When life speaks, it’s voice is music. Listen.

Brave vibrations fill the air, throb through the earth, stir the still and moving waters. The wings of the crane beat the atmosphere with rhythm. The cricket chirps. Salmon leaps with salmon to the roaring falls of music.

Forests never sleep. Oceans are never silent. Silence is a mere idea. But hearts beat time. Limbs harmonize. Brains drum on the very symbols of existence. There is a universal course which reveals itself in music. Music is order and purest creation. For music plays us things beyond us, within us, without us. Music plays us things as they are. Music plays us things as they will be. There is nothing music cannot play, from the chuckle of the moon to the frightful diapason of the damned. Music embraces all: the all in everyone, the everyone in all. Even the unseen worm creeps to the beat of music. When man spoke, his speech was the invention of music. From the first blow of consciousness, music nestled implicit in Man's mind. Music was there, an infinite lyre of feelings waiting to tremble at the touch of existence. And so Man must drum and pipe and sing. Man must resound. As Man must breathe, as Man must think, as Man must suffer, as Man must die, Man must make music.

Music is the voice of life in Man.

It is the voice life in you. All music is your music. All music creates you and re-creates you. And you create music. Through music, you are creator and created in One.

Every atom of matter vibrates at its own frequency. Every element possesses a specific vibration. Molecules pulsate Cells quiver. Every event, every phenomenon, every object verberates and reverberates: winds, waves, sunlight, stones, thunder, mountains, flowers, falling leaves, germinating seeds, even the crust, even the core of the earth. Nothing rests. Rest is a mere idea. Everything quavers, quakes, flickers, fluctuates. Every grain of sand, every sun.

Man receives vibrations from all of Nature and resonates himself, a huge guitar, uttering music. Spoken language was born this way: when perception or conception first thrilled through Man's mind, it thrilled with musical frequency. The mind responded like a gong, struck by thought, sonorously repeating the frequency. This repetition we call "speech". What is speech, anyway, but inevitable sound? But music is inevitable sound that communicates without reference. Speech must refer. Speech refers first to music, which it imitates; and then to actions or objects, which it indicates. Music suspends from no reference. Music is self-suspension. It needs nothing but itself. There are no objects in music . Music is all subjects. Music is itself the subject. Music is no object. You cannot clutch a harmony. You cannot stroke it like a piece of stone. You cannot touch it. It touches you. Music, then, is primal. It is the foremost the Arts. Other arts are shadows next to music. Music's perfect abstraction from the material reduces all matter to rubble. Music recognizes no three-dimensional barriers. The most perfect bronze is imperfect next to music. Music cannot decay with time.

No green patina can smother it. No locks can seal it, like diamonds, in a vault. Music cannot crack or warp or stain. It cannot wither. It cannot wrinkle. It cannot come to dust. It cannot be bought at auction or sold to a private dealer. You cannot put your hands on music. Music is at once priceless and valueless. The condition of music is supreme.

No wonder, then, that music is magic. Circe's magic. Calypso's magic. The Sirens's magic. The magic of Joshua and the magic of Gabriel. The magic of the Piper of Hamelin. It is every kind of magic. Silver trumpets summon dead pharaohs. Orpheus conquers hell with a lyre. St. Cecilia sings through a gash in her throat. Krishna Gopala rules his flock with a flute. Tezcatlipoca tips his smoking mirror and casts a spell with divine melody. These are sacred events. For music is above all sacred.

Music and religion are inseparable. There has never been a tribe of people anywhere - no matter how primitive - without music. There has never been a tribe anywhere without religion. There have been tribes without agriculture, without pottery, without writing, without the wheel, but none without religion or music. Just as religion addresses itself to feelings too deep for words - to the most human in most humans - so music is the means of that address. Religion and music appeal to the Invisible. Music's invisibility is the visible evidence of its mystery.

What, then - in the end, in the beginning - is music?

When the mind speaks, it sings music. Music is the language of the mind. The language of Man's mind. The language of the universal Mind.

The very word music is the music of its meaning. Music comes from the Greek, MOUSA (Muse), which itself derives from the Indo-European base, MENDH - (to direct the mind). MENDH - is older still. It comes from the Sanskrit MŸNAS (Mind, Spirit) and MANYATE (he thinks). Music is mind.

Music is the vibration of thought and feeling rippling through the mind. Music is the sound of reflection, contemplation, perception, reception, creation. It is active and passive, male and female. The true business of the mind is music. Music turns the thoughts away from transitory powers and perishing values, and in turn our thoughts make music. The expanding universe is a harmonious whole which implies the whole of music. The whole universe oscillates as an immortal note. There are no dischords. There is no disorder. Any dischord or disorder we may imagine that we perceive, is merely the invention of our own imperfect perception. Dischord and disorder are mere ideas. Order is there even if we do not know it.

Music alone, perhaps, is perfect. The pursuit of music is the pursuit of perfection. Music alone succeeds. Where music succeeds, Man succeeds at his greatest. Not vast cities or empires glittering gold are the symbols of human achievement. Human achievement is universal. Human achievement is music - whether the tribal dance invoking the fertility of the fields or the grandest Mass scaling the walls of Christian heaven.

Music is your voice. Music is the voice of life in you. When you travel beyond yourself, beyond your earth, beyond the center of the stars, you travel on music. Generations come and go to music. Music keeps the time of life. The subject of music is life. The subject music is mind. The subject of music is the universe. The subject of music is music.

You are more than human when you let the music become you. Listen. You are in tune with space. You become the music when the music plays.

So, listen. The air is full of music. You hear the music, now, for you are the music. And the music is you.

© Donald Lehmkuhl, May 1975.

Photo © Julian Luckham 1979