I find myself day after day looking for the right words, desperate to convey what I personally feel so strongly to be true, feel so evidently present in my chest yet impossible to bring forth in text. I am beginning to wonder if the greatest truths and understandings are the unutterable ones. Inexplicable yet fully capable of being emoted and shared, I believe I am finding these truths, and the solace they bring, in the forms of light and music.
Solace I have especially been seeking since my Grandfather was struck ill earlier this week in Arizona, suffering from concurrent strokes and is currently progressing through a slow and still scarily unknown recovery. How we feel is natural, but what to say is difficult and it is strange how words lose most of their meaning and power when held against the striking grip of emotion. As he recovers, I have sought out ways to face these emotions and reside in them, looking for hope and peace to accept the outcome.
In this search, I went out with my video camera looking for a sunrise and found the encroaching spring, the grey gradually being worn down by the rays' increasing strength and the welcome sounds of new life. However, it is the light and music which we ourselves create that I have been finding most appealing. The music and light that comes from within our own nature seems to bring the most comfort when in the rare occasions we are able to purely present it or bear witness to its presentation in others.
I found the sunshine and later in the day I found the music (thanks to NPR), the Miserere (Allegri). The foreignness of the Latin insignificant as the voices of the choir bring forth the music's inherent peace. The story behind the Miserere is as wondrous as the indefinable assurance of its notes. Originating in 1630's, it was performed only for the Pope in the Sistine Chapel during Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week and was so highly regarded that it was eventually forbidden to transcribe or perform elsewhere. It stayed hidden from the world until upon hearing a performance, a 14 year old Mozart miraculously recreated and composed the Miserere from memory the next day and brought it to us all.
The song is a simple prayer for the presence of the almighty to be with us, a thought or meditation that crosses all factions of belief. We yearn for connection and what ever can bring us closer to a communion is worth adherence. I do not wish to hide or categorize away my feelings, and within the warmth of the light and the presence of the music I can find the channel running to my family's outpouring of warmth and concern and also deluges of worry and pain, funneling acceptance in the duality.
Music has been my great companion in the inevitable loneliness I have felt out here, and I apologize for the bombardment of music I have been sending out to my friends and family these past months, but I find in it a way to share something with those I long to be experiencing life amongst. So, as I long to be with my family by my Grandfather, I pray we can connect and share in the hope of the light and music we find in this new Spring, in each new day. In sharing the same sun and hearing the same songs we are together in a moment of repose and comfort.
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I have found that many great writers and minds have shared a bond in their esteem for the expressive power of music. Here are a few sentiments to read over while the sun rises and the voices reach out to the same light.
"Music is the shorthand of emotion" - Leo Tolstoy
"Music expresses that which cannot be said on which it is impossible to be silent" - Victor Hugo
"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable" - Leonard Bernstein
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything" - Plato
"A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures in silence" - Leopole Stakowski
"See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of nature being everywhere music" = Thomas Carlyle
"In the end I think of music as a saving grace for all humanity" - Henry Miller
"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite" - Carlyle
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