This may seem like a topic for a different blogger, but stick with me, I think I may just have something here.
We live in an age of so much technology. Much of it has come about just during my lifetime. (of course, I am old!) We typically use phones that have more computing power than what the first lunar flight had on board!
And isn’t it awesome to surf the inner webs, where you can find anything imaginable…including some I can’t imagine!
What it does for a music lover! Every recording ever made, available at the touch of a finger! But there can be a side to every advance that is made, that carries an unseen drawback.
For all the convenience, we usually listen to music through inferior reproduction. Isn’t it irritating, being interrupted in your listening by a phone call?
Try to imagine a time when the only possible way to hear music came from a live performer. (Unless you played a musical instrument yourself!)
Picture a small parlor, a harpsichord, maybe a flute, wooden of course, a few string instruments. (tuning all the time) Perhaps a singer. How special would that have been! And you would be so present to the moment, no chance to listen again on your way home.
This is where I connect to our title. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Tibetan Monks that make those intricate sand paintings? They can take weeks to produce, involving whole teams or monks, slowly placing one grain of colored sand at a time. Once completed, they are ritually destructed, and the sand collected in a jar, poured into a river, releasing it back to nature, to disperse the healing energies.
Are you starting to see where I’m going with this?
We worry about our performance, and strive for perfection. A worthy goal, but the intention is the real focus. Being present in the moment, to what you’re doing, and then letting it go, knowing that impermanence is the state of all things.
When I make my music, what is my intention? How present am I to the moment? This moment? Every moment?
Not exactly how our culture works today, I hazard to say. When there is so much of everything, how much remains special?
I was looking at the stars last night, something I’m lucky to see well in Santa Fe, and resisted the urge to take a photo. It’s so common now, every pleasant moment we have gets memorialized with our phone. But how much do we really see and experience in the actual moment, or is it more important to look at it later, on our 2 inch by 4 inch screen! Do we really see it as it appears, and appreciate it for what it is? A moment unlike any other, that will never get duplicated.
If we saw every moment that way, would it make us appreciate life a little differently, perhaps?
I really loved making my newest recording, and I think I could have spent more focus on the moment. It’s the process, as they say. Having folks buy a copy, listen to it, say nice things, all great, happy for it all.
But it blows away in the next breeze , doesn’t it?
That’s what makes a live performance really special. I hope we can appreciate that.
And as a musician, to try to stay present, knowing it all floats away, as soon as the sound dissipates.
I have made so much music over a lifetime. Some of it recorded. But the most special moments appeared only once. A concert in Carnegie Hall, a quartet performance at Bemidji, Minn., a halftime show in Jacksonville, Florida.
Life has so many special moments, and the ones that include music, and good friends, well it sure has a lot of specialness for me.
So I hope I connected the dots for you. Being….being in the moment, and Nothingness…where everything eventually goes.
If that makes your next concert a little different, you can thank the Monks. One note at a time, present moment only, be here now.
Now how do those long tones feel? A little more interesting? I hope so…