Music and photograph by Pia Jane Bijkerk.

Download. Share. Enjoy.

With Love and Gratitude,

Pia x

Like a paper boat on a windy sea,
battered and bruised from the to-ing and fro-ing.
Drenched in drops of tears that fall like rain…
I’ve lost sight of the shore.

All this, yes.

But now that I am surrounded by all that is unfamiliar,
I’m more aware, more awake, than ever before.
And with wide, clear eyes I soon find myself
In a world of wonder I never dared dream about.
It’s in this world that wandering hearts come lost,
To be found.

Poem excerpt from My Heart Wanders.
Music, voice, words and photograph by Pia Jane Bijkerk.

Download. Share. Enjoy.

With Love and Gratitude,

Pia x

So I’ve been playing a series of notes on the piano over and over again since I shared my last composition with you, Spirit & Flight.  I didn’t think it was ready to be recorded as I hadn’t really been able to move it, shift it, expand it. I finally let go of thinking I needed to make it into something it wasn’t, yet continued to play it over and over again this past month because there was something in it that spoke to me…

…something in it that I needed to hear. Then last Saturday morning, while Romain took Laly to the park, I sat down at the piano, pressed record, and played.

This is my rawest, published piece yet, so full of little “oh I could have played that better”, “hmm that’s not quite right” notes  – however it captured how I was feeling so completely that I felt it was worth sharing with you…

If you listen carefully, you will hear me take a deep breath towards the end of the first part of the piece. Then I play on, higher, quieter…

After I played, I understood what it was that I needed to hear: my anger. I have always pushed it away, bottled it up, kept it locked deep inside. But I’m learning that by doing so it doesn’t go away, it just grows then screams out in pain in various parts of my body. When I sat down to play this time, I felt it well up in me, echoing the frustrating morning I’d had with my little warrior girl Laly, so defiant, not afraid to protest or go against her mother. She’s not like me and when I’m not in awareness, I can hear my quiet, bottled up voice within screaming out “I don’t understand you, why aren’t you like me! Why can’t you listen to me!”.  Of course I don’t want her to be like me, I just want her to do as I say.

So this piece, Spirit & Flight Part 2, is a storytelling of my battle with motherhood, my struggle to adapt, to surrender to how I was mothered and how I mother and want to mother.

In the second part of the piece (at 2 minutes 40 sec), I relinquish.

These photos are from our few days in Byron last month. “Spirit” and “Flight” are two words that resonate with my time there, and the energy of our little Laly.

Thanks for listening again dear friends, I hope you enjoy this piece. Don’t forget you can download all my pieces to listen on your music devices for free.

With Love,

Pia x

My second piano composition for the year, titled Spirit & Flight is now ready for you to download. Thank you for the incredible response to my first piece, Of Time & Light. It’s been such a wonderful process, each piece a reflection of a state of now for me, a deep dwelling. And there is something about publishing the work – as I’ve found in the past with sharing my creations in their raw state here on my blog – that not only helps me to grow but is so very nurturing as well.

Thank you for listening, I hope you’ll enjoy this composition.

With Love,

Pia

Dear friends,

It’s been many years since I explored sound here on my blog. And many years since my very first public piano recording. With your enthusiasm and praise I shrunk away, too timid to try again in case the next piece wouldn’t be as well admired. Life moved on but the music stayed in my heart.

This year, in working to open my heart ever more, I’ve decided to play again. For me. And to share it with you. Freely. Each month in 2014, I will upload a new piano composition: My heart’s voice. Each piece will be recorded in my own home on an old wooden semi grand borrowed from a friend, complete with ambient sound from my home & neighborhood. With each piece I am striving to let go: Let go of perfection; let go of expectation; let go of self.

There will be mistakes. I will not edit the compositions. These will not be professional recordings.

I offer each composition to you freely – you can download them and add them to your music collection, to take with you as you journey in your creative life. I recommend listening to them with your headphones so you can hear the birds singing in the background, and the pedal creaking, the keys clicking.

At the end of the year, in its roughness, will be an album. Here is my first piece, titled Of Time & Light.

This is my heart’s voice.

With Love,

Pia xx