I Love To Fly

I do not fly very often.

Consequently I have not become jaded about air travel.

I still think it is astounding that we can soar — inside an extremely well-engineered tube of aluminum — into the sky and then gaze down upon planet earth.

Every time I leave the ground in an airplane I experience a mixture of astonishment and bliss.

How does this enormous chunk of metal rise higher and higher and higher until we are above the clouds?

I know it has to do with the shape of the wings and different amounts of air pressure above and below them.

According to the web site How Stuff Works, “as air speeds up, its pressure drops. So the faster-moving air going over the wing exerts less pressure on it than the slower air moving underneath the wing. The result is an upward push of lift. In the field of fluid dynamics, this is known as Bernoulli’s principle.”

Even with this explanation, I am still AMAZED that my plane leaves the ground.

Bernoulli’s principle is also involved with speaking and singing — influencing how our vocal cords (which can be more accurately described as vocal folds or lips) are able to come together and apart thousands of times per second when we are making sound.

The web site Sing For Joy explains, “Because the trachea narrows at the top, the air must flow faster at this point to pass through…Because the air moves faster, it creates a region of low pressure. And because the vocal folds are in this region of low pressure, the epithelium (the fine tip of the vocal folds) is sucked together and vibrates.”

Singing and flying are both about air flow!

And — for me — they are both about joy.

I wrote and recorded “I Love To Fly” before I ever thought about teaching Music Together.

I started working on it when I was waiting in terminal E at Logan airport for a flight to visit friends in Toronto.

A father was trotting back and forth with his young son happily bouncing on his shoulders while I was chanting the chorus onto my lap top using Garageband.

You can hear them at the beginning of the song.

With hindsight, “I Love To Fly” appears to be a lovely foreshadowing of my new life as a Music Together teacher.

Leading Music Together classes is also about joy.

Watching the expressions on children’s faces as they encounter new sounds, new rhythms, new voices, new instruments is often a joyful experience.

I sometimes find myself laughing with delight during class — simply because the children are so present and engaged with what is happening in the room.

In a Music Together class, our goals are exploration and experimentation, rather than perfection or performance.

It’s all about enjoying the process making music together — singing, clapping, snapping, hopping, skipping, dancing, humming, wiggling, shaking, rocking and much, much more…

I love to fly. I love to sing. I love to dance. I love to lead Music Together classes. I love to perform at retirement communities.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Thank you, universe.