The Piano is Also a String Instrument

This is long -- about half an hour but it is so beautiful and fascinating to watch. Even if you are only curious to see someone use the piano instrument in an unorthodox way (Hey, Melissa W., if you are reading, do you remember the phenomenom of "functional fixedness"?) I love watching a musician who has the music so utterly channeling through him. There is an old hymn I grew up singing called Channels Only which actually kinda made me uncomfortable because it seemed to be saying that humans had no unsinful individuality so that when Christ came in to redeem us, He wiped our spirits free of everything that previously made us us (like erasing a hard-drive and starting over) and then remade us into socialistic conduits for His purposes. It was a too Buddhist to be Biblical. But I did love the idea of being so entirely united with Christ that I loved what He loved and hated what He hated and walked my days in a way that made me efficacious for the story He is writing -- a willingly eager-to-obey character in the hands of the Master Writer. C.S. Lewis said that in our giving up (dying to) self in our reconciliation in Christ that we actually find the first glimpse of our real (God-intended) self. Sometimes when I see a musician being electrically lit up by the lyric they are singing or expertly plying this riff from their instrument, I think of that song, of the life-long desire I have had to be used efficaciously to say something worthwhile, something beautiful and true and edifying, honoring to my God. I think the only time I have ever felt in the center of that electrical current has been when I gave birth to my four children or when I was nursing them. The latter is surely part of why I have had such a difficult time mourning our decision to have no more children. Well, on that melancholy (though not despairing) note of self-revelation you should listen to Justin Vernon give himself to this music.