Life as Music
it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Abstract This is one of the pillar concepts from Alan Watts. I hope you can enjoy it as much as I enjoy it.
As like in Programming,
there is something magical
about regarding
everything as musical.
On words from Alan Watts:
Music as an art form
is essentially playful,
you say you “play the piano”,
you don’t work the piano.
Why?
Music differs from say travel,
when you travel you are trying
to get somewhere.
And of course we,
because being a very compulsive
and purposeful culture,
are busy getting everywhere
faster and faster and faster;
until we eliminate the distance
between places.
I mean, with modern jet travel
you can arrive instantaneously.
What happens as a result of that
is that the two ends of your journey
becomes the same place.
So you eliminate the distance
and you eliminate the journey,
but the fun of the journey is
to travel, not to obliterate the travel.
So then, in music, though,
one doesn’t make the end of the composition,
the point of the composition.
If that was so
the best conductors would be
those who play fastest,
and there would be composers
who wrote only finales!
People would go to
_concerts just to hear
one crashing chord,
because that’s the end!
Same with dancing.
You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room,
that’s where you should arrive,
the whole point of dancing is the dance.
Look at the people who live to retire,
put those savings away; and then
when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left,
more or less impotent;
they go and rot in an old people’s
senior citizen’s community.
Because we’ve simply cheated ourselves
the whole way down the line.
We thought of life by analogy,
with a journey, with a pilgrimage,
which had a serious purpose at the end;
and the thing was to get to that end,
success or maybe heaven after you’re dead..
But, we missed the point the whole way along,
it was a musical thing
and you were supposed
to sing or to dance
while the music was being played..
That existence is musical in nature.
How to make life more musical.
- Dance in the morning.
- Learn how to play an instrument.
- Sing when no-one is listening. And also when people might be listening.
- Think of everything as a symphony.
- Discover new music.
- Attend live performances.