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" I have lived in the shadow of loss—the kind of loss that can paralyze you forever.
I have grieved like a professional mourner—in every waking moment, draining every ounce of my life force.
I died—without leaving my body.
But I came back, and now it’s your turn.
I have learned to remember my past—without living in it.
I am strong, electric, and alive, because I chose to dance, to laugh, to love, and to
live again.
I have learned that you can’t re-create the life you once had—you have to
reinvent a life for yourself.
And that reinvention is a gift, not a curse.
I believe your future self is a work of art and that science can help you create it. If you’re lost . . . if you’re gone . . . if you can barely absorb the words on this
page . . . I want you to hold this truth in your heart: when it’s your time to go, you won’t wish you had spent more time grieving; you’ll wish you had spent more time living.
That’s why I’m here. And why you are, too. Let’s live like our lives depend on it. "
― Christina Rasmussen , Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again
135
" Well," he said with equanimity, " you see, in my opinion there is no point at all in talking about music. I never talk about music. What reply, then, was I to make to your very able and just remarks? You were perfectly right in all you said. But, you see, I am a musician, not a professor, and I don't believe that, as regards music, there is the least point in being right. Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that." " Indeed. Then what does it depend on?" " On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. That is the point, Monsieur. Though I carried the complete works of Bach and Haydn in my head and could say the cleverest things about them, not a soul would be the better for it. But when I take hold of my mouthpiece and play a lively shimmy, whether the shimmy be good or bad, it will give people pleasure. It gets into their legs and into their blood. That's the point and that alone. Look at the faces in a dance hall at the moment when the music strikes up after a longish pause, how eyes sparkle, legs twitch and faces begin to laugh. That is why one makes music. "