Through the Looking Glass

Music is our looking glass. By exploring the ways music is used and what makes it music, we come face to face with who we are.

Who are we? We are social creatures and music accompanies our celebrations. We are hedonists and music is the Lord of the Dance. As spiritual beings, we are not of this world and music transcends our limitations. Our intellects seek truth and music provides us with an oasis of order. We are mind, body, spirit, and community. Music reflects these.

Beginning with the logical mind, music is organized sound. It is from grasping that order that the mind derives pleasure, according to Aristotle. Pythagoras declared that music is math. From the elegant algebra behind acoustics to the pure symmetry in the geometry of Mozart we encounter order. When we encounter that order where we previously heard disorder, we find God.

Secondly, we physically crave music. We surround ourselves with sound. One hears it in elevators, dentist offices, and over the telephone. From Georg Phillipe Telemann's "table music" to today's ubiquitous Muzak, it is everywhere. It is as important to the ambience as the wallpaper. Commercials, movies and cartoons add it to the pictures and dialogues, like vitamins added to our milk. And like vitamins added to our milk, it enriches our lives. It awakens us and puts us to sleep. It is the pacemaker regulating the pulse of society. Music is indeed the Lord of the Dance. From the Epicureans before Plato to the current hedonists, it fills our emptinesses. Silence is the void created when the music stops. Music creates our world and we create the music.

Music feeds the spirit. It is a channel to the divine speaking directly to the soul. Music communicates beyond words. It expresses meanings and emotions in pure form without their concrete content. It is transcendent, transcending thought itself. It speaks in wordless tongues of pure love and beauty. If words were possible, it would be poetry. Yet, combine the force of poetry with the power of music and both rise exponentially to form the chants and prayers of shamans and priests who call on this power. Its magic heals our spirits. When we use its sorcery to speak to the hearts and souls of men we find the magic within us.

Finally, music is community. It is the cumulative repertoire of collected traditions which give us the meanings we know so well. It is the tear during the hymn or patriotic anthem. It is the laughter of a child's game and the bliss of a mother's lullaby. It is from association that we praise its virtues, just as it is by association that we condemn its vices. These vices and virtues are reflections of whom we are. Good and bad we join in a chorus of voices to belong to something greater than each of us individually. Our songs animate this otherwise lifeless society becoming its blood. When we drink in these sounds we become part of that body. Music unites us and we become one with ourselves.

We are mind, body, spirit, and community. Music reflects these. Music provides the truth we seek and the background we need. It speaks to us, heals us and unites us. We have found the music and it is within us. We are the music as long as it lasts.