i guess i posted recently..
I was thinking tonight as i watched the travel channel about music... more specifically music inspired by love of the divine. I have always found much of what people do in the name of organized religion highly distasteful. however, i still think that people are connected to something divine if they chose to sense it. I'll say that anything ugly done in the name of the someone's higher power is likely far from actually being the will of something outside oneself... well.. i guess i wouldn't know.. there are probably connections to the spiritual world that would have you do more disturbing bidding.. but that's not where i was going here...
anyway... music and people inspired by something divine... yeah, so on the travel channel they were having a show about the holy land... jerusalem and surrounding historically significant areas. at the end of the progrum there was a little sound byte of the muslim call to prayer... just the sound of the music coming out of this man caused me to stop, because it was unquestionable the sincerity and beauty of his inspiration. I have no idea about his beliefs.. i don't care. the music it inspired in him was beautiful. Long ago, a man i have little respect for answered a question posed to someone else: Why is music written? his response was too quick and final-sounding for my taste and: to praise God.
There are many other reasons to write music. but this one struck me as a common one throughout time in western cultures. other reasons include passing down history, or telling stories, and getting your difficult to explain feelings out. however, I remembered that comment from him. I dismissed it as a really powerful motivation at the time, but upon further investigation there are certain bits of music out there that strike one as very deeply inspired... i don't know. it's nice to have that beauty shine through in something. gives me something to think about.
anyway... music and people inspired by something divine... yeah, so on the travel channel they were having a show about the holy land... jerusalem and surrounding historically significant areas. at the end of the progrum there was a little sound byte of the muslim call to prayer... just the sound of the music coming out of this man caused me to stop, because it was unquestionable the sincerity and beauty of his inspiration. I have no idea about his beliefs.. i don't care. the music it inspired in him was beautiful. Long ago, a man i have little respect for answered a question posed to someone else: Why is music written? his response was too quick and final-sounding for my taste and: to praise God.
There are many other reasons to write music. but this one struck me as a common one throughout time in western cultures. other reasons include passing down history, or telling stories, and getting your difficult to explain feelings out. however, I remembered that comment from him. I dismissed it as a really powerful motivation at the time, but upon further investigation there are certain bits of music out there that strike one as very deeply inspired... i don't know. it's nice to have that beauty shine through in something. gives me something to think about.
4 Comments:
when you say "love of the divine" i want to think you mean divine the drag queen in pink flamingos and other john waters movies.
that's probably what i meant. .. did uh.. that person. .didn't they die?
That's really well put. I find music very spiritually myself, but I too balk when people start saying it's for praise of god, just because it seems far too definite and clean cut for my view of spirituality.
I think to think of music as people working out how they feel about the unknown. Which is why I've sort of taken a break from playing the piano. It became to rules based and I constantly worried that I wasn't practicing enough and that I could be doing better, which I realized recently defeated the purpose of playing music, so now I'm mostly strumming away on my guitar because I've never had any formal training there...
I think that sums it up for me... my spirituality isn't informal, so my music should follow suit...
Makes me think of "Bells are Ringing" by They Might Be Giants, which I recall we've discussed previously.
Maybe that's why I do enjoy playing the piano -- I never had any formal lessons. (Except those lessons as a kid, but none proper since two years when I was eight.) I've decided to pretty much stop this music directing thing, by the way...
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