Music For The Beginning of the World
December 22nd, 2012
The world didn’t end.
And I am listening to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony-
to the Ode To Joy, and I am feeling this moment the taste of eternity and
therefore the world is ever ending and ever beginning. To live is to taste the
layers of such candy, the sweet followed immediately by the bitter, and to look
to the stars, and to laugh, and to look down into the violent heart of creation
and to weep.
I actually don’t believe in world endings, per se, but a
greater obliteration into the sands and stars of eternity, perhaps the end of
the world as “we” know it but then, who are we, anyway?
Among the many things we are, we are makers of music as well
as we are committers of violence (even if only in our thoughts and if only
against ourselves [sic].)
Four things: (but I’m not actually going to talk about the
first two, just putting them in here for context.)
- The Newtown Tragedy
- NRA and guns in every schools
- Music again in Afghanistan after the Taliban, as told by Andrew Solomon on THE MOTH
- Marin Alsop, of both the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, speaking on NPR about how in the US we are struggling to get any arts education but, in South America, both government and private funding sources are increasing classical music education in schools.
One week ago, I spent the weekend in Minnesota. I was at the
Mall of America, comparing little pink dresses for my niece, as I looked up and
saw Santa walk by. One moment later, my NY Times App on my phone reported the
breaking news about the massacre in Newtown. Just as I snapped the photo of
Santa getting on the escalator (I chased him to get a good shot, because I just
knew my niece and nephew would love to see it), the notice popped up and I had
to reshoot. “Dang!” I had said in the moment, frustrated that I had the “push
notices” feature up and running on the App. But I got my pic of Santa, and I
waved and shouted out “Thank you!” as he disappeared into the floors below me
(it’s a VERY big mall) and he shouted back “You’re Welcome!” And then I read
the App, and then I read it to my parents, and then I sat down and I wept.
I came home a few days later to Los Angeles, because I had a
lovely opera-tunity (haha, you can tell I was hanging with my Dad because my
jokes are corny) to sing an audition (ah, joy! Ah, terror! To sing, to risk the
tension of my own laughing and my own crying held in suspense at the stakes of
the character, to show you my own pain and my own hope and the feelings of this
heart, too great for mere words, which must be SUNG.) And then I heard the
proposal from the NRA about armed guards in every school.
Well, I have my own political opinions about it but this
blog isn’t really about politics, or even about Jesus Christ (What WOULD he do
at this time? Clearly, as the precedent in the Bible shows, it would be to
gather up armed volunteers and…. Wait a minute….. wait a MINUTE! Which Book of
the Gospel has the part about Jesus’ arsenal of weapons….. okay I’ll get back
to you about that…..) No, this blog is not about that. It’s about the gifts of
music….
I heard tonight, just now, while baking cookies for
Christmas, Andrew Solomon’s wonderful story on the Moth about his time in
Afghanistan. Please listen HERE: http://www.flumecast.com/watch/andrew-solomon-a-time-of-hope-12038.html
You see, so much of it is about the continuance of something
divine and immortal that we humans get to touch and to be part of… that is
music, and that is life, and that is holy. And these are the holy days, and
every day is an opportunity to remember something divine, and to touch it, and
to be grateful for that opportunity. … but I know full well I am one of the
lucky ones. I am an artist, and I am a poet. Vissi d’arte, and I really mean
it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXQvPwYYVBI
It moved me to tears, Mr. Solomon’s story, because these
artists were not allowed to share music. MUSIC! Under the rule of the
Taliban….. and then finally when they had the opportunity, their hearts were so
full of joy the played for 13 hours straight….
…and here in the States we allow ourselves to take music and
art out of schools to become more pragmatic…. And increasingly, violent…. There
are no separations between the warlords and the hegemonists when art and music
and poetry are excluded from public discourse and more and more the people are
led by means of fear, manipulation and violence. We are the terrorists, too, in
another context. Terrorists of the heart, perhaps, but think long term for a
moment and you, too shall weep, and then cradle your beloved in your arms,
sweetly singing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…”
But how to reach the heart? How to reach that place where
the heart and mind commingle in an ecstasy of systemic comprehension, of
thoughtfulness, of beauty, or math and art mixing as one, of the end of isolation (a COMMON THEME among those who commit these
massacres!) because in order for this system of fun and beauty to work, we must
all work together?
May I humbly propose: music.
Earlier I had listened to an interview with Marin Alsop, a
conductor both in Baltimore as well as in Sao Paolo, talking about music programs
for children in South America and then here in the US…. It seemed to me that we
have let ourselves become so needy to be “right” and so “afraid of being wrong”
that we leave little room for places of experimentation and exploration. And
yet this isn’t making us smarter or safer or better! We can see quite clearly
that it is leading us toward more violence and more death…. Not to mention….
DULL.
Ms. Alsop was talking about a program in Baltimore called
ORCHKids, which is giving inner city school kids an opportunity to learn about
music, and to see opportunities outside of anything they ever dreamed was
possible. …
And you see, we all mean well, really. I truly believe, like
Anne Frank, that deep down, people are still good at heart. I just also pray
for us to be led back toward love, and I ask for blessings upon music and love
and peace and these values that we all DO hold dear but forget from time to
time require practice.
Just like music. Music requires practice. I started at age
5, sitting at the piano every day for 20 minutes. And I’d like to pretend I was
a prodigy but it wasn’t until I was 11, really, and actually focused my time
every day, that I really began to play.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t have earlier but that I just did not practice. But
something in me clicked around the time of puberty, and although it is more
systemic than what I am about to present, I will simply say that something in
me sought an outlet for all these feelings that were just, well, too BIG to be
dealt with in a “normal” manner. And that’s why there was John Lennon’s
Imagine, and Debussy’s Deux Arabesques (or Portrait of Jenny, as we called it,
because it was heavily featured in the film from the 1940s starring Jennifer
Jones, which my grandmother loved.) That’s why there was Ani Di Franco ( well,
I am a product of the 90s) and R.E.M., and anyone’s list can go on and on.
Insert your favorite songs here: Moon River. Fields of Gold. Dance me to the
Ends of Love. Songs My Mother Taught Me. Zippity Doo Dah.
Believe it or not, violence and anger and hatred also
require practice. Oh sure, in the moment, it seems like a flash. But it is a
groove in the nervous system, a highway laid down on a bed of myelin (fat!) and
imprinted deeper and faster every time that particular road is taken.
American Poets Frost and Emerson talked about this, and who
knew whether they knew a wit about the nervous system… the both wrote very
famous poems about taking the road less traveled by…. To go where there is no
path and leave a trail….
And what can this mean to us? Little old us? For anyone who
is not a great poet nor an infamous murderer? Not a movie star nor a statesman
or women nor a leader but merely a school teacher…. A movie theater ticket
taker…. A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker?
And what does music have to do with this again?
Everything.
When we can see an opportunity outside of something we
already know how to know, we can follow that opportunity toward something- and
that something is the key to our own heart. Maybe it is changing a pattern so
we don’t develop a disease. Maybe it is to learn a language and to therefore be
inspired to travel to a place we never thought we could get to. Maybe it is to
help us have more joy in our own lives, and maybe it is to inspire us to build
an orphanage and donate a dollar. Maybe it is to try something we always wanted
to but never dared before…
And music, well, this is what music is like. We set out to
learn a new song, one we may or may not have heard before, but which we fumble
through the first few times…. Which we soon get into a groove to, having
learned, and then discover perhaps we have learned something wrong and get to
relearn the piece…. If we are lucky and are playing in a band or an orchestra
or in concert with others somehow, we learn to listen to one another with an
open mind, and respond in kind. We rely upon one another for rhythm and timing
and pitch. We open a doorway through our hearts and minds and bodies and
through that doorway, a spirit of something greater than ourselves flows
through from one to another.
Perhaps this, music, this can be the “escape” that becomes a
new way of salvation for us. I mean, it has existed for so long for a reason,
regardless of man’s own inhumanity. Birds, whales, the wind…. Humans. We all
have this in common. We all have this gift to quench our desire for communion
and to calm the fires of terror and violence. You may say that I’m a dreamer…..
but…. You know how the song goes…. I bet you’re already singing it, right
now…….
