I remember sitting down right across from the pond and setting up my handpan, toeing Darwin to the park bench and turning around to a small crowd ready for me to play. That was just a week prior to being tasked with burying my best friend of 10 years after learning his GI tract complications earlier in the week were incurable.
I’ve found myself going back to Confederation Park,here in Calgary most evenings. Sometimes the anxiety of walking down there without my shadow, freezes me up though and I just stay inside.
Darwin and I would walk that park everyday twice daily at least for the last 4 months since moving up this side of the city. I don’t typically have an audience, and I don’t typically film myself in these moments. But I wanted to remember what came up, because in the moment I tend to just get lost in the patterns and I wanted to be able to record something and listen back if it felt right.
I certainly didn’t plan on crying. But then this song happened. I’ve named it “Beautiful Stranger” and I mixed my interpretation of Trevor Hall’s “You Can’t Rush Your Healing” too, and if you watch til the end, you’ll see why I know now what Darwin has guided me to do. Music is the vehicle to bridging that weird lineal space between grief and gratitude. I hope if you’ve got something you’re fighting through or feeling into you can sit with it and find the peace within.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for being here.
Check out more of what I’m doing these days at http://miketheschwartz.com