Brand New Blog!!

I finally did it!  I created a blog.  Folks have been asking me recently:  Do you have a blog?  Have you started a blog yet?  When are you going to start your blog…?  I’ve been reluctant.

Then, yesterday, Kristina Walsh sent me a link to a video.  She said: “KL!  Check out this composer!”  It was the second link that I had been sent in two days time about a TED talk–which are all equally amazing.  The link she sent was to Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Chorus 2.0.

It’s one of the coolest things I’d seen in awhile.  And I thought to myself:  I should start a blog.  And the the first post should be about the Virtual Choir.  In those moments watching the Virtual Choir it was as if technology no longer seemed a plastic divider between people, and I started to feel it could be a real means of connection.  I got the chills.

I’m an old-fashioned writer.  I write by hand.  I don’t have a smart phone.  I still write and mail letters–I love to write and mail letters.  I love stationary.  I use stickers and novelty stamps often.  I relish in the slowly paced traditional forms of connection despite that our society lurches ahead at light speed.  Sometimes I won’t even send an email when I easily could, and phone someone instead–not text message–but phone.  I like to hear a live voice on the other end.

But watching the Virtual Choir shifted something for me.  I began to see technology not as a means of separation, as a device that allows us all to hide in our homes, emailing our next door neighbors to ask to borrow a cup of sugar before walking over and ringing the doorbell….who am I kidding?….do any neighbors ever ask to borrow a cup of sugar anymore?

Still, in the moments watching Whitacre’s display of more than 2,000 voices in 58 countries, I began to see, finally, that our technology can aid us all in making genuine–if even virtual–connections.  Not by text message or video conferencing.  But by being a part of a cohesive project where real connections can be made  using the resonance of voice and sound.  We are all living in a state of vibration.  Sound travels.  Sending out a vocal call to others to connect changes this virtual machine of pings and trackbacks and tags and IP addresses into something more.  Something warmer, less distant.  Something that can connect us to feeling.   And while it’s true that none of the singers in the Virtual Choir met in person to record this project, I have no doubt that energetic connections were being made.

So here I am, connecting now with you.  In the virtual world, every moment is now.  And whether you are reading this now, or now, I’m honored to connect with you, wherever you are.  Until we connect again, enjoy the Virtual Choir 2.0~

[Virtual Choir 2.0]