Today, I was playing through a song on my piano and my mind was so very far from the music in front of me. The notes blurred together and I realized at the end of the song that my hands had played through the entire song by sheer muscle memory. When I was young, learning to play, no one knew for quite some time that I had no ability to read music - not really. I could clunk away note by note, but not in any elegant or really competent way. Some songs were just in my hands because I had heard them played by someone else. With time, I could play even complicated songs with refinement and success. And, apparently, even now, my muscle memory still holds onto those pieces in the cobwebs of my mind, even if the notes elude me.

My wandering thoughts during that song had taken me to a not-terribly-dissimilar place. I was thinking of friendships. Some are challenging to learn and take a great deal of cultivation to blossom into something tangible. Some blossom without any effort - the music is heard and the music is known without explanation and it is unstoppable. Some friendships are attempted and are too complicated to pursue. Some friendships are for a season - compelling, powerful, life-giving and remembered but likely never to be played again. Some friendships sit, rarely revisited but then are remembered and played as if no time has passed. Some friendships last a whole lifetime and become richer, sweeter, resonating with knowing and understanding and love and trust. Some friendships change as they are played, never looking like the original pages.

The music changes us. It becomes a part of who we are. Music can be transcendent, cathartic, haunting, visceral, ephemeral, melancholic, and exuberant.

So, tomorrow I'm going to try to learn a new song. Undoubtedly, I'll tinker at it dutifully for long enough to dissuade my guilty conscience and then I'll find my dear old friends and let my muscle memory do all the work.