In our culture we are very accustomed to the written word. The first thing we learn in kindergarten (and onto the rest of our education) is how to write and count, cause and effect, linear, word-by-word explanations, descriptive analyses. Once verbal language dominates the brain, we neurologically lose our ability to inhabit the two other, arguably truer and more beautiful languages of which our brains are capable: the visual and the auditory. When we see geniuses such at Mozart (who played piano blindfolded since he was 3,) it's clear they are privy to an entirely different realm than ours: the mystical world of the language of music. A world that opens one up to the transcendent, the immediate, the Absolute; Eckhart Tolle's Intensity of Presence, Terence McKenna's Felt Presence of Direct Experience, Jack Kerouac's Golden Eternity.
Instilled in us throughout our schooling is the great virtue of patience when it comes to literature: War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, In Search of Lost Time. It takes effort, mindfulness, careful deliberation, and sometimes some very difficult feelings, to get through and analyse a text - and to finally be rewarded the richness, sensitivity, sensibility, and depth that consequently enriches your soul. This is something many of us can appreciate.
Yet we have no such patience with art and music. What a tragic loss of our humanity, our sensitivity, our grace. We are so used to putting music on in the background, dancing or singing to it, which has its place... but we never take the time to sit down in a dark room with a candle, high quality surround sound speakers, and a curated playlist of the world's most transcendental auditory landscapes. In the right setting, classical music opens—for the truly attentive listener—entirely new vistas of feeling, perception, and emotional depth. Indeed, humanity is sitting on a treasure trove of such music from throughout our history that very little people in modern society are aware of.
We are generally not used to giving music our full 100% attention throughout the piece, as this requires the same level of mindfulness and concentration as any serious meditation practice worth its salt. Yet this is what true appreciation of classical music demands—to meditate to it, be fully with it and all its intertwining layers of sound and their relationship to each other. To let it all hold you in the space it creates.
As with difficult yet rewarding works of literature, many classical pieces are very, very challenging to get through. Some may arouse extremely difficult, scary, lonely feelings in the deepest core of one’s soul. But if we don't run away—if we stay with it, swim in its dark, thunderous, frightful waters, let it grip us so completely--!.. and then to finally release us into the sweet starry night... it's the most beautiful catharsis, the most beautiful exhalation, enlightenment, deliverance, ecstasy we could ever know… divinity itself.
In a turbulent world, classical music is one of the few things that grounds us to emotional sincerity, the haunting profundity of existence—the innate meaning in life.
