The Sound
of
Silence
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
15 comments:
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Has "real music" died or lapsed into a coma?
ReplyDeleteOr is something else entirely be the message?
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS AN UNUSUAL BOY WHO COULD NOT TALK. HE WAS VERY LONELY. HE LIVED IN A TOWER OF SILENCE. THE BOY WAS ALWAYS THINKING. HE THOUGHT ABOUT ALL THE THINGS HE HEARD DURING THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE. THE BOY HAD NOTHING BUT TIME TO CONTEMPLATE LIFE AND PEOPLE IN IT. THEN ONE DAY HE WAS INTRODUCED TO A POWERFUL WIZARD WHO GAVE HIM A MAGICAL BOARD THAT TRANSLATED HIS THOUGHTS INTO WORDS! THE BOY WAS ECSTATIC! HE WAS NOW ABLE TO COMMUNICATE ALL HIS THOUGHTS. AFTER THE BOY STARTED USING THE MAGICAL BOARD HIS ENTIRE LIFE CHANGED. PEOPLE STARTED TREATING THE BOY VERY DIFFERENTLY. THEY WERE SHOCKED BY HOW MUCH THE BOY KNEW AND THAT HE WAS CAPABLE OF LEARNING AT ALL! THE BOY KNEW THAT HE HAD TO HONOR THE GIFT OF THE MAGICAL BOARD. HE MUST USE THE BOARD TO TEACH THE WORLD ABOUT OTHERS WHO ARE STUCK IN THEIR OWN WORLDS OF SILENCE.
THE BOY WAS ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THE PERCEPTIONS OF PEOPLE ABOUT HOW THOSE WHO DO NOT SPEAK. HE HAD TO BLAZE A NEW TRAIL FOR THE OTHER SILENT PEOPLE. HE HAD TO SHOW THAT SILENT DOES NOT EQUAL STUPID. THE BOY KNEW THE BEST WAY TO LEAD WAS THROUGH EXAMPLE. HE USED THE MAGICAL BOARD TO SHARE HIS WORDS WITH THE WORLD. THE BOY WAS ADORED BY ALL AND SLOWLY LED THE SILENT PEOPLE INTO THE WORLD!
About the author and his family.
Photos of the author of the above excerpt.
Erratum!
ReplyDeleteOr is something else entirely be the message? should read "Or could something else entirely be the message?"
The Sounds of Silence.. Simon and Garfunkel
ReplyDeleteSilence is golden.
Use silence for honest introspection.
Silence can be deafening, if one listens to it.
SILENZIO CANTATORE
ReplyDeleteI've heard that your performance of Cage's 4' 33" is definitive.
ReplyDeleteMurolo is a beautiful discovery, Miss Shaw. Thank you for bringing his quiet, intimate, contemplative music to our attention. There has always been a need for gentle, thoughtful expression, but ever more than now in this strident, clamorous, fractious age.
ReplyDeleteThe Bible tells us that God (Truth and Love) speaks to us in many ways, but His "still, small voice" is the one we should listen to with closest attention and greatest care.
That could well be why we are advised to "Go into thy closet and pray in secret."
How good of you to remember that, Ducky! Yes. It has been my one critical triumph and the primary reason Posterity will remember me kindly. Harold Schoenberg said it was the elegantly insouciant way I picked my nose and then savored the morsel at THE critical moment in the emotional tension generated by piece that secured my claim to fame.
ReplyDeleteThose were glorious days when Cage was all the rage.
ReplyDeleteThat is a beautiful story, AOW.
It may surprise you to learn that, despite my passionate interest in music of high quality --- and my equally passionate insistence that ALL music is not of EQUAL importance any more than ALL cultures are EQUALLY significant and ALL religions and secular systems of thought have EQUAL potential to provide salubrious results --- that music, ITSELF is NOT any more important than any OTHER positive mode of expression.
I believe that God is MIND, God is TRUTH, God is LOVE, God is LIFE, God is PRINCIPLE, that He is All-in-All, and that above all He is BEAUTIFUL. Therefore, all GOOD things are ONE, despite their surface appearance of being separate and distinct or many faceted at the least.
What I'm trying to get at is that, despite the appearance of being locked away in a grim world of silence and dreary isolation, young James -- whose appearance at age 14 is remarkably more engaging than it was earlier -- had experienced the almighty power of MIND all along, but it has been the power of LOVE that unlocked his prison of apparent isolation, and enabled him to share is true self with the world.
Music at its best is all about the expression of Truth. If we are to believe Keats, Beauty IS Truth. Truth is Love. Love is Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, and LIFE -- and ALL those things are combined and unified in the person of Almighty God.
James's problem may have stemmed from some sort of physical trauma, but the KEY to his RELEASE from that prison has been entirely SPIRITUAL. It was the power of LOVE expressed in his parents and teacher's devotion that has healed him.
"With GOD all things [good] are possible."
If anyone finds that difficult to believe, please let me say that cultivating faith in the power of Love, Beauty, Truth, Intelligence and Principle does far more good than indulging in lamentation, recrimination, bitter denunciation and the "acceptance" of evil and things untenable as "God's Will."
Worse even than that would be the satanic insistence that God and the essential, enlivening qualities He embodies do not exist.
Where would the liberal arts be without music, a vital component of the quadrivium?
ReplyDeleteAnd what will become of a culture that no longer considers it vital to teach it?
FT,
ReplyDeleteJames -- whose appearance at age 14 is remarkably more engaging than it was earlier
I attribute that change to his new ability to communicate via the letter board.
He has calmed down since finding a way to communicate with others.
Of course, all the experts believed that James was unreachable and should have been institutionalized. His parents, who have unlimited funding for which they thank God, have worked and worked with James. Finally! A major breakthrough!
:P
ReplyDeleteetc
ReplyDeletein case you didn't follow the threads to their ends.
ReplyDeleteOy!
ReplyDeleteOvercoming the silence... Acheronta Movebo.
ReplyDelete