A note, a chord or a song can change us. Since ancient times music has been used to alter states and rouse nations. Music has been a powerful and transformative thing in my life. Isn't it for everyone? Maybe not. As I was vexing passionately to a friend about a new album from my favourite band he suddenly said "I'm not really into music...occasionally I buy a tape for the car" ! What?! How can it not fail to move you, lift you, make you cry, make you laugh? I remembered that he was also a football fan and that he used to sing his heart out every Saturday on the terraces. So it gets to us all in the end in. Maybe because it's wired in us in some way, woven into our DNA. Getting briefly technical; the Pentatonic scale consisting of 5 notes that can be heard in pretty much every culture of music, Chinese, Arabic, African, blues, everywhere. In those ancient caves, the ones with the animal paintings made by men from 20,000 years ago they find flutes made from a vultures wing bone and low and behold; the scale is Pentatonic. So there's something in music that goes way back in us, back to the shamans and the drums, back to the first person to string a hollowed out log. Who was that guy or gal?! A genius. It goes back even further than that, back to natures' natural rhythms. The beat of the wing, the rhythm of the waves and the delicate chimes in the wind.
And life itself has a natural rhythm too. It goes up and down. Sometimes we are happy sometimes sad and sometimes it throws us around so much we start to feel a kind of motion sickness. "I want to get off" or "I just want some stability" we find ourselves saying. So we choose something boring or gentle, we settle for less until the rhythm becomes a steady hum, a rut, a horizontal drone with just a few bumps. In which case we might want to get back on the ride, find a little excitement. As one of my favorite song writers said "if their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely have gladly exchanged them for something a little more plain, maybe something a little more sane"
So through this chaos we start to look for a sign, a reason and a strategy for coping. We follow the wise words written by the ancients. We meditate knowing that we are searching to find ourselves. We remember those wise cracking gods that thought they'd have a laugh and store the secrets deep within ourselves. How can we go looking inside for that when the whole world is distracting us? It throws us daily emails, glowing lights and 3 minute videos that must of cost more than Star Wars. People start to say “With all this science and technology I don't believe in God, I believe in matter, I want what’s solid, but I'm sure I have a soul, I have something more here within. Don’t I?”
And if you stopped anyone at about 9.30pm on their commute back home or maybe got to them even later just as they were turning off the bedside light and asked "What was your absolute best moment of the day?" I'm sure most of them would enthuse; "Well I had a real laugh working with my colleagues" or "I hugged my man as he realised he’d made a mistake" or "I kissed my sleepy child as she gave in and let the dreams take her" or, some other wild and crazy act of love. I heard Smokey Robinson say that love is the most powerful emotion we have, and even people that hate love because in order to hate something, they love the opposite something else! Love is a mysterious and wonderful expression of our existence that makes us question, write, sing, express and confuse ourselves on a daily basis.
With all these thoughts it's sometimes hard to find calm in the chaos. Perhaps a song can transform us, maybe a book, a poem or sometimes a smile. Maybe a talk from a couple of crazy guys who have been around the block, learnt a bit and want to share it with you.
Come along if you can:
Surviving The Chaos of the 21st Century – Music, Life, Spirit, Love
