Do Re Mi Joymaker

It's been a while since I wrote anything, so how appropriate to come back with a great item to share. Many of you may already have seen this video on You Tube, but I first came across it in an email from my Dutch Uncle and had at least one other friend ask me if I had seen it (thanks, Walker), which lead me back to Uncle Jim's email.

I can't explain why I react as I do when watching this. All I can say is it fills me with a weird and profound kind of joy and hope. I cry each time I watch it, which makes no sense. In a way, it reminds me of a quote from Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, where he writes,

"Sometimes it takes hold of me--not fear, not desire, but an inner unfathomable turmoil that threatens to break the confines of my breast and choke me." (*)

Though for Werther this quote describes a darker feeling of turmoil, watching this little production makes me think of the turmoil not as something sad, but as the joy I'm suddenly filled with and as it breaks free of my breast, the choking is me trying to get my breath back after being overwhelmed with the pure joy of seeing all these people dancing to Do Re Mi. I suppose that is the beauty of art that it can suddenly inspire in you such a depth of feeling.

I hope you all get as much pleasure from watching this as I did, and continue to do.



(*) From the Signet Classic translation by Catherine Hutter, 1962, p107.