Wonderfully Composed: A Musical Guide to Emotional Expression - Authentic Expressions

Wonderfully Composed is my first attempt to write what I feel most deeply: that learning to express the music of your own soul is among life's most significant and fulfilling endeavors.

Knowing yourself is no easy task. Expressing yourself can be even harder, especially if you truly desire to be known and understood by the people around you. Most challenging of all is expressing the thoughts and feelings most deeply held, most dearly cherished, and most diligently guarded.

I believe that music is an apt reflection of the emotional composition of our souls. Any separation between our own experience and our expression of it is a distortion of our authentic selves, and a form of deception to the world around us. Any disregard for the experience of the people around us is callous and destructive, and an abusive waste of our most precious gifts. We learn authentic, sensitive self-expression in much the same way that musicians learn music: haltingly and timidly at first, fluidly and openly with practice, masterfully and beautifully in time.