new ears

Music can find its way through a crack in your wall, or into a joint in your armor, or around the edge of your mask, and like muriatic acid, it erodes the masonry until your wall crumbles. Sometimes a song just slips in, and knowing where your vulnerabilities lie, plants its self and sings its words inside you until you can no longer deny the truth of the message, and it sets you free. Joints become limber, and a sweet, fragrant, aroma invades the stale, suffocating space behind your mask.
Music is like air these days. Technology has made it ubiquitous. Everywhere you are, there is music. It is used as a pad for life, unnoticeable, and of little consequence. It is used to manipulate emotions and to affect action to help, reach out, or buy. For the most part, like air, it is stale, polluted and foul. It takes some time and trouble to create or find fresh air in the midst of so much pollution and meaninglessness.

I really don’t like being manipulated with music, and for the most part, my cynicism, paired with my musical intelligence doesn’t allow me to be. Our having been manipulated so much, and our having been defined to such a great extent, by our music, has caused much of the music that defines us to have lost its definition.
This happens in much of life. An event defines an emotion, which defines a moment, which engraves a memory. Over time, the memory recalls the emotion rather than the event, and the source of the emotion is lost. Powerful songs have the tendency to usurp their own power. At first, they mean to us because of what they mean, and they spark a response. At some point the songs themselves spark our response and their meaning is lost. The songs replace the very thing that they taught us, the very place that they took us, and they have undefined themselves.
Since I don’t like to be manipulated by music, I avoid manipulating by music. But, I can’t help taking what I’ve just said into consideration while I’m using music to deliver a message, or cause thought. I have to consider that songs often get in the way of themselves. Often, a familiar song can say more of what it has to say, when it is referred to rather than actually sung in it’s entirety. My practice then is to manipulate the song then rather than the listener, in a way that will allow the listener to more completely process the song.
I have written before on these virtual pages about how art is powerful because it draws upon and recalls and refers to prior experiences, feelings, and knowledge to say what it says. The listener or viewer pulls together for himself the information that the artist has alluded to, and gives himself the meaning. Its depth is dependent upon the listener’s or viewer’s prior experience and ability to be stimulated by the allusions.
Often, when I use an old familiar song, I’ll use only part of it, just enough to bring the song into the head, so that the listener will process its meaning rather than get lost in the singing of the song.
I think one of my growing strengths is the ability to help people hear the message with new ears. These are ears that are located inside the head, or perhaps in the heart, but are accessed through the ears on the sides of our heads. These ears search the song for deeper meaning, while keeping the beautiful song in its proper vehicular place. Often to freshly convey the meaning of the song, you’ve got avoid doing the song.
This is one of the most effective ways of connecting emotionally with the listener and demanding that he participate and interact. I don’t have to take you there – I can simply show the way. Don’t do the song for him, make him do it himself. We are much more changed by the journey.