On Music, Mindfulness and Cultural Appreciation

“All his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at the moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music, powering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words.” 

~The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Music detaches us from the intellect and shifts us into right brain mode where we see things as they are: in relationship, out of time and space. We are lost in music and then transported to some unknown place: part imagination, part the world of the artist. This warping of our senses invites us to become aware of the vast wonders of originality and simultaneously, the universality of all human experience.

Exquisite music, the kind that is unbounded, is artistic expression that is certainly influenced by culture, language, identity and mastery but also genius. When we close our eyes and allow such music to penetrate our being, we are merging with a vision of an artist who may live far away or speak a different language but who is able to transmit the essence of longing or suffering identical to our own. What does it matter from where or by whom, with the eyes closed?

If we were to be lectured about such an out of body experience, or any notion of invisibility through music, we would likely want to defend rational thought and objectivism as a matter of freedom. And yet, when we are in the presence of music, or any enduring art form, we are liberated from the rational mind, and only then, can we breathe in the sweet, infinite nature of our humanity.

A spiritual master once told me that the purpose of all knowledge is to move from the visible to the invisible.