Joie de vivre

In a sudden outburst of happiness, my best friend once whipped out a pen to scribble something onto a napkin as we sat at our favorite coffee shop sipping Frozen Mochaccinos.

"CONNIE GIVES ME THE JOIE DE VIVRE," she wrote.

I saved the napkin for years to come.

At the time, I didn't really realize what an honor it was to be described by this phrase. In fact, I didn't really know what the expression meant exactly. I knew it had to do with joy, with living, possibly being translated as the "joy of life" based on my rough knowledge of the French language. But actually, the phrase is even more specific in meaning than simply having the joy of life. Vivre, being present tense, has a much more active connotation which lends the phrase to describing the very sensation of joy that you get while actively living- while eating, dancing, running, working, breathing, and doing anything else that life may present to you in a given day. And through all this, to find this joy of living is a special thing indeed.

Thus is the inspiration for this blog- to find joie de vivre through actively living my life and discovering all the beautiful things out there that affect me as a person, artist, and musician. Because without these things, the pursuit of art is a futile and needless one. It's my hope that through discovering beauty in the everyday and the extraordinary, by searching for profundity in all forms of media and people, and by realizing the meaning of things that God has bestowed around and in me all the time, my soul will well up with a desire to produce music on my instrument that is more poignant, discerning, and profound then what it was just a day ago.

And so begins this journey.