greetings again to an old friend, and much thought on music

My violin, Ezra Monster Prufrock.

It has been a while since I have been honestly spending daily time with Ezra. Not real practice, nothing that I can say I've improved upon. Maybe "kept in shape" (hardly). It's winter break.

Actually, this year I've been discovering mucho about the violin. About music, about practicing, about ensemble. A lot of great things. And I think something new this year, that wasn't there before, is that I am starting to really adore music. All music. For what it does---all layers---the emotional ways it can sear someone, the fantastic harmonic progressions and melodic lines (The word that plops into my head is 'Haydn'). I started the violin because I wanted to play the violin. Because it was a strange instrument you put on your shoulder. Because I thought that it would be fun to wave your arm up and down to make a sound. I think (yes) that all of us could affirm that the violin is a magical instrument.
But will there be violins in Heaven? I don't think that is a stupid question. I believe in Heaven, that it will be more real than this earth. At the same time, wouldn't our instruments be more real? Or, at least, more perfect. Will we even have the same ones we do now?

I heard someone say recently that Christianity is the only religion (if you want to call it a religion) that sings. Some other religions chant and such, but no singing. And why do we sing?

I googled it:

from Victor Shepard's website (http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/):

"We sing inasmuch as our psychic constitution impels us to sing."

http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_do_we_sing:

"Professor Graham Welch of the University of London has studied developmental and medical aspects of singing for 30 years and says.
“The health benefits of singing are both physiological and psychological. Its physical benefits include increasing oxygenation of the blood stream and working major muscle groups in the upper body.

Psychologically it has the positive effect of reducing stress levels through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to the sense of emotional well-being.”

From the bonding of early humans to the classical recital, the song has played a vital role in humankind’s history and evidence would seem to suggest that singing is good on a communal and personal level."

Another thing I've heard is that singing is a response to something. We sing when something very good has happened to us; we sing when something terrible's occured---and our singing reflects what it is that has happened.

Google "Why do people make music?":

("People who make music out of carrots"...)

WikiAnswers (trustworthy source very?) says:

"Human beings are (almost) the only mammal species that possess both speech and music...But why do humans need music?
"Every single human being, male or female, handicapped or not, young or old, has a desire to sing and dance and to listen to music, just like everybody has a desire for food and drink, for sex and sleep.
"Mankind uses music to express and convey feelings and to develop a feeling of togetherness."

One author has pulled the issue of time duration and effect into the front:

http://cnx.org/content/m13846/latest/

"Words may describe time's passing but music enacts it for us. For instance, the greater the amount of repetition, the more the future is conditioned by what has already happened. If an idea returns literally, it speaks to its transcendence; if it is perpetually transformed, then it changes with the times...
"In a recent article in the "New Yorker" magazine, author Milan Kundera quotes Marcel Proust: "Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book."

So there seems to me a cause for making music and an effect (yes...cause and effect) music has on the musician. What the author is saying is that music actually durates, whereas words are only stagnant..."music is performed unstoppably in time."

Not only that, but that music expresses a relationship between the future and the past, how the future (and the present, only thing being heard) arises, actually developes from the past.

More ramble on this later.