"This is your dance"

Tonight I went to a benefit concert and talk for the Longest Walk II – the journey I will be joining next February. I wasn’t going to go, feeling a little fatigued today, but I’m glad I went. I got there in time to see a video the organizers put together, chronicling the walk from 30 years ago and some of what we can expect from this year’s walk. There will people from all over the world joining us, including a group of Japanese monks who were along for the walk "back in the day." Also, a group of Aborigines from Australia are walking with us as well. There will be cultural talks during the dinner hour, lots of music, lots of drumming. It got me excited!

Afterwards, some of the members of the Native American community drummed and sang the American Indian Movement’s National Anthem and then we got to hear a couple of people speak who had done the walk back in 1978. It was inspiring to hear them tell the tales of their spiritual journey – and the sheer physical demands of walking that distance. One woman, who did the walk when she was 19, went through 6 pairs of shoes. Yikes. One man talked of the importance of making sure all races were welcome in this spiritual community and that "we are walking for the health of the Earth –we are walking so that we all can live, and that we are calling on the ancestors of all nations and all peoples to aid in this healing." I needed to hear that message and so I’m glad I was there.

I also got to meet up with my friend Antonio, who I know from the rooms. He’s going to be going the whole distance too, so I’m glad to know I will have a friend along. We talked about how we are training for it - putting time in at the gym and just gearing up for goddess only knows what is ahead.

When I got in my little truck to head home, the third movement from Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto was starting, which is just one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. The last movement of this piece starts off with a melody so sweet it makes me swoon and then gets into a rockstar piano solo that just floors me every time. There’s these last few seconds when it’s just this sweet little piano riff and a slow thrumming of the tympani right before it rockets into the final crash and..man..it was the anthem rock of its day for sure. It was Beethoven’s last piano Concerto – the man was deaf when he wrote it, which makes it all the more astounding to me. I got to hear the Oregon Symphony play it this year, which was one of my highlight concert moments indeed.

I had first heard the “Emperor” when I was in high school. I don’t know where I picked it up, I had a cassette of it that I used to play on my Walkman, with those puffy orange headphones, and ride around on my midnight blue “chunkrat” one speed all over Mill Valley, blasting this concerto and just knowing that all was right in my world at that moment. And here it is 25 years later and I’m still here, and still swooning over Beethoven and everything is still alright in my world.