There are moments when music is not something we listen to — it is something we live inside. It finds the places words cannot reach and opens them, gently, like a sunrise slipping under closed eyelids.
One evening, during a live concert tucked between rain and the first trembling light of dawn, I found myself FLOATING — not alone, but together with a kindred spirit beside me.
We did not know each other before the music began. We didn’t need to.
The first notes stitched us into the same breath, the same shimmering wave of sound.
The rain outside tapped a rhythm no hand had written, and the steel around us carried the vibrations, singing along in its own language of echoes and flight.
In that space, connection was effortless — as if the music had carved a canyon wide enough for all the unspoken stories between us to flow freely.
Below are two poems born from that night — reflections of what it means to float together inside music, to belong for a moment not just to yourself, but to a sound, a morning, a stranger-become-friend.
The NaPoWriMo Day 25 prompt was:
Finally, here is our optional prompt for the day. In her poem, senzo. Evie Shockley recounts the experience of being at a live concert, relating it the act of writing poetry. Today we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts an experience of your own in hearing live music, and tells how it moves you. It could be a Rolling Stones concert, your little sister’s middle school musical, or just someone whistling – it just needs to be something meaningful to you.”
I immediately remembered an Unplugged Concert of Martynas Levickes, a master accordionist at the Liepe &Co. International Festival in the halls of the steel retailers Nettlenbusch & Syrowy in Hanover, Germany at June 9th, 2024.
Find the opening song of this event after my reading of the following poem in the Video or Pod.
Sound Woven Through Steel
The first note rose — not from the stage, not from a place, but from everywhere, all at once, as if the air itself remembered how to sing.
The steel rods, silent giants, holding breath in the shadows, took the music into their bones, let it tumble, scatter, rain against the walls in bright, accidental patterns.
When Martynas Levickis played, I did not hear. I *became*.
The accordion, a breathing creature, pulled sound from the deep places, where longing meets grace, and fed it back to the room in great shimmering waves.
The ground did not tremble; no, it cradled. The steel did not clang; it held each tone like cupped hands under water, letting music flow through fingers without ever breaking it.
The first piece was Rain. It fell in invisible threads against my skin, finding every pore, every memory, until I could no longer tell where my body ended and the sound began.
A stranger sat beside me, but by the third note she was no stranger at all. We nodded, small smiles, the kind that know:*Yes, you feel it too.*
The music carried us, not forward, not back, but inward — like rain drawn into thirsty earth, like light bending into prismed color.
There were moments when my ribs forgot to armor themselves, when my heart rang out, pure and unhidden.
I thought of all the roads I had followed because others drew them for me, thought of the narrowness I’d once mistaken for safety.
But here, in this forge of sound, I allowed. Allowed the tears, the aching beauty, the wild wish to live differently.
It was not just music. It was not just concert.
It was an undoing, a remaking, an invitation:
May you be the creator of your own life.
Later, waiting in the cool night air, I did qigong on an empty train platform. The earth turned beneath me. The stars blinked their approval.
I toasted the evening with a simple meal, a sip of wine, and the quiet, certain knowing that something inside me had changed,
and that change sounded exactly like rain falling on steel.
2025/04/25
When I read today's prompt in
Substack, I immediately thought at the first poem. The experience at that concert truly felt like floating.
Floating Together
The first chord rose —
and we were already FLOATING,
not alone, side by side,
two hearts stitched into the music’s breath.
Rain tapped its rhythm on the steel,
the dawn stirred inside us,
soft and new.
We looked,
not speaking,
knowing:
the music gathered us,
folded us into one shimmering wave.
In that sound,
in that moment,
we belonged —
to the music,
to the morning,
to something vaster than ourselves.
2025/04/25
And while those are already music related I’d like to also share my music related poem of yesterday. Following the NaPoWriMo Day 24 Prompt of:
And now for today’s (optional) prompt. One fundamental aspect of music is its communal nature. While music can be made by a single person, of course, it’s often made in groups. Rock bands, orchestras, church choirs – they all involve making music together. And often, we’re playing or performing music that was written by, or inspired by, other people.
In her poem, Duet, Lisa Russ Spaar tells the story of two sisters making music together, based on two pre-existing songs by different artists. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves people making music together, and that references – with a lyric or line – a song or poem that is important to you.”
Hallelujahs We Carry
after Leonard Cohen and Gloria Horton-Young
We came with nothing but our feet,
no banners raised, no drums to beat,
but voices raw from shouting through the years.
The asphalt hummed beneath our soles,
like basslines pulled from battered souls—
we sang through grief, we sang through tears.
And even if it all fell through,
we still would sing a hallelujah.
She brought a sign, you wore a scar,
I lit a candle near the car—
we circled close in trembling harmony.
Someone whispered “there’s a crack,”
and sure enough, the sky fought back,
but still we stood, like rooted symphony.
Because the broken truth is true,
and in our bones lives hallelujah.
A man near Fort Sumter struck a chord,
a child from Boston spoke the word,
and every line we carried lit the way.
From Gettysburg to Ellis Isle,
we walked in rhythm, mile by mile,
with Gloria’s voice as call, our own as stay.
And though afraid, we still pushed through—
our courage sang hallelujah..
Leonard’s song once knelt and wept,
but now it marches, now it steps—
it braids with fists and flowers in the street.
The quiet chords, the holy notes,
rise with our breath, caught in our throats,
each syllable a vow we won’t delete.
Not for the powerful, not for the few—
this fight, this fire, this hallelujah.
Thank you so much Gloria for your continued effort to mobilise your people.
Thank you for continuing to walk this path with me.
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