Music

[kayy]

This may be a bit unorthodox, but I'd like to share with you my experience of music and ask you for your own experiences and feelings about it.

My preferred type of music is classical. I find that it expresses something...emotions, life...in a beautiful, beautiful way. Take Chopin's piano music... peaceful, moving, almost melancholy, beautiful. Take Beethoven's 9th - if a piece of music, to me, ever expressed the potential of humanity it would be this one. The music itself is stunning, rousing, moving, and the 4th movement - wow. The words are from a poem by Schiller, a German poet. They go:

Joy, beautiful spark of divinity
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Into your heavenly sanctuary!
Your magic reunites
What custom strictly divided.
All men will become brothers,
Where your gentle wing rests.

Apart from the obvious Christian references (heavenly sanctuary, and later on 'loving father' etc) - I find the image of "all men will become brothers" so moving it brings tears to my eyes. I've sung in the choir of this symphony before and it was one of the most powerful experiences in my life.

I currently sing in a choir, which I find enjoyable and also quite inspiring. It's beautiful to have a large group of individuals coming together to create something bigger; joining together in unison and oneness. For me this is a little bit like chanting at a meditation session, only better because there is musical ability there, so the sound created is pleasing to the ear.

I regularly listen to music on my computer...mainly classical but often jazz, world, folk and songs from my parents' generation such as Simon and Garfunkel. I find S & G's music to be very profound and poetic. They sing poems.

Aside from my own love of music, I am in awe of the sheer musical talent of some people, whether players or composers. This makes me realise what incredible things the human mind and brain are.


Anyhoo, just thought I'd share that with you. Does anyone else feel like this or have similar experiences with music?

Katy (choir)

[catmoon]

I like your choir.

I used to play piano a bit and was learning a Bach fugue. When all the lines were active, I was playing two lines in each hand. I never did master it, but sometimes I could get all 4 lines going briefly and it was a very strange, exhilarating experience.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

I could easily chat all day about all the music that I like, and if anyone had seen my wall of CDs that I've been relentlessly compiling since 1991 they'd have a good idea of how important music is and has been to me. However, in keeping with the theme of this topic, I'll try to keep my thoughts narrowed to a few defined areas that at least have some Dharmic context to them.

Firstly, my Dhamma practice has certainly reduced my craving for music. From 1999 onwards I compiled a 2CD of my favourite songs from that year, so I was very much in tune with what was being released and endeavoured to stay on top of all the new releases in my particular genres of interest. I was DJing at the time so it was not surprising that I had this much interest. In late 2005 I became Buddhist and whilst I still enjoyed music as much as I ever did, the relentless pursuit to find more, more, more seemed to abate... in 2007 I was thinking my 2CD retrospective would just become 1 disc compilation until I went to the UK (to see a band, of course ) and bought heaps of new CDs and have plenty of contenders for the compilation. In 2008 it really did just become a 1 disc compilation. In 2009, I scratched a few ideas down for possible candidates, but never even bothered to make the CD. In 2010, I haven't really even thought about it, and I'm sufficiently disenchanted with it that I neither crave the latest music, nor do miss the fact that I don't pursue it.

My musical interest over the last 6 months or so has switched to dub, and yeah, I do crave dub CDs! Old school 70s Jamaican dub of the ilk of King Tubby and co. is what I really like. The appeal of the sound is well summarised by the Wikipedia article on Dub - "The many-layered sounds with varying echoes and volumes are often said to create soundscapes, or sound sculptures, drawing attention to the shape and depth of the space between sounds as well as to the sounds themselves." You can listen to, and listen into the sounds. As well as that, it's quite relaxing and peaceful for the most part. Dub either has no vocals, or is semi-instrumental, but some of the Jamaican lyrics that do find there way into the tracks are Rastafari in content, and for the most part this doesn't concern me in the slightest and any values praised are generally in accord with what the Buddha spoke highly of too. Even then the vocals are often fragmented, echoed into oblivion and such... it's just really interesting and turning inward for reflection, it's interesting to hear the arising and falling of the sounds, and the observe the mental reaction to that input. Meditation purists might frown upon taking music as a subject of meditation, but it brings a certain mindfulness to daily transport activities which may otherwise be far less mindful. It also helps drown out the inane chatter of silly commuters.

Right, I'll stop there... for now!

Metta,
Retro.

[catmoon]

Hmm, it just crossed my mind....

What does KeithBC listen to?

Grateful Dead?

Jimi Hendrix?

Valdi?

[KeithBC]

Hmm, it just crossed my mind....

What does KeithBC listen to?

Grateful Dead?

Jimi Hendrix?

Valdi?

Yes, yes and yes.
60s rock, folk, celtic, baroque, classical, that kind of thing.

I'm not crazy about opera, and I dislike most hip-hop. (Though I respect some of the genuine talent I have heard.)

Om mani padme hum
Keith

[catmoon]

Hmm, it just crossed my mind....

What does KeithBC listen to?

Grateful Dead?

Jimi Hendrix?

Valdi?

Yes, yes and yes.
Keith

Omg I'm manifesting prescience!

Good thing I'm really humble or this might go to my head.

[Ogyen]

I've been a composer since I was 3. I remember the first time I "heard" a whole composition in my head with movements when I was 6 and living in India. Until quite late, few people have ever known how much of a musician i have become from an entire life of study of music both in orthodox and unorthodox training formats.

From soundscaping to arranging the melodies that emerge from my daily life from dishes to diapers to work and the messy everything in between, the great divide between the profane and the sublime, it's from that in between that the music inspiration just occurs naturally if I just stop and listen. I can shut off word thought easily, the chattery mind that speaks, words can go away easily replaced by a waiting silence, and then that's when melodies can just emerge. It bubbles out in so many different ways from language and rhythm to sounds in my surroundings. My life is a a mix of notes and poetry sometimes one not the other, but it's all a wave of the same thing, the buddha nature thing emerging and coming to life in expression and reflection of my immersion of mind in samsara, or as I like to think of it, a budhing buddha in the mire. buddhas with dirty faces. and I like to think of everyone else this way as well. My face might look dirty, but there's beautiful skin under this grimy veneer, and so is everyone else's. In my music i often write with this feeling, this direct fearlessness towards honesty, if it's ugly or if it's pretty. It doesn't really matter, if it can be beneficial it has value. Priorities become far more mathematical when translated through the code of music. It's a stunning vehicle for reflection and realization.

like much of my writing some of it gets jotted down and some of it doesn't, it doesn't matter to me, it rises it falls, it's okay. sometimes a piece will just want to get written and that's what happens, and other times some pieces are recorded in audio, others inspire paintings or visual ideas, others just become words with rhythms of meanings and silence. Music to me is the backbone process of all my thinking/processing. I'm a very systematic kind of thinker while not fitting well within disharmonic boundaries, making me a restless mind. Music is my balm.

just my two cents on music...


retro, I have never heard of Dub!!! I need to SO check it out.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

retro, I have never heard of Dub!!! I need to SO check it out.

A good value place to start...

http://www.cdwow.us/CD/trojan-dub-colle ... 37#bc=d9b1

If you like that, I can help with more recommendations.

Metta,
Retro.