“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on... The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy."
- Dancing the Dream, Michael Jackson
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| Joy calls to joy... |
Music is one of the most powerful, mysterious forces we know. It can move us to tears, exultation, peace and triumph. It can "possess" the body through dance - it transcends language as a means of communication - it seems integral to the universe - yet we cannot truly comprehend what it is...
It is almost a force of magic - nay it is magic! For I have found that listening to music evokes images and fantasies within my mind. It is a creative force - but more than that I have found that it bridges the past and present - and reaches from beyond death...
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| The Passing of the Soul at Death - Evelyn de Morgan |
Listen to this piece of music: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. It was the absolute favourite piece of music of someone I loved very dearly, who is now dead. When I listen to it I am filled with a terrible happiness, a sweet melancholy, a sense of wonder and an aching, consuming love. Because this piece of music contains something of the soul of the one I loved - wherever and whatever happens to a soul after death - for though I hope I cannot know or trust with any surety - the beauty and love and wonder; the kindness and innocence and hope that characterised this soul - remains in the world, every time the music is played. Whenever I listen to it - I know that in the past these same notes were heard by him, and perhaps he was moved to tears as I am, every time.
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| The emotions of a yearning soul, searching for a sense of a connection ... |
It is doubly powerful because I know that one day I too will be dead, and though I hope that will not be the end for me, whatever happens this piece of music - and the other pieces that I feel as part of my own soul - will remain.
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| I find it apt that Hope plays music while she waits blindfold... But as long as the music lasts, so will she... |
What is a musical composition but the expression of the soul - those feelings and imaginings that move and drive us? Art too is an expression of the soul. So is writing. Whenever another person hears the music, reads the tale; views the painting, and feels their own soul stirred - is communing with that soul, and with the soul of everyone, past and future who will be similarly affected.
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| Who knows who is listening, past and future, to the song of the present? To the Chant D'Amour? |
This makes me consider of those pieces of music, art and writing that become part of the soul. You know the ones I mean - the ones that transcend ordinary "liking" or admiration and which shape the person you become. Pictures that are painted on the heart. Poems spoken wordlessly with every breath. Music singing in your mind, over and over, until your body's movement becomes a dance. Characters that walk beside you when you feel afraid, and whom you cherish fiercely. Wonderful and perilous places discovered between the pages of a book, which you align with your own reality every second of the day. Perhaps you created them. Perhaps a kindred-spirit created them. But they become part of who you are.
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| We all have a few books that become part of our identity... Reading becomes a source of self-affirmation, a journey and a search for guidance; a connection with the wisdom of the past. |
I think that is why we create. It is a deep (if incomplete) connection, unbounded by time and immortal as an idea. While the creation exists, so does the creator. And so too exist forever all those who saw themselves reflected in a picture painted hundreds of years ago, who hear their souls' keening in an old melody; who walk within a "secondary world". Once something has been thought of, it can never die, for its potential is always there to be re-awakened.
It's some comfort.
Just create... just create- Are You Listening?, Michael Jackson
Immortality's my game
From Bliss I came
In Bliss I'm sustained
To Bliss I return
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| Transcendent Spirit |
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