Why Music Matters

This was posted on the Telecaster Discussion Page Reissue. Things I try to say but can't find the words to explain.


Why Music Matters

Karl Paulnack, Director, Music DivisionThe Boston Conservatory
Dr. Karl Paulnack’s Welcome Address to parents of incoming students, September 2004

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician… I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated… I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school. She said, “You’re wasting your SAT scores!” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite…
Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture — why would anyone bother with music? And yet even from the concentration camps we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around firehouses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Mid-western town a few years ago.I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier. Even in his 70’s it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.“

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.“

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music, I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

I Object!

My post was cut off.

What I was saying was, if you find my blog objectional, why don't you contact me and discuss it? I won't flame you, I'm a nice guy. Otherwise, I'll think you're just someone who has way too much time on their hands and is easily offended and shouldn't venture out of their house and be exposed to the real world. Let me tell you, I could be REAL offensive. But I choose not to be. There's enough crap out there.

Peace.

A Good Evening

Tonight there was a showing at a gallery and a reception for the artist. The Gallery is Fort Collin's own Walnut Street Gallery (The Art of Rock 'n Roll www.walnutst.com) and the artist was Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Laura and I went for the private reception at six o'clock. This is the third time we've met Bill. He's a wonderful guy and one of the best drummers on the planet. The last time we saw him he gave us tips on where to go and what to see in Hawaii. His art is made on computer using Photo SHop and is transfered to canvas. It's very psychedelic with images upon images with good use of color. It's reasonable as far as cost goes too. We didn't get much one on one time with Bill, but I did give him one of Tuatha's CD's and told him it was nothing like The Grateful Dead.

I got to meet another person tonight as well, a fellow named John Turk who produces The Jay Marvin Show on AM 760 KZZN in Denver. (www.am760.net.) Jay is a lefty talk show host who I enjoy and have been listening to since before the 2006 election. John is the guy who screens the calls, gets guests on and sometimes pipes in with his own commentary. He's also a big jam-band fan, especially Widespread Panic. They've been talking about music, art and literature more now that the election is over and I gave him contact info on Tuatha. We got on like old pals. He brought a friend who lives here in Fort Collins named Paige who Laura struck up a conversation with and we didn't hear from them for quite a while. Very cool guy. It's a little odd to be looking for someone you never met, who you feel you know because you listen to them on the radio. I had no idea what he looked like, I just knew his voice. I was listening for it, but never heard it until he came up to me. (I'd left him an e-mail after listening to his interview with Bill Kreutmann this morning discribing myself.) It's even better to discover they're down to earth, good folks.

Thanks to Laura and Bill at Walnut St. Gallery for hosting the shindig. One of these days we'll be able to buy more art!

Is This Blog Objectional?

Someone has flagged my blog as objectional. Huh? I reread some of my posts. The only thing I found that to me seems like it could be considered objectional is my take on the movie Goldfinger. It was made in 1965 or there abouts. In case you weren't alive back then, people looked at the world a lot differently then they do now. In some ways it's better, in others worse. If you have a problem with my perspective

Just Past The Full Wolf Moon

I haven't had much to say lately that I wanted to post about. The holidays have come and gone. We're well into the first month of the new year and we're about to say goodbye to Mr. Bush. (And not a moment too soon...)

There's some things going on, but it's too soon to write about them. We'll see how things are in six months.

Last night Laura took me to hear (and later meet) Jean-Michel Cousteau at the Lincoln Center. He shared some video footage of underwater creatures and talked about our relation and connectedness. The water in the Colorado Mountains comes from evaporated sea water turned to snow. It melts and turns into the rivers and eventually it returns to the ocean. What gets in that water between the time it's snow and when it's in the ocean again is the problem. Not to mention what we dump into the air as well. He sees our situation as serious, but he feels that we can and will make the right choices and changes as soon as we understand that protecting the oceans is protecting ourselves.

There was a meet and greet after the lecture, and we were among the last to talk to him. He teased us about wasting our time to do that. I couldn't think of much to say other then to thank him for his work. Laura got to thank him and his father for inspiring her to become a scientist. When she told him she works with water quality data at the National Park Service, he asked her to send information to his organization and to keep in contact. He's someone I'd love to have dinner with. Or better yet, learn to dive from.

His organization is called Ocean Futures Society. Visit them at www.oceanfutures.org.

What is the Full Wolf Moon? It's the time of year when the hungry wolves would come to the edge of the village and howl, especially around the full moon. Thank you, Old Farmers Almanac.

Fever Dreams

The other morning I broke a tooth eating a bagel. As things turned out Laura had to go to the dentist, and since I was giving her a ride (so I could use the car to take the cat to the vet) I was able to make an appointment for the next morning. So at 4:00 AM on Thursday morning I woke up shivering and couldn't stop. It was warm in the house, so it could only mean that I was sick. Since I had the dentist appointment, I ignored it. I got myself bathed and dressed and into the car.

I got to the dentist and after about a half an hour got x-rayed and inspected. I was hoping it would be something simple, but it turns out I'll need a root canal, a rod put in and a crown. Since none of that is in the budget, I had them patch it as best they can until I can get in next month which means I'll only be eating soft food for a month.

I walked the two miles home in the 20 degree weather and wasn't feeling so good. I thought it was because I hadn't eaten much since I broke the tooth, so I ate some oatmeal. I had trouble finishing the bowl and my head began to hurt. It turned out I was running a fever of 101.6. I took an aspirin, got some juice and laid down on the couch and spent the day in various states of consciousness. Luck was with me as the fever broke rather quickly and my appetite started to return. I watched a video, Sean Connery as 007 in Goldfinger, one of my favorite movies when I was about 12 years old (and yes I would still love to own an Austin Martin DB-5). It's still entertaining after all of these years, but I've watched too much Mystery Science Theater 3000 to not crack wise at certain things.

I also question things. Like, Goldfinger has a stud farm in Kentucky. Wouldn't the locals question the employment of a hundred Red Chinese or North Korean guys in matching blue coveralls? "Hey, Bubba. Did you see that rich Kraut hired a bunch of Kor-e-ans out at his horse ranch?" Did they run errands in town? ("You fill gas tank now, Yankee Imperialist running dog lackey!" "Now hold on there young fellow. We are not Yankees!") And there's all of these people working horses and stuff that have nothing to do with the fiendish plot. Aren't they going to notice something? "Gee, Mr. Goldfinger has invited the biggest mob bosses in the country for some kind of orientation. I wonder if I should tell the FBI or something?" He'd have to bribe a lot of people to keep them loyal.

But it's still fun. Bond saves the day, defeats the bad guys and ends up with Pussy Galore.

After that Laura came home and made noodles with broccoli and onions with a peanut coconut sauce she got at the Winter Market last weekend. Yum! She was doing pretty well and in spite of my having a fever and her running on four or five hours of sleep managed to have coherent conversation. She only said, "What did you really say?" four or five times. Then I ended up back on the couch until four in the morning, falling in and out of sleep having strange thoughts and dreams.

Which brings us back to today's topic, fever dreams. What is it about being sick that makes us dig into long forgotten memories and strange dreams? And as people who know me know, I have some pretty strange ass dreams all the time already. I can't remember details other then one dream. In it I was going to play guitar for a crowd of people and an old friend, Dave Firestine, showed up. So we went into the room to play and sat our stools at the rear of the hall and asked the audience to pick up their chairs and turn around. You'd think that someone might have noticed that the stage was set up in the rear of the room, but that would be logical.

But it was pretty continuous that I'd dream, wake from it and go over it in my mind and then go back to sleep repeating the process. Or I'd be in that state of not awake, but not quite asleep and things were popping up from thirty plus years ago. Little details of things long forgotten. Like an image of looking out of a car window while on vacation with my parents. What the hell does that have to do with anything now? I don't know.

There's no real point to all of this. I'm still a bit out of it. I need to heal up for tomorrow night's Solstice Celebration at the Mercury Cafe in Denver where Tuatha will be playing. I'm looking forward to it. We played last year and it was a good gathering. Our local priestess is doing the ritual between our sets so that'll be good. Time to shake off the old and bring in the new.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Happy Thanksgiving

I think of Thanksgiving as a Rastafarian holiday. Maybe it’s from years of listening to reggae music. There’s a Jimmy Cliff album called “Give Thanks” and the words “give thanks and praises” show up across the board in songs from Bob Marley to Toots and the Maytals.

So here we are on Thanksgiving Day giving praises to Jah for our abundance and blessings. In the attitude of gratitude, here’s a sampling of things I’m thankful for.

I’m still here!

I’ve survived relatively intact. I’ve got all of my fingers and toes and limbs and they all work.

Family and friends

“Good friends we’ve had,
good friends we’ve lost,
along the way.
In this great future,
you can’t forget your past
So dry your tears I say…”
-Vincent Ford

If it weren’t for my family and friends I’d be living in my car and celebrating the holidays at a rescue mission. Seriously. I’m not so good at keeping in touch with people from my past and I regret that, but I keep them in mind and hold them in my heart. And I’m thankful for the wisdom they’ve shared, the adventures we’ve had and the good and strange times.

Music

“One good thing about music
When it hits, you feel no pain…”
-Bob Marley

I can’t imagine a world without music. It’s given me so much inspiration, emotional shelter, and shared ecstasy. There’s nothing I love more then being on stage looking out at a room full of joyous dancing people. Many times I’ve been on the other side, dancing to a great band with the lyrics reflecting the things in my head. In my darkest times, often a song would give me the strength to carry on. I remember coming home from a live sound gig. I don’t remember what was bothering me, but I had a serious case of the blues. Instead of going to bed, I turned on the TV to unwind and Saturday Night Live was on. The musical guest was Jimmy Cliff who did a passionate version of “Many Rivers to Cross.” Tears rolled down my cheeks as all of the sadness and despair was washed away.

Good Food

The holy trinity for me is friends, music and food. There’s ritual involved, preparation, anticipation for the coming meal as stomachs growl and good smells drift in from the kitchen. Cooking for me is always an experiment. I never know how it will turn out. I can use the same recipe, same ingredients in the same kitchen and it will be different the next time I make it. I guess I cook like I play music. I like there to be structure, but I also like to improvise. A perfect holiday for me would be friends gathering together for a shared meal followed by a jam. I like pot luck’s because there are always surprises with dishes that I’d never dream of. Broccoli enchiladas come to mind. Sounds like some kid’s worse nightmare, doesn’t it. Wonderful. Thank you, Carol Rose where ever you are.

“Jah”

By whatever name you call the Great Spirit, the Primal Force, All That Is, Source or even if you’re not sure there’s anything else, I feel through my experience that this Universe we inhabit is vast and alive. What turns a seed into a tomato? I give thanks and praises to that Universal force that gives us the life and the abundance that we share today.

I’d like to give thanks to you for taking the time to read these words. I’m still finding my way with this. I appreciate the support and interest.



Give thanks and praises to the Most High
Give thanks and praises So High
He will not deceive us my brethren
He will lead us again
Oh take the veil from off your eyes
Look into the future of realize

When my soul was hurting deep within
And I’m worrying to be free, desperately
So guide and protect I and I, Oh Jah, Jah
Through all these ages
Guide and protect I and I, Oh Jah, Jah
Through all the stages

Give Thanks and Praises…
-Bob Marley