The Two Kinds of Music : Beyond the Entertainment Paradigm

”There are two kinds of music, good music, and the other kind.” Duke Ellington

It has been said by many that there are two kinds of music. For various reasons. But, yes, it’s obvious, is it not? Then again, can we really objectively say this is true? Or is it all just a matter of opinion?

Right at the outset, let’s rule out the issue of taste. Your taste has nothing to do with whether music is good. We can agree, can’t we?, that there is certainly some music that is great, that you may not happen to like. Mahler comes to mind, but there are countless more examples. Obviously Mahler’s music is great music, certainly history agrees, but not everyone’s cup of tea. By the same token, there is plenty of music that is loved by many, that is obviously crap. There are so many examples of this, I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Planned Obsolescence

I am noticing that most music has become throwaway these days, like plastic bags or plastic bottles. This is the age of music as a “consumable”, use once, throw away. Move on to the next forgettable and useless piece of “music”. We are “music consumers”.

Wait a minute ! I thought music was supposed to last ! I thought you were supposed to be able to enjoy it over and over ! It’s not a cup of Starbuck’s coffee, it’s ART! Right??

But, the marketing mind craftily considers: If we make it timeless, we won’t sell as much as if we make it so people get tired of it immediately. So, for a bigger “bottom line”, let’s make it disposable. Bill Hick’s hilarious and classic rant about marketing sums it up:

True or False

Perhaps, instead of good or bad, we could say true or false. That might help clarify things a bit. True music, or false music. Real music, or imitation music. We probably have never quite thought of it in those terms, but that takes us into the territory of what is real art, real music, and what is not. Can we not draw a line somewhere?

Eternal music and temporary music. So much music now is disposable, like plastic cups, or paper towels. Planned obsolescence built in. And you are supposed to spend your “disposable income” on it. I guess disposable income is money you don’t mind throwing away on something of no value.

So in looking further, we could say that perhaps “true” art or music is that which has Truth, which is a quality of Eternity, embedded in it.  As the poet John Keats wrote in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

The reason some art and music becomes “classic” doesn’t have anything to do with the style, (because it is not necessarily “classical music”,) how the notes are arranged, how many notes there are, whether it is complex or simple, the instruments used, or anything. It has to do with whether it has eternal value. So if music is honest, it has the truth built in. It is music that lives forever.

Eternal Music

So how do we know if a particular piece of music has eternal value? Well, one practical way to find out is to listen to it hundreds, or even thousands, of times. Is there a point where you get sick of it, and don’t want to hear it any more? If so, that could be a clue that it is not music with its roots in eternity.

Or, listen to it 20 years later. Is it still fresh? How about 100 years later?
For example, the Beatles. Their songs never go out of date. Really, they are timeless.
Or the great jazz standards. Or Bach. There are SO many examples of truly classic music.
They sound fresh every time you listen.

So i am wondering if it is indeed this, the “eternity factor”, that determines whether music is “true”, or good, or not.

It Takes One to Know One

But here’s the rub. It is difficult to tell if eternity is present in music if YOU are not present, here now, in this eternal moment. And, if you are not present AS eternity, you will not truly be able to “hear”.

Yes, you will listen, and the music may evoke some emotional, mental, biochemical responses, because sound in general can have all kinds of different effects on the body/mind complex. But will you be noticing those effects? And are they healthy, positive effects? Or are you using the music more as a drug, or a painkiller?

You could say, as a variation on the old saying, it takes oneness to know oneness.

So, in that sense, each of us, personally, whether a musician, or a listener, is responsible for the quality of the music that manifests in our reality. How we listen, and ultimately “hear”, has everything to do with the quality of music. So let’s not be lazy about it.

Music is a phenomenon very much in time. It depends on the passage of time to unfold. So how can eternity fit into this very limited package? We could very well say the same thing about ourselves. We also are a very limited package, and yet at the same time, we have direct connection with what never dies. My feeling is, that as a musician, your musical process will embody that paradox of the infinite contained within the finite, to the extent that you embody it yourself. Really it will happen spontaneously as your awakening unfolds. So musical practice includes the practice of being infinite and finite at the same “time”, which is ongoing, moment to moment, at all “times”.

Musical Styrofoam

So much music now has been reduced to “lifestyle filler”, background music for your lifestyle, in order to plug all the holes of silence with something. We are so afraid of silence that we just put whatever music on, very often not caring at all what it is that we are taking in on a sonic level. It’s sort of like eating whatever toxic junk food, just to fill up the sense of emptiness inside. We’re thirsty, so we drink soda pop.

What if we became as sensitive to what we listen to as we are to what we eat? I have explored this already in my article “GMO Music”. Consider this piece a sequel to that one.

Poser, or Composer ?

It seems that nowadays, anyone who knows three chords on a guitar can call themselves a musician, and when they write a song with the same three note melody that has already been written a million times, playing those three chords, with the same voicings and rhythms as everyone has used already, then suddenly they are a “composer”.

Because really, the important thing is the picture of “me” on Facebook, playing the guitar and singing. Who cares how it sounds? the important thing is how “I” look while I am playing, and that everyone sees “me” up there on stage, the artist/performer “doing his/her thing”, and that they “like” me.

I am sorry folks, but this is just ego.
If music is your calling in life,
disappear into your instrument and don’t come out for twenty years.
When you do, it will already be a part of you.
And master yourself, because ultimately, YOU are the instrument.
The instrument is really just an extension of you, when you are playing.
Drop selfies for a couple of decades and learn, first how to listen, and then how to play. Really.

Political Correctness

There is an epidemic of political correctness now, that has decimated the capacity of most humans to distinguish between true and false. Everywhere we are bombarded with SO much bullshit, propaganda, and brainwashing, that it takes real discriminating awareness and meditative stability to not be plowed under by this tsunami of lies.

And to be sure, music is used in many ways to power that tsunami, because music has a powerful effect on people. And very often it is used to hypnotize and desensitize, rather than to awaken or empower. And it is not just the lyrics, but the music itself that accomplishes this.

Music itself is neutral, like a technology, or a language. It very much depends on who is using it. As I have said before, it is a carrier wave that carries the musician’s frequency along with it. And if it is corporate, commercial music, it also carries that corporate commercial frequency. So if it is carelessly used, there’s no telling what effects it will have. They  will not necessarily be beneficial.

The Tyranny of the Mediocre

This pervading epidemic of political correctness is insidious.
Its roots are in this idea that it is not possible to know absolute Truth.
Because, they say, there is no absolute truth.
Everyone has “their own truth”.
And nothing is better than anything else, no one is better than anyone else.

Much like democracy. Everyone is equal,
everyone’s “vote”, or opinion is worth as much as everyone else’s.
In this case, everyone’s “truth” is really just referring to their opinion.

So, according to this egalitarian view, all musicians are equal.
Those who have spent an hour on it, and those who have spent a lifetime. The same.
Anyone can call themselves a musician.

The problem with this “philosophy” is that the music gets watered down
to the point of mediocrity.
Just look at what “democracy” has given us.
The tyranny of the mediocre.

Truth is not an opinion, and it is not known by the mind.
It has nothing to do with thought.
It is only known by BEING it.
Because it is encoded into our very existence.

To me, this politically correct “we are all equal” mantra,
this idea that nobody is better than anyone else,
is just a reaction against its opposite pole,
which is, that some people are better than others.
Are those the only two alternatives? No.

Vacillating between these two poles is much like being stuck in the Republican/Democrat polarity, really just a distraction from the truth.
Actually, it is the manifestation of the Leo/Aquarius polarity when it is unresolved.
More about that here.

There’s another choice:

Be Yourself

Here is the truth: everyone is unique.
That’s just naturally obvious.
Everyone has a unique expression.

So, no, we are not all equal, AND no one is “better” than anyone else. it is both, at once.
Everyone has the potential to be a unique expression of the Divine here on earth.
But those who grow into their full potential bring more value than those who remain sleepwalking, because value is a quality of conscious being.
This has nothing to do with judgement, it is simply true.

So anyone who awakens to full consciousness, brings more value than those who don’t bother to explore and understand themselves. Sometimes this is referred to in certain traditions as merit. And a “meritocracy” refers to a society where the truly wise are honored and put in positions of authority, simply because their true authority is obvious to all with eyes to see.

It is like the difference between an unsprouted acorn and an oak tree.
The same potential, but in one case it is actualized, and in the other it remains undeveloped.

When you are consciously who you are, without contrivance of any sort,
there is no competition. But the actualization of your potential is not a guarantee.
It doesn’t happen automatically. it requires your full participation and intent.

Most prefer to abdicate that responsibility, because it requires a sincere work on oneself, that is a lifelong commitment.
It requires taking real life risks, again and again.
We would much prefer an easy way out,
a way to “play piano overnight”, for example.
We want to get the “uniqueness goodies” without the commitment.

An unfortunate case (from Omraam Mikael Aivanhov):

“If human beings feel no need to link themselves to the divine world, they deprive themselves of something precious. Of course, those who are intelligent, determined, enterprising and in good health can, for a certain time, give the impression they are not losing any of their faculties. But, as they are not being fed by currents from above, something in them gradually begins to decompose. Their door is then wide open to undesirable entities which will eat away at their heart and mind like worms gnawing on wood.

Those who are not in contact with the light are not fed by currents of new energy. The ignorant take temporary situations and draw conclusions from them: ‘Link with the divine world? But why? I know such and such a person who doesn’t believe in God or the devil and yet is very successful.’ Yes, but you have to look further and know how the laws work: years from now, in one way or another, ‘such and such a person’ is very often psychically bankrupt.”

To create HONEST music, REAL music, TRUE music,
we will have to know who we are,
we will have to BE ourselves.

To be yourself sounds easy.
It is easy.
It is as easy as playing an instrument, once you’ve mastered it.
Watch the great master musicians play.
They make it look so easy, that you can be tempted to think that it’s no big deal.
For them it isn’t a big deal. For them it is as natural as breathing, or talking,
but that kind of freedom isn’t free.
It takes a lifetime of consistent and sincere dedication to arrive to that level of effortlessness.

What Happened?

Ever since recorded music became ubiquitous, music has taken a strange turn. It has only been a few years now, really less than a hundred, which is nothing compared to the amount of time music has been around. Suddenly, it became a “product”, just another widget to duplicate and sell. The predatory marketing mind took over, and, in a few short years, ruined it completely.

Now we are left standing in the rubble of the demise of the “music business”, which is an oxymoron if i ever heard one. Music is the opposite of business, i.e. “busyness”. True music arises from silence. But the business mind, “busy-mind”, has gotten into the music, turned it into a “product” to be marketed, and has spawned the world of “producers” who churn out “product”. Now you will find all these computer jockey producers, who know virtually nothing of the sacred science of music, cranking out more and more of the same styrofoam sound bytes, “compositions” with exactly zero content. Apparently, it is “hip” to bypass the whole process of learning music. Why bother? We’re way too cool for that shit. Let’s get straight to the bling.

Just to be clear, it is obvious too, that in the field of electronics and computer music there are some examples of great music, as well as plenty of examples of “the other kind”. Electronic musicians seem to come in a variety of levels of skill, experience, and talent, just like any other genre. But cutting and pasting soundbytes and twisting some knobs is not playing music. Knowing the language, science, and art of music is going to do nothing but enhance whatever music you are working with.

Imitation Everything

We have to be aware of the overall agenda at play here on planet Earth to truly understand what is happening to the arts. There is a war on consciousness going on, and more and more, music is being used to serve that agenda. It is a kind of virus that has infected the soul of humanity, which proliferates imitation everything.

So someone with their eyes and ears open will begin to notice that the trend of innovation and classic qualities in music has gone steadily downward, to the point where one gets the sense that everyone is looking toward the music of the past, with “tributes” and “retrospectives” and the like. The great jazz masters are slowly but surely departing, and the new ones are being drowned in a sea of irrelevance. To find genuinely inspired music nowadays is a needle in the haystack kind of process. There is this pervading feeling that it has all been done already.
All the real estate has been bought and developed. All the “stuff” has been made. The consumer paradigm is over.

Since when is music a “consumable”?? I see people referring to the process of “consuming music”, like something we are going to eat, as if it has an expiration date. Strange how that whole consumer mentality has crept into the artistic process. To me, calling someone, or even worse, yourself, a “consumer”, is simply an insult, no better than a racial slur.

Fortunately, the internet has a positive side in that spontaneous connections are made all the time, to help listeners and musicians connect. But the internet giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other. Are we better off now?

Music can be used against us

For myself, I am very concerned at the state of music these days, and it seems that many are starting to wake up to the fact that music, just like everything else of value, has been co-opted, and is being used for negative purposes, well yes, I’ll say it, AS A WEAPON.

Have you noticed this overwhelming trend that exists these days, to weaponize EVERYTHING? Whenever someone comes up with a new invention, or something that could be used to benefit the world, there is this immediate push to use it for a destructive purpose, as a way to control and suppress, because apparently, that’s where the money is. WHY is the money there?? Why is it not in the support and development of healing and thriving for all?

That in itself is a whole other exploration. But I am going to suggest that this very thing has happened to music, and that much of it is used for mind control.

Here’s an example of how rap music has been used to fill private prisons:

http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/secret-meeting-that-changed-rap-music.html

Behind the Scene at Laurel Canyon

Also it has recently come to light, that much of the music that became popular in the 60s, especially the whole scene in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, was actually part of a mind control experiment, and that many of those bands we grew up with, were put together for those purposes. True? Well, here it is, you be the judge:

Obviously, in all these situations, there are “wild cards”, and i am sure most of these socially engineered projects end up having unintended consequences. Musicians like Frank Zappa, who is mentioned in this video, and also John Lennon, are, i think, examples of this, where they saw through the whole setup, and how they were being used.

The Beatles and Tavistock

And, even the Beatles ?? Factor this information into your understanding. There again, whether it is true or not is really up to your intuition, because only those who were actually there would know what really happened. But we see evidence emerging that the entire 60s peace and love, mixed with psychedelic drugs and music, was actually an engineered phenomenon.

“The phenomenon of the Beatles was not a spontaneous rebellion by youth against the old social system. Instead it was a carefully crafted plot to introduce by a conspiratorial body which could not be identified, a highly destructive and divisive element into a large population group targeted for change against its will. New words and new phrases–prepared by Tavistock(1)– were introduced to America along with the Beatles. Words such as “rock” in relation to music sounds, “teenager,” “cool,” “discovered” and “pop music” were a lexicon of disguised code words signifying the acceptance of drugs and arrived with and accompanied the Beatles wherever they went, to be “discovered” by “teenagers.” Incidentally, the word “teenagers” was never used until just before the Beatles arrived on the scene, courtesy of the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations.”

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/colemanbeatlesandAquarianConspiracy01mar07.shtml

The source of this information is supposedly an ex MI6 agent, John Coleman. His claim that the Beatles’ music was actually written by a guy called Theo Adorno is a stretch for me, since Adorno was involved in the 12-tone music movement. The Beatles music is so catchy and melodic, it is hard to imagine this character writing it.  But reading his Wikipedia bio can lead one to see how much social engineering has been going on behind he scenes of all the eras, fads, fashions, fascisms, and trends in the arts and music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_W._Adorno

It really makes you wonder if ANY of it was real.

So, obviously, we enter a grey area here. Because the Beatles’ music is widely considered to be classic. I am sure most everyone would agree. And also much of the music of the Laurel Canyon era. So we can see that genuine talents in music have been used, perhaps even without their knowing, to fuel social engineering experiments. Music has such a powerful effect on the entire psyche and being, that i think we’d be naive to think that the corporate controllers have not already recognized and exploited that fact.

And then, of course, you have to wonder, exactly why was John Lennon killed?

At the very least, being aware of all of this can help us listen more critically, to really discern, just what energy and vibration is any particular piece of music carrying.

Music is a Liberating Force

“The highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment” Pythagoras (569- 475 BC)

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the whole concept of “entertainment”.
Genuine honest music transcends the entertainment and commercial paradigm, which is really just part of the synthetic imitation information grid that is placed here to limit consciousness.

Let’s restore music to its supreme purpose, as a liberating force. The only way to truly be free is to extricate yourself from this binding and blinding, politically correct hive-mind phenomenon. And if music is not helping liberate you, it’s not serving you.

So perhaps in that sense, music is the ultimate weapon, but only if it truly liberates us, and only if consciously used to undo the oppressive slavery system that is clamping down everywhere. It is this power that music has, the liberating power, that has been co-opted and is being used against us.

Bliss or Happiness

Maybe the difference between good music, and “the other kind” could be compared to the difference between bliss and happiness:

“Bliss is true happiness. What you call happiness is just misery in disguise. What you call happiness is nothing but entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary — it cannot be true. Truth has to have one quality, and the quality is of eternity. If something is true it is eternal; if it is untrue it is momentary. True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases functioning. It does not come from the outside. It wells up within your own being, it starts overflowing you. You become luminous. You become a fountain of bliss.”   Osho

Bliss liberates. Happiness enslaves. Think about it. The “happiness” we get from getting what we want is always temporary, so it leaves us wanting more, and necessitates doing all kinds of things to get it. It is how we get bound into the world of cause and effect.

Bliss is spontaneous, self-generating, and requires nothing from the “outside world” hologram to happen. Not only that, it also never ends.

But bliss is also much more demanding. Because it requires nothing short of total honesty. It requires you to be naked and alive, without pretense. Also, it doesn’t always “feel good”. It is not an emotion, or a thought.

Bliss cannot be “made” to happen. It is beyond the realm of duality, so there is no way it can be caused. It always IS, and we simply need to become aware of it, that it really is the essence of who we are, as pure existence, or being. Bliss arises, as soon as we stop suppressing it, as soon as we stop cooperating with the pervading hypnosis that tells us over and over, that the source of happiness is “over there” and “outside” somewhere.

So if music is truly going to serve us in “following our bliss”, we are going to have to completely resurrect our relationship with it. Is that going to happen?

At the moment, i am not hopeful. The goddess of music, Saraswati, or Aphrodite, if you like, is being dragged through the gutter like a two-bit “ho”. It seems we’re all too happy to pimp her out for a few bucks, or even just some “likes”, all the while professing some bullshit about “art” or something.

And, to be honest, I have contributed my share to the problem. As a “professional musician” you are basically forced to conform to the commercial paradigm in order to “make a living” (which is an anachronistic concept in itself), unless you are fortunate enough to be able to attract money doing the music that is your unique expression and offering. As  working musicians, we are always expected to play whatever is necessary, in almost a workman-like way. Like building a house, or as one bass player friend used to say: “laying pipe”.

Essential Life Art

Music is a divine science that is infinitely interesting even in its simplest forms. Every tone is a universe, and even two tones played together yield a magical fractal, which i explore in detail in my forthcoming article “The Charm of Impossibilities: Why Music is Magic”. For that reason, everyone should at least try playing or singing, just to be more in touch with what an amazing integrative process it is. In ancient Greek schools, music was part of the Quadrivium, and was required learning for everyone, along with mathematics, geometry, and astronomy.

“The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy (sometimes called the “liberal art par excellence”)[6] and theology.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium

Notice that the study of music is one of the prerequisites for the study of philosophy! And what is philosophy? It is the love of truth, or wisdom. Philo-Sophia.

When one practices music on their own, they are able to truly listen to intervals, to really get inside the qualities in the scales, rhythms, and intervals, without any interference from corporate influences or the influences of some musician’s ego, as they would encounter while listening to the music of others, rather than learning it themselves. It can become a very intimate connection with sound that is totally your own. Words cannot accurately describe how intimate that process can be.

But that level of musical study is being lost. More and more, music is used as “entertainment”, really as “entrainment”, or a way to hypnotize and desensitize people. Because it can do both. It can heal, or it can harm.

And, so many musicians seem to regard it as something more like a competitive sport, where the goal is to become superhumanly mind blowing, louder, faster, and “better” than anyone else. But creative genius, and originality have nothing to do with competition. It is a completely different universe.

Music is Medicine

As musicians we have a great responsibility. Music is medicine, and we are vibrational doctors. Do we want to be hacks and quacks, who just sell some pharmaceutical snake oil to make money? Or do we really want to share vibrational medicine that helps bring people into oneness, harmony, and the living presence of the eternal moment?

If it is the latter, i think we need to remember that, just like becoming a doctor, or even better, a true healer, it requires a profound training and practice, and a lifetime to master. So as musicians aspiring to be healers with music, we need to enter into the process with that same kind of patience and intent.

Musical Mastery

Here’s an excellent example of musical mastery. Notice the presence of Paco de Lucia, and how he rarely smiles. What’s the problem? He’s not having fun?  Real music goes way beyond “fun”. He’s not there for “entertainment”. He is involved at such a deep level, that his face is a million miles away. And the mastery level of all the musicians in his group is right up there with his.

An then, of course, no discussion of timeless music would be complete without the musical master of eternity himself, Wayne Shorter. Notice his presence in this video. Does he look like he’s “having fun”? Once again, the level he is working at, both in the composition and the performance, is SO much deeper than that. This is ecstatic music, that’s my 2 cents.  The pure presence of overflowing creativity. In his brief solo at around 2:45 minutes he simply tears open the fabric of space-time and reveals infinity. And the rest of the members of the band as well, this is a masterful performance all around.

Know Thyself

It is possible to create great music without being a realized being. We have thousands of examples of such music. But i have always wondered how much more powerful music could be if the musicians had actually realized their divine nature as a stable and constant condition, rather than just in a fit of inspiration in the midst of an otherwise troubled life. How inspiring, the master musicians who are true philosophers, or lovers of truth !

But we tend to think of philosophers as people who sit around and think about lofty things all the time, somehow safe in the fortress of their head. No, if you are a true “lover of truth” you are going to have to completely rearrange your life. It means no longer doing work you hate, being in relationships that are dead or dysfunctional, or cooperating with tyrannical regimes or earth-raping corporations. In other words, no more living a lie.  A real philosopher takes on the work of completely reinventing himself, and living in a way that does not compromise himself in any way. Easier said than done.

Socrates

Socrates was such a one. He lived on the street, with no money to speak of, taught for free, and was a thorn in the side of the archons that ruled the world around him at the time. And the truth was more important to him than even his own life.

In the Dialogues of Plato, in the section called The Apology, where Socrates is defending himself at his own trial, he describes how the Oracle at Delphi had said that he was the wisest man in Greece, but since he knew nothing, and knew that he knew nothing, he was sure that he could find someone wiser than himself. So he set out to find someone wiser, to prove the oracle wrong.

Among the people he went to see were the poets, and the artisans. He could have included musicians, i’m sure he would have found them to be similar.

“After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them–thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me?
 I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. The poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the politicians.
At last I went to the artisans. I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and here I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets;–because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I was. “

What i find interesting about this is that Socrates distinguishes between wisdom, and “genius and inspiration”. It is almost as if the art came through them from beyond, but they had no idea of the meaning.

So many of the great musicians could be described thus. Some amazing works of art have come from some very disturbed people, who for a while, while creating, could fall into a deep connection with source, but at the same time be a heavy drinker or drug user, abuser of women, or downright mentally unstable for one reason or another.

Worshipping Degeneracy

And it has even become regarded as “cool” to be a degenerate artist or musician, as if this kind of life would be an inspiration to others in some way, or that that is the only way to access artistic inspiration. There is this idea that inspiration is not always available, and undependable, and that we have to be in some kind of “altered” state to access it. Hence the association of drugs and alcohol with music, all things that are ruled by Neptune, and Pisces.

And then there is the audience, who even worships these kinds of characters. What happened to the men and women of wisdom, as artists? We don’t find so many examples of musicians who have also attained wisdom, and realized their true nature. Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Sufi master, is one example, but like most of them, he gave up music.

Perhaps that is the moment when the musician understands that “once you have heard the sound of silence, all music sounds like noise”, to quote Osho again. That would mean that music is a necessary step in the process, but ultimately is no longer needed.

Music is Life

It’s time for a major upgrade to music. We need to restore the sacredness of the process. And that has nothing to do with religion.

It has to do with the recognition that music is life, and that life is intrinsically sacred. Music has been given to us for a purpose. And that purpose has nothing to do with commerce, (which is really nothing but the rotting system of enslavement,) but rather with the liberation of the human spirit.

© 2015 Kiwai Amat (Kit Walker)