Music and Mindfulness

Let me first start off by saying that I am a lazy meditator. Meaning that I find it incredibly difficult to sit down and close my eyes and do it. When I'm on the cushion, I'm grateful and when it's over, I'm grateful. But...getting there is the hard part.

However, mindfulness is something that can be practiced outside of meditation. And it is one of the most important things to a musician (and music appreciator) to cultivate.

Mindfulness is the careful viewing of, well, everything, in a non-judgmental fashion. It is often said that there is mindfulness of the body, emotions, thoughts, and mind. Mindfulness of the body is recognizing bodily sensations. (Instead of going down the path of..."My leg is itching...I must scratch it...now somewhere else itches...I must scratch that too, etc.", we simply label the sensation "itch" and go on with our day) Mindfulness of the emotions is the recognition of happiness, anger, sadness, without the cycle of guilt and craving that sometimes follows.

Here's the value of it. Typically, humans operate in a very knee-jerk fashion. Something happens that knocks us from equilibrium, we get an emotion, very often resulting in a bodily sensation (sometimes positive...tingling, etc.; sometimes negative...stomachaches, etc.), which then results in another emotion, then the thoughts come ("what should I do about it?"). Mindfulness allows us to experience the world directly. Instead of knee-jerk reactions that we seemingly can't do anything about, we experience the emotion (without feeling the need to do anything about it), we experience the sensation (without needing to react). The closer we can get to seeing the world directly, the more easily we will be able to make our own conscious decisions about life.

When we are mindful as a musician, it is difficult, if not impossible, to be negative about our creativity. It is easier to see our mistakes and correct them, without needing to feel bad about ourselves or beat ourself up. It is also easier to make beautiful music without feeling the egoistical need to be a great musician. That striving often takes very promising young musicians away from the music itself. It's not about us, it's about the music.

I recently heard Ray Bradbury speak. He's 89 years old, still writing, still vibrant. He said that his advice to young writers was this: Do what you love and love what you do. Don't do anything for money. If you're doing what you love, the money will eventually come.

I would add to that: Don't do anything for money, fame, or fortune. The desire for greatness is not what makes a great artist. Being an artist in love with your craft makes a great artist.

And to be truly in love with your craft requires a great deal of mindfulness...

A thought on listening and the millenial age

Listening requires patience, a quality which seems to be diminishing greatly among the general populace.

People argue about what music is, I say that music is sound existing over time. It seems to be a definition that doesn't diminish when looking at non-Western musical traditions. It doesn't require notation, Western instruments, a type of structure, or anything else. Simply sound and time. Both which are continually happening.

I think that the difficulty has become a lack of understanding what the listener's job is. There are undoubtedly many types of listening, which include listening for entertainment (literally...something that happens between two events) such as driving in the car and putting on something familiar, listening for meditation, listening for dance steps, etc. But there is a type of listening that is very important, which seems to be decreasing. Listening for listening!

So...what does this involve? It involves stopping what you're doing, and just LISTENING. Not listening for a purpose of finding a melodic theme, or getting you pumped for a gym workout, or keeping you from getting too "bored" while doing chores. No purpose.

But why?? Why listen for no purpose? After all, we have so much to do, day in and day out. Take care of the house, the yard, the kids, go to work, cook, clean, etc., etc., ad libitum, ad nauseum. Actually, it is because of these things that we NEED to listen for no purpose. When watering, listen to the sound of the water leaving the hose, hitting the leaves, falling to the soil below...it can transform the "chore" of watering into a "blessing" of watering. Sometimes we need to slow down and just experience what we have in front of us.

Now, music is something that gives us an opportunity to do this. It can transport, transform, our mind. It can teach us more about ourselves, how we behave, how we think. Particularly, twentieth century art music, holds many keys to this possibility. More and more, composers are truly just interested in the experience of sound and want to give others and themselves as many opportunities to explore different sounds as possible!

The millenial age is full of electronic gadgets. When we stop talking to our friend at dinner, we have to immediately pull out our blackberry and check our email, stocks, sports scores, news. We can't enjoy the silence between two thoughts anymore because of this constant onslaught of tempting distractions. So, we have two choices: either give in to the distractions (status quo) or learn to choose otherwise. And yes, I believe that the experiencing of music (particularly, the listening for listening's sake) is an avenue through which we can step outside of these distractions.

Pieces to listen to (set all else aside for an hour and just LISTEN!) could include:
--Music for 18 Musicians -- Steve Reich (a twentieth century minimalist masterpiece)
--Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet -- Gavin Bryars (ditto)
--For Bunita Marcus -- Morton Feldman
--Voyage that Never Ends -- Stefano Scodanibbio

Life-changing pieces. Prepare to be entranced, but if you dare to take a listen...you MUST listen all the way through with no distractions, no talking, no phones, no computers, etc. And you will be greatly rewarded!