Schopenhauer attributed to music the power to directly portray the very essence of the cosmos. I didn’t quite know what he meant until yesterday evening, when my son brought home his first violin and I my first cello.
Several of my family were over for dinner and we entered at the end of the meal. We unpacked our instruments, played a couple of notes and shared them around.
Though no real music of any kind was played, the mere vibration of a couple of strings set in motion the innermost heart strings of everyone present, both young and old. It was as if the gates of hope, joy and encouragement were suddenly opened in the room as the bows tickled and caressed the strings to life.
When I think of how music has affected my life, I must say that in most cases it has been thoroughly liberating. I have had occasions wherein I saw a reflection of my spiritual home through no other influence but from the world of tone in which I was engulfed. It was a place of almost overwhelming connection, spacious yet somehow intimate, peaceful but flowing and active like a rushing river.
Music awakens faculties that normally slumber in man as he now is. It stirs a remembrance of the soul’s home; it reconnects, regenerates and replenishes.
Whether I will progress to the point where Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 eventually pours out from my heart, through my hands and onto the strings at my command or whether my 7 year old manages to master “Taco Bell’s Canon” as my 5 year old cheekily calls it I cannot be sure, but one thing I know for certain is that music in particular and art in general has the power to effect enormous change in the world we share, whether we are aware of it consciously or not.
Gregory Hake 
Too cute about “Taco Bell’s Canon”!
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Maybe food for a new Atlanta Symphony Orchestra promotion?…a little Chihuahua who says: “Yo quiero Pachelbel.”
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Beautiful!
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The founding principle of chiropractic is stated as “founded on tone” and that “life is the expression of tone.” Your words today bring to mind the essence of the expression of our lives.
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We have greatly underestimated the physics of the living world.
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Sounds like a fun evening with many more to come. Some of my best memories involve music. A chamber concert transporting me from the music hall in USA to feeling we were in a grand concert hall in Vienna, a small town marching band conveying the pride of our nations accomplishments stirring patriotic appreciation that was palpable. Choirs and choruses lifting the heart to heights of thankfulness words perhaps could not. Each so diverse with the power to create; alchemy of sorts. How excellent to give your sons the gift of participating in the creation of music and most especially making it part of your family experience. I enjoyed your post!
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It’s absolutely true. Music can open doors that are usually shut, and in a very graceful way. You can put on some beautiful classical music and see the day’s woes begin to leave someone, or put on some salsa and see everyone start to dance. There is such a wide range of possibility available when you consider it.
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The Australian aboriginal legend of Creation having been sung into being has always seemed to me to have a foundation in truth. Everything that is, has its basis in vibration, frequency and interaction of frequency. Music not only symbolizes this fact but is a functional symbol too. Particularly where we are open to be moved by music, it creates textures and conditions in our hearts and minds that can then ripple out into the larger fields of our lives.
I hold a happy thought for the developing musical interaction between you and your son!
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Music is amazing and I share your sentiments about it!
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