I saw in interesting documentary the other day. It was about a violin maker and how he chose the wood to make his instruments.
He says that wood has a voice; that he can hear the wood’s resonance and its music. It reminded me of another article I read a long time ago about another luthier. He had searched all his life for wood that would serve for making violins with a certain beautiful and haunting resonance. At last he succeeded when he came into possession of wood gathered from the timberline, the last stand of the trees of the Rockies, 12,000 feet above sea level. Up there where the winds blow so fiercely and steadily that the bark to windward has no chance to grow, where the branches all point one way, and where a tree to live must stay on its knees all through its life, that is where the world's most resonant wood for violins is born and lives and dies. What beautiful imagery we have here: beautiful music conceived from a life of tribulations. Wordsworth said, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” The problem though is that when going through trials some of us don’t sing, we just make selfish indignant complaining noises. The trials, the tribulations and the tragedies life endows upon us are made to teach our hearts a new song, a song of care, of love, of humility, and of generosity. The crushing of our hopes and dreams is the process which creates the fragrance of empathy, a very expensive fragrance which can only be conceived in the vessel of our broken hearts allowing it to seep onto others. Life is not always kind to us, but like trees in the Rockies, may we let the wind that would uproot us; the wind that keeps us barkless and vulnerable; the wind that pushes us down on our knees; create in us beautiful music to soothe the heart of others. Here is the documentary I saw: https://youtu.be/33KMToBmtXU
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