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eights, but without a central metaphor, you ain't got nothing.
and arpeggios hour after hour, day after day, year after year? Is it some vague promise of glory, money, or fame? Or is it something deeper?
precedes it. What I am trying to say here is that if I am ever asked if I'm religious, I always reply, "Yes, I'm a devout musician." Music puts me in touch with something beyond intellect. something otherworldly, something sacred.
I often wonder: Where do melodies come from? Where do metaphors come from? If you could buy them in a store, I'd be the first one in the queue, believe me. I spend most of my time searching for these mysterious commodities, searching for inspiration.
Music is probably the oldest religious rite. The first priests were probably musicians, the first prayers probably songs.
Our instruments connect us to this mystery, and a musician will maintain this sense of wonder to the day he or she dies. I had the privilege of spending some time with the great arranger Gil Evans in the last year of his life. He was still listening, still open to new ideas, still open to the wonder of music. Still a curious child.
It's very hard to talk about music in words. Words are superfluous to the abstract power of music. We can fashion words into poetry so that they are understood the way that music is understood, but they only aspire to the condition where music already exists.
Paradoxically I'm coming to believe in the importance of silence in the music. The power of silence after a phrase of music, for example: the dramatic silence after the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or the space between the notes of a Miles Davis solo. There is something very specific about a rest in music. You take your foot off the pedal and pay attention. I'm wondering if silence itself is perhaps the mystery at the heart of music. And is silence the most perfect form of music of all?
Music is probably the oldest religious rite. Our ancestors used melody and rhythm to co-opt the spirit world to their purposes - to try and make sense of the universe. The first priests were probably musicians, the first prayers probably songs.
So we stand here today in our robes with our diplomas, our degrees of excellence. Some are merely honorary, some diligently worked for. We have mastered the laws of harmony and the rules of counterpoint, the skills of arranging and orchestrating, of developing themes and rhythmic motifs. But do any of us really know what music is? Is it merely physics? Mathematics? The stuff of romance? Commerce? Why is it so important to us? What is its essence?
So what am I getting around to saying is that, as musicians, whether we're successful, playing to thousands of people every night, or not so successful, playing in bars or small clubs, or not successful at all, just playing alone in the apartment to the cat, we are doing something that can heal souls, that can mend us when our spirits are broken. Whether you make a million dollars or not one cent, music and silence are priceless gifts. May you always possess them. May they always possess you.
Songwriting is the only form of meditation I know. And it is only in silence that the gifts of melody and metaphor are offered. To people in the modern world, true silence is something we rarely experience. It's almost as if we conspire to avoid it. Three minutes of silence seems like a very long time. It forces us to pay attention to ideas and emotions we rarely make any time for. There are some who find this frightening. Silence is disturbing. It is disturbing because it is the wavelength of the soul. If we leave no space in our music - and I am as guilty as anyone else in this regard - then we rob the sound we make of defining context. It is often music born from anxiety. It's almost as if we're afraid of leaving space. Great music is as often about the space between the notes as it is about the notes themselves. A bar's rest is as significant as the bar of demisemiquavers that
I can't even pretend to know. I've written hundreds of songs, had them published, had them in the charts, with Grammys and enough written proof that I'm a bona fide successful songwriter. Still, if somebody asks me how I write songs, I have to say, I really do not know. I don't really know where they come from. A melody is always a gift from somewhere else. You just have to learn to be grateful and pray that you will be blessed again some other time. It's the same with the lyrics. You can't Write a song without metaphor. You can mechanically construct verses, choruses, bridges, middle
The above edited excerpts are reprinted from Graduate Day: The best of America's commencement speeches. Published by William Morrow, New York, 1998, at US$22.00
July - September 1999. Jain Spirit
33
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