This morning I woke up and had about 30 minutes I could spend playing with the iPad before getting ready for work. I downloaded a few more free apps and decided to purchase Smule’s Magic Piano because it had such a high rating in the iTunes app store.

Upon opening it up a corkscrew set of piano keys swirled into the page. Great, I haven’t played piano since 8th grade, I thought. What will I do with this. After about 3 minutes, I aborted my attempt at what memories I have left of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, and started smashing the keys. That lasted about 25 seconds.

I hit the menu button, songbook caught my eye. I hit Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Nothing happened. A few beams of lights like falling stars began drifting down the screen. That’s kind of pretty I thought. I pressed one of the falling stars. Ah! A note! I pressed another and another and figured out that if I pressed the lights notes to the song would play. Amazing. Beautiful. Startling.

I checked the Nutcracker March. I began pressing the stardust in time with the tempo of the music in my head and played….the Nutcracker. Then the Flight if the Bumblebees. Then Amazing Grace. That one was really hard. I stopped playing and went back to the menu.

I saw the World button. I thought world music. No, it was a beautiful grapic of the Earth, with a beam of light streaming from somewhere in Vietnam. I began to hear a song. The Moonlight sonata. Played by anonymous. After about 2 minutes, the Earth rotated and the beam of light was in Yemen. The point if light began to create stardust and the Flight of the Bumblebees began. It was gorgeous. It was stunning. I couldn’t stop smiling. To know that at that exact moment in time someone in Yemen tagnamed Zaphra was playing and I was listening.

I went back to the menu and selected Duet. The Earth rotated again and the point of light came from Florida. I heard a tentative tinkle of keys. I pressed a few places in the black outer space. I tinkled back. And my duet partner Elton John did the same. Soon he was matching my notes and I his and we played and played and extended our time together and I thought.

My god. I am playing music with someone I’ve never met, and never will. At this very short moment and time I am connected to someone I will never know. And our fingers simutaneously danced across a glossy iPad screen and we made beautiful music together.

What a way to start the day.