Music is my Religion

I believe in Music. And though I cannot see music, or touch it, or smell it, I have faith that it truly exists, it is all around us, omnipresent. Music is a force that guides my every step, my very soul. Music is a sea of sonic bliss and my guitar is a tiny ship sailing the gently folding waves. Music is the ultimate key to harmony in the universe, the one song we all share. We are but single voices singing out in a great choir of voices filling the air with music, with energy that infuses spirit with our matter. Even when we are silent, or when we sit in silence, music, notes, voices sing to us from just beyond the veil of reality. The greater the silence the greater the pitch whistling in our ears. Could it be that our ears are still ringing from the big bang? Perhaps the universe is just one big drum head and the big bang was the last time the drum was struck?

Time is nothing but rhythm, and our actions are notes coalescing into harmony and melody, our world, everything that is, is music. Instruments are merely a way to tune into this higher order, to begin to explore it and contemplate it's design. To study music, to play an instrument, to sing, is a spiritual practice that can bring one closer to their spiritual center and more in tune with the greater spiritual reality. To express ones self in words does not guarantee that the content of those words will be a greater truth. But expressing ones self, right or wrong is how one processes information in a healthy way, letting it come out rather than holding it inside. Someone may listen to a song you wrote in a dark phase and think it represents who you are, but the song represents who you were before you expressed the darkness. We are not what we ex-press, we are what we re-press. This process is natural and can be enhanced with conscious intent, music leads us to our next step if we are willing to follow it.

With music as a religion all one has to do to "pray" or "worship" is to pick up an instrument and play, or sing, hum, or whistle. When you walk become conscious of the fact that you're really dancing to a song in your head, your steps keep the beat or keep shuffling it up. Writers, performers, and fans of musical theater are well aware that anything spoken can be sung, and all of the unspoken words are best expressed in song. One does not need to write a song to have a song in their head, or their heart. To "write a song" is to tune into a cosmic radio station and take from it what you will because our Earth bound plagiarism laws don't have jurisdiction outside of our stratosphere. Music can be molded like a lump of clay and we can learn much from doing this in every which way, but music often comes to us already formed with little else to do but work it out on our instruments. Music can be your "church" and there is no right or wrong time to go there, and there is no need for someone to stand between you and your "god."

Music has many prophets, those whose words were intentionally enlightening, if not revolutionary. In the human story music has always been a magic spell that allows one to say what otherwise cannot be said, the music forgives the words. With music one can win favor while simultaneously using the favor, if the music feels good the message feels true. This is especially true if the words are coded or difficult to understand, one can listen to Bob Marley singing "Talking Blues" and love the song without ever really hearing the line "I feel like bombing a church, now that you know that the preacher is lying." This is one of his more revolutionary lyrics seamlessly placed over one of his usual feel good reggae riddems. John Lennon wrote a "Christmas song" towards the end of the Vietnam war with a children's choir singing these simple lines "War is over if you want it" in direct defiance to the powers of the president, Richard Nixon. And to take it a step further, he used his own money to rent billboards around New York city to display those words in large print.

When we look back over human history we can see that music is and always has been a religious experience, institutionalized religions would be nothing without music. Our music theory is the result of hundreds of years of monks chanting incantations. Today music is still an incantation, a prayer, a walking meditation. From the many masters whose words and works have stood the test of time, music as a religion has more saints and prophets than all other religions combined. Pythagoras is perhaps the "Jesus" of this musical religion, if a religion really needs a "Jesus." He understood the music of the spheres, that the planets were singing in their orbits, that the world is a great song. To Pythagoras the three essential elements of education were not "reading, writing, and arithmetic" but "Astrology, Numerology, and Music." But something tells me that Jesus the man understood this musical reality, anyone who speaks (or thinks) in terms of allegory can see that life is "like" a song. And when you are a deeply spiritual thinker, you know that the analogy is true, life is a song.