"I had a magical day. Met a lot of friends and all by chance." So said a friend the other day. Magic? Synchronicity? Coincidence? Just one of those things? Evidence that when we are attuned, notes come together.
"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence." (Robert Fripp for King Crimson) The merging of music and wine, receptacles and silence is an attuning, a blending of ideas, leading to a coming together of experience. Release the idea into the world and it becomes reified; the more it is expressed, the more solid it gets. The begining of materialism was an idea, as such were we all: "just" an idea. That idea is a note; there are many more.
Silence is the place where things happen. Silence is the space where things come together. Silence is the pandora's box wherein all that is unnamed is given the chance to speak and all that which was closed off is shone the glory of day. In silence reside the notes of our lives usually getting drowned out by even the smallest unmet need. Hear the rustling coat of the person nearby, hear the pipes as they move that central heating around the building, hear the absence of everything else that usually jostles your inner balance - and hear those few hesitant notes playing the music that is you.
Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities. The music of David Sylvian - Electronic? Ambient? Perhaps he was seeking a transmutation such as the alchemists of old - a changing of one to another. Metamorphosis? Cast your mind to history; Ancient alchemists seemed to be preoccupied with making mountains of gold, but they never seemed to succeed. But what if this was merely a means to an end? What if the path to gold led past being able to transmute themselves? To enable a gross material body such as we all have, to be changed into something else? Resisting ageing, or negating geography.... perhaps magicians/musicians, sages and mystics have at various times actually succeeded in hearing those notes in the silence that transformed themselves....perhaps they found those vibrations in base metals that led, not to another base metal, but to finer vibrations, sweeter chords, the music not of despair and angst and crowded railway platforms, but lifting, turning and freeing them of mortal coils, not premature departure, but at will and with elated return. Music can trigger attacks or weeping - can lead to trances or jubilation; it is not for our ears, it is for our balance, our raison d'etre, our way to become more than we are.
Whether with notes or symphonies, attuned we are together, and able to align in ways that might otherwise be considered: magic.
