Song and Silence

Sometimes when I dance, the world goes silent. All that exists is my body and the movement. There are no words, no thoughts, it's a trance-like state and I find that I'm at peace. I'm experiencing the moment not as me, not as a thinking being, but as a nothing. I'm invisible to myself and to the world.

And then I pause and everything comes crashing back. I'm filled with sound, with thought. My reprieve from the world is intruded upon and interrupted.

People spend hours at a time meditating to experience that relief, seeking that cessation of noise, immunity from the infection that Burroughs called Word. In those quiet moments, the inner monologue is absent.

It's rare and takes practice, and for this to occur naturally often requires some kind of interruption upon the interruption, an overriding noise to replace that which has become the background of our existence.

I'm reminded of this because of my experience at HigFOM (the Higginson Festival of Music) this weekend.



What happens when music overpowers lyrics, when what we hear no longer has Word operating within it? Is there still meaning and by that I mean the kind of subjective meaning we use to describe the thoughts and emotions and words used in our day to day existence?

For example, one of the bands at HigFOM, Mission Orange, introduced one of their songs as being about "hiking on Mount Baker" or something to that effect, but when they started playing, the drums and guitar and feedback completely covered up and drowned out any vocals that would have conveyed that message.

You couldn't hear what he was singing at all and it seemed ironic to preface the song with a description. If I'd come across this on the radio, I don't think I would have been able to discern anything relating to being on a mountain.



In other words, the intent is there, but the meaning is lost amongst the sound accompanying it. It interrupts the transmission of the message. And this interruption provides us with silence of the mind.

And I got lost in the song, pulled in and whirled around by a maelstrom of sound. Soon I found that if I let this continue, it tore away at my mind. There was only the music.

Here then is an example of music as a release, as an agent of the momentary nirvana that teases us with a glimpse of bliss, for music in this capacity gives us silence.

But there is also danger in this. As much as it can be a tool for empowerment and enlightenment, the way we envision a monk or other Eastern practitioner reducing thought and expanding mind, applied differently, this ability of music becomes a tool in the power of economy of the mind.

In emptying the mind, it is made vulnerable. Is not the blank sheet easiest to fill?