Last night I saw the play 33 Variations.  It’s a fictional story surrounding the composition of Ludwig von Beethoven’s  thirty-three variations of Anton Diabelli’s waltz.  It was a wonderful play written and directed by Moises Kaufman.  But while some might view the play from the perspective of seeing one of Beethoven’s works come alive, I viewed it as a process of change and living in the present moment.

One the surface, Beethoven began with a simple waltz by Diabelli and transformed it into thirty-three different musical works of art.  During the play, we discovered the process of composing a piece of music, showing through Beethoven’s sketchbooks how he would draft a set of notes in pencil, then pen over a revision until he arrived at the final product.  In addition to depicting the music, Kaufman also portrayed the life of Beethoven as he descended into deafness, the process of a maestro at the height of fame plunging into the depths of illness.  Kaufman blended the past with the present day by including a musicologist sleuth, diagnosed with a debilitating illness, who’s out to discover why Beethoven was so obsessed with these musical variations.

The play made me pause and think about the process of life, how nothing stays the same, how everything changes, yet change happens day by day, moment by moment. 

At the macro level, we are born and grow.  At each stage of our life, the process continues.  We learn.  We work.  We love.  We experience the world around us.  Each year, each week, each day, each breath, is a new beginning.  As we focus more closely on our life, we can examine our career, and home life and see how each successive event in our live transforms us into the person we are today. 

As a writer, I think about the process of writing.  Typing subjects and verbs. Stringing sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into pages of text until the words are transformed into a story.  As a stained glass artist, I think about the process of creating a work of art.  Designing a window, cutting the glass, leading and soldering and mudding until what was once small plates of glass and strips of lead have been transformed into a piece of art.

Everything is a process.  And every process begins and ends in the present moment.