Waiting is a phenomenon so foreign to us, Americans, that we hardly know what to do with ourselves when we are forced to do such things. I have the unfortunate habit of growing coldly impatient in grocery store lines. Perhaps if I had a bigger wallet, I wouldn't mind so much--and those extra moments of counting and recalculating my weekly grocery tally that seems to loom before me ever pressingly wouldn't bother me terribly. Probably, that is not the case however. I am just impatient. And, I would probably be even more so if I was a woman of great means.
My lack of waiting, my restless soul, is probably why God saw fit to give me this illness. Weeks pass as I wait for a good day, where I am well enough to walk a distance or visit friends downtown. But, that good day, the sunshine that comes out from behind the clouds and warms me up from my kitchen table and chair, brings me strength to make it through the many more days that I will once again be remarkably ill. So too, is the nature of a musical suspension.
I think I shall never hear music as beautiful as a piece that rightly plays suspensions, but like life, it must eventually resolve. The piece begins on a chord and then separates and then must again harmonize. The two voices chase each other to arrive at a harmony--but they do not quickly arrive at a harmony. They must endure through seasons of change (notes that move around from one place to another) until they finally reunite--on a mutually harmonic triad. As Kent Kennan says in his book "Counterpoint," "...a suspension, anticipation, or chord tone must be involved if the effect is to be successful" (73).
It is possible that only a life full of enough suspensions and anticipations is one beautiful enough to play.
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