MUSIC is the most mysterious of human phenomena. How can a series of sounds, without lyrics, move you to tears, lift you to joy? It’s just vibrations that travel through the air. We evolved over millions of years to have ears and brains that, together, transform these vibrations into what we call sounds.
I was at a concert recently, seeing for the second time in a year the astonishing Roy Wood, the founder of The Move, ELO, and Wizzard, and composer of probably the most played Christmas song of all time, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. In my biased opinion he is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, massively underestimated.
The audience were all long-time fans, knew every song, and sang along from start to finish.
Such happiness. Such mindfulness. In two ways. Almost everyone there had every song memorised in their heads, tune and lyrics. It takes a lot of practice to memorise something but once there it lasts for decades, maybe a lifetime. We all probably have hundreds of complete songs in our brains ready to come out at a moment’s notice.
And pure mindfulness on the night as full attention was given to the performances of the songs. No distractions, no television on in the background, no mobile phones unless to take a quick snap of the band. It is rare for us to give such undivided attention for so long, and when we do we reap much greater rewards at each and every moment.
Seeing joy and happiness in a large group of people is a very rare thing. Firstly we are not often amongst large groups in a relatively small space. Secondly, expressions of joy and overt happiness are not the norm in human everyday experience. And there’s no losers in music unlike when we see mass celebrations in sport.
Yet music when you are alone is equally – if not sometimes more – profoundly affecting, often in a completely different way. Now you’re not sharing an emotion with anyone else. It is deeply personal and inner.
I have a very obscure CD called Shakuhachi – The Japanese Flute. It comprises five pieces, lasting from almost four minutes to nine and a half. I can’t call them songs. Mood music may be closest but the individual notes are so very long that at times it’s more like the wind than a sound from an instrument (the Shakuhachi is a Japanese flute or sorts). Some of the pieces are centuries old, thought to be composed specifically as aids to meditative practices.
But nothing beats silence. Or quietness to be more precise as pure silence is almost impossible to find. When the outside world is quiet, and the mind is still, and the emotions calmed and at peace, something remarkable can arise. Perfect inner tranquillity and contentment. It is difficult to put into words how this feels, or how restorative it is in terms of de-stressing, revitalising, uplifting. It’s like being a rechargeable battery and feeling that you have been plugged in, so that you experience the life energy inside you slowly returning. In a non-mystical sense it is like being reborn, like coming back from a form of mental and physical death when we are really tired and weary.
I was taught by a brilliant, wise teacher of meditations. He told me that any time I experienced something strange or startling in my practices, not to get excited or try even to understand what happened. Rather I had to simply note if it felt positive or unhelpful, and just keep practising.
This is how I keep my relationship to music. I understand a wee bit of the science of what’s going on but the mystery, the joy, the awe that it can bring us, I am happy just to enjoy and marvel at, and don’t care if I never find out why music and sound and silence is magical. But it is.
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