The Pixie Dust of Imagination
So we have been trying to get to the bottom of what music actually does for people, for communities, in the individual soul, etc.. The deeper we get into the question, the harder it is to pin down what exactly is going on. Music is multi-facited, so are its effects.
What if we were to consider the power of music in the negative, by its absence.
In other words, imagine the world without music. What would be missing? What part of our human experience would be fundamentally missing without music? Without art? Without fiction? What access points to imagination would be gone?
The great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote about this in his day.
In his Notes from the Underground he writes that “the most advantageous advantage” of man is not found in the logical realm or within duty alone, but must be found outside those systems. It is found, in contrast, in our ability to create and imagine. In art.
This was particularly true and urgent in his day. As Russia was becoming more Tsarist, strictures on art were increasing. Without the freedom to create, creative energy and ideas were strained only through the lens of politics, creativity was forced into political categories.
But art necessarily produces experimental worlds. It gives the chance to run free in those imagined worlds. Music, particularly, acts as the escort for these journeys. It may not be in the foreground, but music is definitely the host, the dream-inducing spell if you will.
Music in so many ways is the pixie dust of the imagination. It takes people from the mundane to the profound through the deep passage of feelings. It takes people from being mostly “in their head” to somewhere deep within (and even without) themselves.
We could think of music at a funeral, for example. It is dangerous. It could be the spark in a dry forest. It can set the whole place ablaze with raw emotion. The most passionate eulogies or messages can incubate deep emotion, but not on the same scale as a powerful song. There is nothing like it.
Words give framework, meaning, hope. But music ignites. It connects into a different part of the soul. Ethnomusicologists study this and know the central place of music in the many sacred traditions and rituals around the world. Music usually begins and is essential to a sacred experience.
Music is essential, not optional. We can think about the then future-King David playing the harp for the increasingly disturbed King at the time Saul to relieve his oppression. And it worked! Music healed. And musical caravans accompanied traveling groups of prophets. And it worked!
Music escorts our important and sacred experiences.
Probably neither the artist nor the audience is totally in charge of making those connections. Each is simply part of a bigger whole - a hidden wholeness, one that happens outside of human control. Inded there is something else happening.
It is hard to believe that as artists we are allowed to be part of that something else, that great exchange. It seems fit only for the divine. And yet the divine uses our meager attempts to do something beautiful to create a spark. And that spark, sometimes, creates something even amazing.
Is amazing beyond our means? Perhaps, but like the sound of a train in the distance at the perfect moment, what seems random to us may actually be perfectly orchestrated by God. What we can not control, God can. Amazing is not beyond the means of God. Thanks be to God. Get to it!
