{"id":166,"date":"2015-02-08T00:28:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencedavis.org\/?p=166"},"modified":"2015-02-14T16:07:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T16:07:34","slug":"the-soul-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/2015\/02\/the-soul-speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soul Speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Originally published by Lawrence Davis on June 18, 2013]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As anyone who loves music can attest, there are moments when you can be transported to a different level of consciousness by performing or listening to music.\u00a0 It is an unselfconscious moment when there is heightened awareness and a profound depth of appreciation.\u00a0 In Japanese painting, the concept is called \u201cukiyo\u201d which means \u201cfloating world\u201d in English.\u00a0 It is a time where the mind loses touch with mundane daily responsibilities and becomes engaged in something different \u2014 something beyond the moment and, at the same time, completely within it.<\/p>\n

Music is an activity in time, unlike a painting which can be experienced in a few seconds or observed over a much longer period.\u00a0 For the sake of illustration, please consider music as a two-dimensional graph, with time on one axis and experience on the other.\u00a0 Normally we move along the time axis and experience what is at the intersection of time and experience at any point in time.\u00a0 There are, however, moments when the motion of time seems to stop and we are free to experience a single point in time in a new way, moving up the experience axis.\u00a0 It is a transcendental moment. The soul speaks.<\/p>\n

\"WhirlingThe late Ross Wetzseon, a longtime editor of the Village Voice, once wrote a review of the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, whose hypnotic circular movement he called \u201can emptiness filled with everything.\u201d\u00a0 He went on to describe the experience this way, \u201cthe transfixing serenity of ceaseless motion…the revolutions revealing that the center of a circle is synonymous with the whole. Timelessness has its own rhythms.\u201d<\/p>\n

I vividly remember the first time I heard \u201cThanksgiving\u201d by Charles Ives.\u00a0 The piece, which is about 15 minutes long, is full of drama and mystery, building and growing, culminating in a hymn, sung to the tune of Duke Street, \u201cGod! Beneath thy guiding hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

“God! Beneath thy guiding hand,
\nOur exiled fathers crossed the sea,
\nAnd as they trod the wintry strand,
\nWith prayer and praise they worshipped Thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was literally holding my breath as that tune was sung.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I have had many of these experiences in my life as a musician, but when I do they are always unforgettable.\u00a0 Last Friday at 6:00pm my talented young piano quintet came to my office to warm up before their concert later that evening.\u00a0 They tuned their instruments and started to play the last movement of the Schumann Piano Quintet in E Flat Major.\u00a0 As they played, I began to realize they had never played it better.\u00a0 They were completely focused.\u00a0 They were free of self consciousness.\u00a0 They were making music. I had to remind myself to breathe when they were done.<\/p>\n

When we are transported that way by music and human endeavor, it is an evanescent moment. And when we return to everyday life with its multiple headaches and stresses, I can only hope we bring something back \u2014 something that is life affirming \u2014 something that proves that, even if it is only a moment, life can be perfect.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Davis<\/p>\n

______________<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the twelfth essay that <\/em>Lawrence<\/em> posted on his blog \u201cReaching In.\u201d\u00a0 It originally appeared at lawrence-davis.blogspot.com.\u00a0 The culmination of Ives’ Thanksgiving, as Lawrence described above, can be heard here<\/a>.\u00a0 \u2013 <\/em>CHC<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Originally published by Lawrence Davis on June 18, 2013] As anyone who loves music can attest, there are moments when you can be transported to a different level of consciousness by performing or listening to music.\u00a0 It is an unselfconscious moment when there is heightened awareness and a profound depth of appreciation.\u00a0 In Japanese painting, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reaching-in-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/ldavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}