Running Barefoot by Amy Harmon

“Joy” theme over 200 different times until he was satisfied with it.” I stopped, not certain whether he wanted to hear more.
    “He was deaf?” Samuel’s voice lifted in astonishment.
    “Yes. Sonja told me that he couldn’t hear the audience applauding behind him when he conducted it for the first time in Vienna. A singer turned him around so that he could see the people cheering and clapping throughout the concert hall. He would lie on the floor during rehearsals so that he could feel the vibrations of the music.”
    “How did he know what it sounded like? I mean, in order to write music, don’t you need to be able to hear it?” Samuel replied in wonder.
    “It was inside him, I guess.” I pursed my lips in contemplation. “It was in his head and in his heart. I guess he felt the music, so he didn’t have to hear it with his physical ears.” I paused. “Sonja told me once that many of the great composers, including Beethoven, have said that the music they compose is in the air, that’s it’s already there, you just have to be able to hear it. Most of us can’t…we can only appreciate that people like Beethoven seem to be able to, and then write down what they hear.”
    “Do you hear it?” Samuel asked, his eyes penetrating.
    “I don’t hear it…but I know it’s there.” I struggled to express something that I’d never put into words. “Sometimes I think if I could just see without my eyes, the way I feel without my hands, I would be able to hear the music. I don’t use my hands to feel love or joy or heartache - but I still feel them all the same. My eyes let me see incredibly beautiful things, but sometimes I think that what I see gets in the way of what’s…what’s just beyond the beauty. Almost like the beauty I can see is just a very lovely curtain, distracting me from what’s on the other side…and if I just knew how to push that curtain aside, there the music would be.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “I can’t really explain it.”
    Samuel nodded his head slowly. “I found myself closing my eyes while you were playing that night in the church. Others did the same. Maybe that’s why. Our ears were trying to hear what our eyes keep hidden.”
    He understood. I felt a luminosity fill my soul and a sudden urge to hug him.
    “It’s in the air,” Samuel mused softly. His eyes were unfocused and his brow creased in reflection. “Like ni ch’i .”
    “What?” I didn’t understand.
    “It’s like ni ch’i . Ni ch’i is the Navajo for air or the wind ... but it is more than that. It is holy and it has power. My Grandmother says ni ch’i means the Holy Wind Spirit. Everything in the living world communicates through ni ch’i . Because of this, the Holy Wind Spirit, ni ch’i , sits at the ears of the Dineh, or the people, and whispers instructions tells them right from wrong. People who constantly ignore the ni ch’i are abandoned, the ni’ch’i will not remain with them.” Samuel’s eyes became focused again, drawing down on mine. “My grandmother believes that the ni ch’i is breathed into a newborn baby as they take their first breath. The child then has the companionship of the ni ch’i at all times. Ni ch’i guides him as he grows.
    “It sounds like the Holy Ghost. I learned about the Holy Ghost in church. It helps you to do what’s right, guards you, warns you, leads you, but only if you are worthy of His company. It only speaks the truth. My Sunday School teacher says it is the way God talks to us.”
    “Maybe what Beethoven hears is ni ch’i singing God’s music.
    “I think you might be right.”
    I rewound the cassette and extended the earphones to fit a head the size of Goliath’s. Then I leaned close to Samuel and fit the whole thing over both of our heads, one earphone on my left ear, one earphone on his right and we listened to God’s music, with our heads pressed close together, for the rest of bus ride.

     
    Samuel never complained about