music , mind , thought and emotion

T bone, I'haven't but I'm full of ideas. If I didn't have to write up a lot of other stuff, I would already have come out with them. Will have to wait until the middle of next week. Great and inspiring posts so far, thanks to all of you. Feel in excellent company and at home. Please keep the ideas coming. Cheers and thanks to all!

Love to join you, but Zurich is a long way off........

Words are meddled lightly on grave subjects. There is too much talking, as if you all had Buddha, Jesus in your pockets. It is a paradox: Words are necessary,how else could we meet, but then they are completely off the mark, because it is in silence, that music happens. Forgive me, because, though I may be right, I am certainly unjust. All the same, your talk reminds me of theologists who philophise lightly about the GODHEAD, but probably would pee their pants en face of the tremendum. I would.

Friends, sorry, didn't mean to offend. Life is too noisy at them moment, all thoughts get drowned in the din.

To me music can be as a catalyst, which opens my mind, which silences thought and all wanting and in the openess it can afford, and in what rushes in, there is a taste sometimes of the essence of our existence. Words here are nothing but a clumsy translation, hypostasising a myriad of emotions of all hues, images and flashes of insight, which come and go. What remains often however, is a deep gratefulness of simply being alive. Music (and rythm )touch me more, than anything else ever could. I've had this since earliest childhood and it has never been otherwise. When someone very close to me died and I was raging in anger and despair, in the night after she died, I dreamt that I myself was dead and in some "other place", where I suddenly met Bach and we both played four handed on an organ. We made the most swinging and beautiful Jazz I had ever heard in my life, before or afterwards, dreaming or not, and when I woke up, I was still sad and bereaved but calm in my loss. The rage was gone and never came back.... Music...my questions still stand.

Unsound :A very sound statement to my mind and true for most of the professional musicians I am familiar with. Cheers,

Asa, your above thoughts about mind (consciousness) and matter ("real"world) seem to me highly Jaynseian, hence only once removed Jungian and I could not agree more. (Sorry, generally it seems to please you less, when you are agreed with (-; )Greetings from South Africa this once,

Bin, the passion is still there, but as the years pass by, you learn to rather cherish quietly, privately, because you've learnt, that words fall short to describe what music can do to and for you. It is in the exuberance of discovery that you speak out, share and spread the word. Later, perhaps in the winter of your years your ears may fail you, but not your spirit, because finely honed through time and experience, music touches you ever more deeply, so deep sometimes, that you know that words fail you and you don't even try to find them. You're grateful, that's all, because in those moments of being enthralled, you're joined with something which is bigger than just your ego. It is in those moments, that you forget your rig, you forget what you know about the composer and what you might know of theory of music and all that noise your brain generally produces, called thoughts, just abates. You're transported to another plane, which sometimes may enfold you in an all encompassing feeling of bliss, which may only last a split second but will reverberate in you for a long time. Or laughter will come up, awe, sadness, whatever you like. The point is, you're being moved, because the composer or the interpreters of his music have touched upon something, which is universal, belongs to all humanity and for a moment you are enjoined within this, become part of it. This is also, why some forms of music are sometimes the best remedy against loneliness, despair and depression, because it can sometimes transport you beyond and outside of your everyday-self. And yes, Rja, I think Greg has made an excellent point as he usually does and I could not agree more. Indeed the effect of music, as I have tried to point out, can make you transcend your usual self. It can make you wild, drive you crazy, even bring you close to what might be experienced as the godhead. Organised religion, churches of whatever denomination , do not like that, would call it heretic,ostracise it, burn it at the stake, call it dangerous and a deviation because it cannot be controlled, is too "private" and mostly not in accordance with the official interpretation of what is "holy" and what is not. This is of course not true within every "church". Bach has written wonderful and moving church music, congregations sing, wonderful requiems exist and are performed in churches. The Kantor is an important figure in Jewish liturgy and the better his voice, the more a feeling content can be added and experienced around the ancient words he is using. It is probably those forms of religious practice, which stick to a very strict and rigid interpretation of whatever it is concieved as holy and contained in WORDS, that abhorr not only symbols and imagery, but especially music, because of its inherent possibility to transport you into another realm, where words lose their meaning and their power and it is though WORDS again, which tell you of the consequences of not adhering to whatever is seen as the straight and narrow that preachers try to control their flock and of the rewards you'll get in the here and the beyond if you stick to the rules. As Greg so rightly points out, the effect that music can have on some people, lies in the fact, that rules, which by their very nature are always collective and are WORDED, might lose their grip on you and you could break free of them for better or for worse and might in sometimes decisive moments for your life, suddenly land in another realm, where words fail you and lose their power. Many organised forms of very strictly practised religion fear that like the devil and would also call it just that.

Bin, Greg,
Thank you. You've warmed my heart.
Detlof