When I started writing these memoirs in 2013, I had been playing spontaneous piano music for 10 years, after the music had come through in 2003 in Kalk Bay during my recovery from surgery. (Part 2, Episode 3).  The fact that it was on my grandmother’s 1901 Bechstein, and not on my Bechstein grand piano in France which I had acquired in time for my 50th birthday in 2001 is significant.  I feel and believe with hindsight, extremely significant.

I wanted to understand what had transpired (and still does) when I place my fingers on the piano keys and enter a ‘zone’ which is not my intellect or mental mind.  I am not in my mind thinking about where my fingers will go, but they seem to ‘know’ and move independently of my thought or volition.  I am conscious that I am an instrument in these moments.  Occasionally if a thought arises, the subsequent notes might sound like a mistake…and I am aware that the connection from my heart has been broken at that point and somehow my ego has stepped forward.

Now that some of these musical downloads have been recorded on my grandmother’s piano and I can listen to them, I hear these themes as my signature.  I can repeat their essential quality.  I do not refer to them as my ‘compositions’, which would imply some rational structure or intention.  If I was shown the partition of what this music looks like, I would not be able to recognise the score and say it was my music.  In fact I would probably not be able to read and play it!  But they are perhaps ‘sound poems’?  And I am an intuitive musician. (See videos)