for all lovers of music out there. i took the time to type this out of a book im currently reading. I hope this essay finds you well. - JORGE LISTENING TO MUSIC by W.A. Mathieu Music reflects the purpose it was made for. The textures and structures of dance music are different from those of mystery movie scores. Dance music wants to have a wedding with your body. Mystery music wants to scare you out of your mind. There is music to watch a play by, music to be romanced by, dinner music, theme music, advertising music, patriotic music, music to get lost in space by, music to fill in the blanks by. Pretty far down the list for most people is music to listen to. Nothing is wrong with stories or movies or dancing or daydreaming or thinking. They all mix in their enjoyable ways with music. But none of them is the same as listening to music. If you have yet to listen to music without one of the above, a fine new experience is ahead of you. There is a funny story going around about New Age music. A diner in a restaurant says to the waiter, “The needle is stuck on the record you’re playing.” The waiter replies, “No it isn’t stuck, it’s New Age. It only sounds repetitive to the unsophisticated ear that doesn’t know how not to listen to it . . .” The truth is, most of us have to learn specifically the single, pure act of listening to music. Sometimes music does come to you by itself, unexpectedly surrounding you. Startled, you wake up in a new beautiful new house of sound. But for the most part, learning to listen takes time and patience. Like training a small muscle. This is what musicians do to learn their trade – they practice listening, with ever-deepening concentration and perception. Music that is meant to be listened to for itself, and not as an accompaniment to anything else, is called absolute music. Finding some that you like might not be so easy. You need music that beckons to you, holds you in its sphere, and shows you something hidden in yourself. The most accessible classical music is generations behind us. North Indian music is half a planet away. Contemporary art music comes in untested bins. Yet there is enough incredibly fine absolute music in the world to allow any seeker to eventually build up a list of preferences. My current “Best Listening List” contains much Bach; some Mozrt and Beethoven string quartets; some Terry Riley; some Middle Eastern, North Indian, and Bulgarian music; some Stan Kenton and Miles Davis. . . But this is not your list , its my list. All my life I’ve been looking for music that I trust as much as a country boy trusts his swimming hole, so that every dive can be carefree and perfect. My list works for me. No one can tell you what should be on yours. That is what makes your list valuable. What makes it so difficult to simply listen to music? The problem is thinking. Thoughts are famished and your brain is food. When thoughts are feasting, it is difficult to hear over the din and commotion of the banquet. There are many kinds of thinking, and listening is not any of them. There is the kind of thinking where we work out our plans for the day, or for our lives. Remembering is a kind of thinking. So is fantasizing. There is also the kind of thinking that places experience in context and explains its meaning. There is analytical thought, which takes apart what it is experiencing, and holistic thought, which connects it to cosmos. Any of these modes of thought can be a response to music or can be intensified in the atmosphere of music. None are necessarily to be avoided. But each in its way is an arm that holds you back from the embrace. People are taught that they can understand music only if they know something about it. Understanding music means knowing how many kids Bach had, or knowing about Mozart’s relationship to his father, or which sound is the oboe d ‘amore, or where recapitulation occurs. There is something in this. But in my view, music is intellectually illuminated from within. It itself is radiating mind that illuminates yours by resonance. It needs only your consciousness of its streaming for it to become absolutely what it is. It needs only to be heard. Learning about music is a matter of doing your homework. Surely it is useful to study the history of a new town the better to enjoy your visit there; and knowing the layout of the streets does help you get around. But knowing these things is not the same thing as experiencing the town. Some tourists memorize the history and the points of history and the points of interest and never leave the tour bus. A conscious traveler can get a feel of a new place just by being there, by sitting in the café with an open mind while the town comes alive. Here is how to listen to music with your whole self. Find the right piece of absolute music. Find an undisturbed setting be it a concert hall or your own room. As you listen, be as comfortable as possible. Close your eyes. Relax your forehead. Perhaps you will see shapes-benign, abstract, light-filled forms, which are a neurological aspect of the sound. There will be pictures of, and thoughts about, and twitches and itches and physical responses. Don’t fight these; just keep coming back to the sound. Grab onto any aural feature- the clarinet, the cello, the cymbal- to pull yourself back in, no matter what. Inhale music and exhale music. Nothing is needed except awareness and your desire to let music be your whole reality. With the regularity of the hear beat, keep returning to the sound and the sound alone. All parts of it. Scan it high and low. Be starved for it. Let it be starved for you. Here is a good practice using recorded music. Get a clean copy of a short piece (three to six minutes) of instrumental music that you can listen to wholeheartedly – classical, jazz, country, rock, anything you love- and play it twice in a row everyday for about five days. Don’t do anything else when you listen to it: no read, no look, no sing, no think, no dance, no dream, no scheme, no mad, no paranoid, no fantasy, no memory, no nothing, Get into a daily rhythm of pure, clear channel listening. This sounds like a sales pitch, and it is. As a culture we have forgotten how to listen to music. Music Has become devalued currency, ubiquitous and banal. I’m glad that music is everywhere. I’m not glad that the purpose of its being everywhere is to sell you something, like records, for instance, or more food at the store. In less civilized cultures music is everywhere because people make it. Singing, dancing, clapping, drumming and playing instruments are ways of being together, or of being alone. But most of what we hear in our culture is recorded. Music has become a specialty given over to professionals. Even though it seems like music is closer to us because its everywhere, its actually further away. So your personal discipline of listening to music is not only a step up for your own consciousness. It is another way of refusing to be an undiscriminating consumer. If you know what it is to really hear music, it will be much tougher on the next guy who tries to sell you a microwave with a rude jingle. Being a conscious consumer of music elevates the quality of music everywhere. + + +
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 06:17:30 +0000
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