Here we are, on our last evening in Latvia, packing things up and cleaning the apartment. I can remember sometime during our third week or so, I said to Don, "We've been here awhile, and we have six more weeks to go! Isn't that great?" Well, time went by quickly, as it usually does when you are enjoying yourself, and it is now time to go.
While I am looking forward to going home, I am extremely sad to be leaving this wonderful country. This has been a magical place for me -- a place where I am around people who love music as much as I do. I don't know anyone here, and I am a nobody in a big sea of people, but this has been such a special place for me. I just wish I could go back home and encourage the people around me to make music an important part of their life. Music has a profoundly positive effect on our physical health, our mental health, and our social life. There is nothing else like it. Latvians have figured that out; most Americans haven't.
I am profoundly grateful to the Eli Lilly Foundation, because without their grant, I would never have been able to come to Latvia. My life has been transformed; my appreciation of and love for music has been multiplied many times over. I will never look at music the same way.
My goal is to come back to this awe-inspiring place. I want to bring my choirs here. I want them to sing in these beautiful churches. I want them to feel the magic that I have felt while I have been here. I want them to grow to love and appreciate music more than they ever have before. I want them to sing with so much joy that they are lifted to a higher place -- a spiritual realm that they have never visited before.
Good-bye, Riga. Good-bye, blog. And good-bye readers. May we continue to raise our voices together in song.
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