A torrent runs
Silent - nameless
From which the lion
lifts his reddened jaws
Stained from the heads
Crushed in the land of many
Where fresh with echoes:
Of ring of steel
And shouts of men
Cut down in the plain
To lay like Buddhas
In quiet contemplation
With festered wounds
And perfect minds
Now clearly chanting
Where David plucks
His shining stones.
He goes forth from the brook
And back again
To drink and to listen
Alongside the lion
And the singing men.
To cast a hook
Into mirrored waters
To drag the lakebed
Clean against the sky
To feel the pulse of
Ancient vertebrae
Slip through my hands
Mangled on the shore
To trace the sun across the lake:
Ingathering solar pole
Reaching down, reaching down
Piercing even into the deep!
O holy languid Dawn,
What ancient rest have
you discovered?
What great sleep
have you disturbed?
Hidden away in the
bowels of the earth?
What light withers
and returns
To vanish before
the noontime?
To awaken the
reeds and shatter the dew?
Greeted by
birdsong and the weeping of women?
Now the cattails
swing their heavy heads
Like drunken girls
in a bathroom mirror,
While knots of
snakes writhe between the grasses
Like half-conscious
children on the floor of a kitchen.
And the raveled
limbs of trees release their dormant cry
And cast off the
muzzle of their frigid burden.
A spotted fawn
glowing stands alert
To anticipate the
arrival
Muted as an echo
from distant time:
The world to come
calling as a whisper
Of half heard forgotten
language
From a mysterious
dark and foreign tongue;
An image upon an
image,
A promise clambered
for in the half-light
Spreading leisurely
across the canvas
To at last take
its seat and be revealed in us.
At 8 in the morning my eyes are still not used to the light, and it is time for the “Zoom” meeting, as my “Contemporary Questions in Free-Will in the Analytic Tradition: Seminar 472” class is about to begin. The radiation from the laptop screen burrows itself into my retinas and lodges – with much resistance – in the back of my skull. As the computer boots up the sun begins to spread his rays along the tops of houses all lined in rows, it flashes fire in the windows of houses and parked cars; a glance of this sight through the window is a gasp of relief, and for a moment, it washes a salve across my pained eyes.
“Gooood morning class!"
I am the bile that burns down your throat.
I speak in the patterns of the carpet,
And listen through the paint on the walls.
I will suffocate you with poisoned breath,
Breathing through a web of ducts and vents;
And in the night you will always feel
My lifeless pulse warming the floorboards.
- Flannery O'Connor, The Geranium.
Towering rows of beige siding melts
In the haze of a plastic twilight
To recede past sight and blend with the horizon,
While miles of painted on concrete drips
Into a forever dilating
Maze of streets and thoroughfares
So vast they eclipse the sight and knowledge
Of human affairs or planning committees.
And here is the boy who clamours and shakes
To disembodied voices in the night,
Pacing endlessly through the confines of
An imperceptible part of nowhere.
The purpose of my previous article on music and contemplation was to bring out the metaphysical meaning of traditional music and its link with contemplation, but since I lack the patience to really flesh out my ideas the post did come across rather brief and unfocused, so here I just want to elaborate on the symbolism of music in a more concentrated way.
My main point was that religious chant and Indian classical music both point to the same truth that there is an immutable and primal God, and that there is a world of multiplicity that stands in relation to Him. This is probably the most basic outline of reality that can be drawn, and pre-modern contemplative music represents this outline in audible form. We can visually manifest this basic outline in the form of the Cross and all its variants, wherein the vertical portion of the Cross stands for God and the horizontal for manifestation (the melody). The melody of chant surrounding its harmonic centre is not a chaotic motion, the world did not emanate in a random fashion, and this is manifested by the use of modes in music, therefore, to break the mode is to break the order of creation. This latter point is made more explicit when we consider the esoteric meaning of the modes: their correspondences with the planets and elements. These correspondences and their place in traditional cosmology (I would like to more specifically comment on the meaning of the modes but I lack the knowledge) bring more depth to scales than if we viewed them merely as tools to make the music sound pleasing. Again, we can clearly see this in the Indian tradition, as different ragas are set to be performed at different times of the day and in different seasons, the music is in tune with the world...
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| Saraswati: goddess of music, wisdom, art, and knowledge |
It does not take great powers of perception to see that Western society is propelled by action, there is a tangible and inescapable obsession with work and production, and we see the fruits of this all around us: from our private time spent gazing into the void of virtual worlds to the sparkling towers which dominate the horizon of the earth. Activity which is not entertainment or work has no place in such a world, intellectual activity is not understood and even looked down upon, this is the natural result of the unnatural glorification of action, and it poisons everything it comes into contact with. Much has been written on this wide and important topic, and it is not my purpose to set forth a full exposition of the significance of contemplation and action (for this I would recommend Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture and Guenon's The Crisis of the Modern World), here I wish only to focus on how these principles apply to music and see what deeper meanings we can draw from them. As always, what I say here is only some aspects of the greater picture, not an exhaustive or perfect treatment.
