Something Else.
What are You Listening to Now?
For millennia- a hideous word I regret using, music has been one of the most powerful forces in the universe. In any time or place, you can be found, bringing it to life. Drawing others to the fire, speaking for everything that remains unspoken. How could you understand the spiritual without it?
There is much to be said for you at your most primitive. You will still be a part of the world around you, seeking to understand it, you are beautiful this way. All too soon you prefer to be told what it means, the first explanations are kept, sacred to you, long after you stop believing them. And when you are willing to believe something on faith alone, you step deliberately away from reason. In your current manifestation, reason is an enemy, instead everyone has to have a creed. Only you could find a way to imprison freedom. I love it.
What I am not so fond of is the way you have robbed music of its power. Worse, you’ve replaced it with a different kind, one more suited to your rapacity. It’s an obvious thing to harness it for your needs, but really, what you’ve done is so much worse. Start by diluting it beyond recognition, then flood the world with it. Make sure it’s on in public spaces, force people to sit through it, force people to hear it while they try to go about their lives. That alone takes it out of sacred spaces, far from the heart and soul that birthed it.
Pay lip service to the giants of the past, worship them in the highest halls, into infinity. Never really hear them.
Classical music. Let’s discuss it. Walk away now if you’re afraid to know the truth.
Different kinds, different minds, some on fire, others not. All of it- too long, too everywhere. It has the same diluting effect; it robs it of its power. If you’re listening to Bach and your mind is wandering, highly likely, then he has lost you. A song is a precious, triumphant thing, it will find its way deep into the listeners, if it’s done right. Truly intimate, like a secret shared, such a thing is not made to be sustained for long. Far too draining, for both sides. String them all together into something that will take hours to hear? Ludicrous. Ninety percent of it will be waste and wasted.
The idea that the artist creates such an elaborate edifice deliberately to guide you where he wants you to go is also ridiculous. He has no right to, in the first place, his gifts were given for a reason, they must be shared, and they must be allowed to fly where they will. Do not tell me to cry when the heroine is dying, by now I should have been crying for her because she moved me. Do not try and tell me how I should feel, ever.
Listen, as I did, to some of many composers, listen long enough to find your favourites, love them as they deserve to be loved. You will find, In the End, Way too much, for too long. No way to really do justice to any of it.
Switch now to “Voices” by Immanu El and see what happens, it’s a magical song, I play it on repeat and walk through the darkest shadows in the forest. Come out to a clearing to be blinded by the moon, a benediction on the land, the grasses, the rocky ridges, the dark waters, my skin. Yes, even mine, the devil is highly susceptible to such things.
You have invented hundreds of genres, found ways to define your own culture by it, used it to fly your flags, ah- I can hardly bear to think of music in your hands. If I could, I would take it all from you, every last melody, every note, every pounded drumbeat. Leave you in perfect silence, where most of you belong. That, I know, would drive you mad, but you’re driving yourselves there anyway. I am patient, I wait for the spark that may do it one day.