Like they say in the commercial, no one can have just one. By that, I mean none of use is constrained by a limit on the number of muses we have within us. We learn much from our muses, whether we recognize that learning or not.
I have the Muses of Listening, Reading, Writing, Conversing, Running, Walking, Swimming, Drawing, and Playing. And there are still more Muses within me.
My favorite Muse is my Musical Muse. She is. Yeah, I know, she is a "she". Then again, so am I. Except when playing Liszt, when I wail and moan that I can't locate my third and fourth hand, each having six very long and absurdly muscular, coordinated fingers. At those moments, I often think my Musical Muse is some genderless being composed of ill intent. But I digress.
My Musical Muse is the guide that helps me listen and play. My Musical Muse is my teacher, my friend and my guide. My main instrument is the violin, so if you're not a violinist, be patient. There is a message in this for musicians of all sorts, from rock to chant, instrumental or voice, musicians and self-defined non-musicians, players, or listeners.
And the first thing my Musical Muse reminds me of each day is the importance of active listening. Listening, at its best is never sitting back and allowing sounds to wash over you as a spring shower bathes the earth. No, not at all.
Listening is a very active process. Listening is an engaging process where you receive information that has meaning. Think of it like riding a bicycle. If you're going for a ride on a bicycle, you are not just sitting there on the bike seat doing nothing. Even if you are riding on someone else's handlebars, you are actively remaining in balance with the bicycle as it moves along. When you coast on a bicycle, you have to maintain your balance or you'll not be riding for long. The same is true of listening.
When you are listening to a friend speaking, you are active. You are taking in the message. You are balancing on the sounds you perceive, investigating them, translating the message.
When you listen to music, you are actively taking in the sounds and making sense of them. Even when you listen to "white noise", that formless, content void of sound, you are listening to the nothing. In silence you listen to the lack of music, a coherent sound stream with a message. The same is true of the music of speech or the hubbub of the city as heard in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
There is a Zen-like statement that goes something like this: music is not the notes, it is the space between the notes. A single note, even perfectly sung or perfectly played, is just that. It is only a note. It is not music. Skills of the mythical bad violist notwithstanding, the ability to play a single 64th note is just that. A note without music.
The space between the notes gives you direction, the pulse of the music, the flow. The space informs the listener of the musical style, the emotion within a phrase, even the goal of a tune. The spaces between the notes recognizes that a high A vibrates in the air differently from middle C.
The "space between" informs us that the music is a march, a dance or a dirge.
In speech we also have the space between the notes. The spaces are punctuation, phrasing, meter, and the spaces that define the end of one thought and the beginning of another.
In art, we have the spacing between the colors. The color red is a different wavelength of light from the color blue.
In comedy, the space is the timing, the pause, the moment when a funny bone is tickled.
Frequency and time, the currency of Music. Frequency and time, the currency of communication.
Frequency and time--the space between.
And so my Musical Muse reminds me each day to listen to that space between. The frequency and modulation of the cawing crow or the trill of the robin. The space between the chirps of a sparrow. The frequency and modulation of the phrase of Liszt or the muscular run of notes in the Barber Violin Concerto.
It is by listening we learn what is going on in the world. The newscaster, pundit and preacher all depend on our listening to the spaces between. The music of the world in words, music or noise informs us as we listen to the Musical Muse.
Take a moment, listen, and thank your own Musical Muse. You've learned so much from Music, and will learn much more this day.
Listen. Are you hearing the space between the notes that tells you a police siren is approaching, or that a child is crying? Are you hearing happy laughter or a derisive chuckle? Listen. Drink in the music of the world. It is the voice of your Musical Muse informing you that what you are hearing is what you will learn in this very special moment.
And thank the music for the space between. In that space, the chasm between the notes is the music.
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