On the Power of Music

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve pondered the effect it would have on early man to be introduced to modern music…just have a big stage and sound system suddenly appear at a tribe’s central gathering place and start playing: Stravinsky, Hendrix, Brecker Brothers, Miles, Joni, Aretha…Kansas, Yes, Tower…what effect would each genre and piece have on the emotions and moods of the collective, circa tens of thousands of years ago? It would necessarily change the spirituality, I think.

I suppose the reason I ponder thus is the huge power music has over my (read: our) spiritual state of being, and the huge role it has played in the history of human spirituality…and why it has.

As I write this, I’m riding through the Alleghenys on a tour bus with some fellow musical pilgrims on a beautiful Spring day, listening to Steve Vai and Brecker Brothers on headphones; a technology we all take for granted but which is of course as amazing and unlikely as existing at all as a complex life form, capable of thought and action (pretty absurdly tall odds, when one actually thinks about it)…and which said technology is having as potent and spiritual an effect on my being as any experience I’ve had in life. I’m just a humble servant of Calliope, strapped into my head-bubble microcosm, receiving Her spiritual nourishment as I gypsy down the highway. And I will do my best to be worthy of Her providence in this, my one and only existence as a conscious entity.