Letting go of attachment
I awake to a deeper truth
I am just the instrument
I pray I am played well today

I cut off my ears
at a beautiful note

And fall in love when
it's a screeching sound

I gauge my eyes out
with the violin's bow

The audience claps
so I take a bow

Lately, I have been détaché-d
Colorful melody, no strings attached

Take the strings of the violin
Tie them around my neck

I grab the neck
of the violin, choke myself
and say

Violence is yet
another instrument
I can't play.

I say there is no physical beauty.
This skin, this flesh, this bone
are but the clay of which we make our beauty,
the instrument on which we play our beauty.
  
Witness the failure of funeral directors to please true aesthetes:
the dead Ingrid Bergman lacks the beauty of a living bag lady.
  
Tennis masters
given K-Mart rackets
win gracefully,
while the high-school violinist
playing a Stradivarius
fails to delight us.
  
Thus noses, lips, ******* have no beauty in themselves.
Perfect features are easily distorted by
anger, sloth, irritability, or conceit.
But in a rare few
energy, grace, composure, and sensitivity
are blended in such a quantity
that they overflow
and color with an exquisite beauty every pore of the body,
fill with a subtle music every gesture, every word.
  
I say there is no physical beauty.
This skin, this flesh, this bone
are but the clay of which we make our beauty,
the instrument on which we play our beauty.

Write what you know
Paint what you see
Yourself is much more int’resting
Than whoever you pretend to be

Sing what you hear
Move how you must
Look not to other’s favour
In yourself you may trust

Create and inspire
Astound and amuse
Yourself is an instrument
Go ahead - play what you choose!

A hand glides
softly against
the melodic keys.

A note rings
throughout the room,
bouncing off the walls
roughly and
without falter.

Energy flows through
the hands and
the rhythm picks up.

Crescendo.