Music is the mid-point between noise and quiet. It is a nice place to be. Today we are going to that place and just going to enjoy it. My goal in this very brief meditation is to get the verb right for music.
First I need to make a stop at noise. Noise is when the alarm goes off in the building and you have to shut it off. While shutting it off, you have to hold your ears and curse all the false alarms that have ever been sounded in the world. Noise is cabbies and New Jersey drivers in horn-to-horn combat. Noise is nine different musicians performing in different corners of the park. Noise is somebody else having an intimate conversation on the cell phone, on speaker, on the bus. Noise is subway screech.
If noise is the opposite of quiet, and music the orchestrated mid-point between the two, what is quiet? Quiet is the sound of peace. It is the echo of holiness. It is rest, often called caesura, the place where we stop. Quiet is where we hold our breath for safekeeping. Quiet is when we can focus on our own thoughts. It is hush. There can be sounds in quiet, but not noise. I think of birds or frogs or dawn or twilight.
So if noise is the presence of unpleasant sound and the absence of peace, and quiet is the absence of unpleasant sound and the presence of active quiet, what is the right verb for music?
The verb is listening, of course, but listening is such a soft verb. It needs a little more muscle to make real sense. Not everyone "just" listens to music. Peasants sing songs at harvest time. Farm laborers sing songs to get the crops in. Slaves use songs to hide information from others and, sometimes, to find their way North. When people are in jail, they often sing. Many people on New York City streets wear long white strings with ear buttons on their end to look good and to listen to their favorite music, in that order. Many mega churches use what is called "Praise Music" to gather in large congregations. Why is praise music so successful? Many argue that it is the direct result of music no longer being taught in the public schools. People can't get the harmonies of Bach or Ellington - so they stick with the simple. One new board member said, "I love the old hymns best." Music is also something to love and to locate us. Many of us find our whole way back to childhood by way of a simple song. Music is a route to childhood.
So music is the work of listening and the play of listening. It is so simple really, that sometimes it is hard to think of music as anything but the wallpaper of life; it is not, it is more than that. It is in fact so important that most families on car trips and most congregations on spiritual journeys like to fight about it. Just last week, I heard both of these sentences: "Judson's music is so much more classical and spiritual now. I love it;" "Judson's music has so little percussion now, I hate it." Then there was the remark of someone declaring our music a hootenanny and a hoedown. It was not meant as a compliment. The right verb for music is listen. Amen
