LIBERATE YOUR EARS:
LISTENING, HEARING, EVOLVING
MUSICAL BOX-THINKING
Perhaps we have noticed during the course of our lives that most of us tend to inhabit a "musical box." That is, we like our kind of music, but automatically regard other kinds as irrelevant or inferior.
Between lovers of Euro-American classical music, for example, and lovers of non-classical musics, there exists a huge gap: "Classical music is synonymous with high art. Everything else is mindless vulgarity." Or, conversely: "Classical music is too old, too foreign and too complicated. I can't dance to it, either." One type of music, two different reactions.
That same gap exists among lovers of non-classical musics. We love what we love and deny what we don't know anything about. "Jazz is the America's only indigenous art form. Everything else is derivative." "New Age spacemusic is higher-consciousness music. Everything else is crude." "Rock ‘n' roll is exciting. Everything else is boring," etc.
Regardless of which generic type of music we like, regardless of which "box" we fit into, we tend to feel secure within it, insecure out of it. We judge other boxes by standards applicable to our own tastes, and then contemptuously reject the others as being second-rate. This is musical box-thinking. It imprisons our perceptions and stifles our growth.
As musical box-thinkers, we reveal ourselves as being snobbishly isolated, and we almost self-destructively shut our ears to the emotional, intellectual, psychological and spiritual possibilities other musics offer in abundance. Few of us seem courageous enough to stop defending the familiar and start listening to the new. As musical box-thinkers, we deny the beauty and power of music-as-a-whole and cheat ourselves in the process. Inevitably, we do it in the name of "good taste."
Clearly, for each genre of music there are at least some people who like it. What do they like? Why will some people swear by their music while damning ours? Why will they even fight over it? Why do we do the same? Why does music, which we often think of as a great Unifier, so often become a source of heated, even violent controversy? Why can't others hear what we hear? Why can't we hear what they hear?
Is it possible for us to step out of our own musical box and experience somebody else's music? Is it possible for us to learn how to understand and enjoy an "alien" musical language? Is it possible for us to learn how to listen and how to hear?
Of course it is.
BEYOND FEAR
Individual musical receptivity is not biologically programmed into our genes. It is a matter of psychological conditioning — by parents, teachers, the immediate sub-culture and the larger cultural-whole.
On the one hand, psycho-social conditioning familiarizes us with certain types of music that are deemed acceptable, and it explicitly and implicitly teaches us to courageously receive and embrace them. In the West, those forms range from country, rock and pop, through jazz, classical and New Age music.
On the other hand, that same conditioning, especially in its sub-cultural forms, instills fearful distrust of those musics that awaken emotions and states of mind that are "alien."
Sadly, for music and for ourselves, we rarely manage to transcend that fear-based conditioning, which affects both our relationship with music and our relationship with the inner workings of life itself. The more we fear, the less we hear. The more we fear, the more we preserve old and deeply ingrained patterns of perception, hoping they will protect us from the insecurity of experiencing the new, the unpredictable and the presently unacceptable.
To the degree that we compulsively cling to whatever is familiar, we are psychologically imprisoned; to the degree that we can courageously welcome the new and the unorthodox, we are free. The spectrum of what we are capable of hearing in music is the spectrum of who we are as human beings. The ability to listen to music and truly hear it is a form of creativity.
Our capacity to establish direct contact with music does not depend entirely upon the quality or style of the music itself. It also depends heavily upon our ability to suspend initial judgments and transcend personal fears. Developing discriminatory "tastes" prematurely can inhibit or nullify our capacity to make direct emotional contact with the music itself, especially when that music is new to our experience. Our ability to experience directly necessarily precedes our ability to evaluate accurately. Therefore, our critical faculty should be the last quality we develop and apply, not the first.
As human beings, we do not experience only one emotion or mood or state of mind; nor do we experience only those various emotions and mind-states that we allow ourselves to acknowledge. We consciously or unconsciously feel, or have felt, or have imagined, virtually every human emotion there is — triumph, rage, lust, greed, heartbreak, brotherhood, love, fear, hope, despair, joy, tenderness, etc. What are we so afraid of? Why not simply admit this fact and celebrate it?
Obviously, if we allow ourselves to consciously accept only certain conditioned emotions and mind-states to the exclusion of all others, we remain trapped in our psychological and musical boxes — that is, our emotions fluctuate, while our intellectually oriented aesthetic stance, whatever its level, remains fixed. Under these conditions, we will not and cannot bring ourselves to listen to musics other than those with which we already feel comfortable. The lover of Bach's classical masterpieces or Paul Horn's jazz will continue to find it inconceivable that rock singer Bruce Springsteen or country singer Waylon Jennings might have anything of value to offer — and vice versa. Box-thinking is bondage. Why not enjoy all of music? Either/or is out. Both/and is in.
As long as we stay well-within the emotional domain of what is stable, familiar and acceptable, we retain a sense of control. We feel safe. All too often, of course, fluctuation is unpredictable. Therefore, we fear it.
As suggested above, fear of unpredictable fluctuations is caused in part by those deep-rooted, now-unconscious psychological pains of our most distant past, which we still carry with us in the present. We are not aware of them, because without psychiatric help they remain buried in darkness. But they stay with us, profoundly so, influencing and dictating our every perception and action and reaction.
To protect ourselves from the fear of emotional fluctuations and from re-feeling our ancient psychological sufferings, we build protective "walls" around our inner selves in the form of fixed ideas and images about ourselves and everything else. We can respond to people or things — or musics — that "mirror" our ego, but we cannot respond positively to anything that is new or unpredictable, or to anything we even think might disturb our anxieties or re-awaken past sufferings. Unconscious psychological pain is the cause; fear is the reaction; contempt is the immediate manifestation; ignorance, arrogance and psychological imprisonment are the long-term effects. The more we consciously or unconsciously alienate ourselves this way, the more we reduce our capacity for receptivity and communication to one and only one language: our own. Beyond that, we remain deaf and blind.
But once we recognize and accept the fact that we have all emotions within us and the capacity to experience all states of mind, even those we consider dangerous or disturbing, then we automatically open an important musical door.
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Let us keep in mind that we are never moved by music just because it has been deemed "good" by the critics. We are moved only by music which corresponds to whatever emotional, intellectual or psychological state in which we find ourselves during the particular moment we are listening to it.
The type or style of music we like may be either "good" or "bad." Judgmental concepts of "good" and "bad" are often insurmountable artificial barriers to accurate perception. In defending our likes by asserting that those artists we like are better artists than those we dislike, we are confusing our subjective likes with an artificially constructed rationale of a so-called "objective" better. Self-limiting box-thinking is partly the result of our attempts to justify our subjective feelings for or against the music with so-called "objective" arguments about it.
This kind of thinking entraps us in our own box-thinking, reinforces it, and leaves virtually no psychological or emotional room in which to grow toward experiencing new musics and new states of mind. Whatever we like is not necessarily "good." Whatever we dislike is not necessarily "bad." The intellectual terminology of "good" and "bad" deafens us to new musical forms that introduce us to psycho-spiritual levels that are above or below our present level. "Like" and "dislike" are appropriate, because the heart knows its own feelings long before the mind can acknowledge and accept them. The mind is a wall. The heart is a portal.
Why not face the obvious? We are not always in the mood for the flaming ecstasies of inspired creative geniuses. Sometimes there's nothing better than a leather-covered booth in a dark Manhattan lounge, a smooth double Scotch, fluttering candlelight on the table, throaty whisperings with a new-found lover, and a cocktail piano tinkling unobtrusively in the background. At other times, nothing else will do but a cold glass of beer, a torn bar stool, a gum-chewing playmate, and a thigh-slapping honky-tonk country band. Emotional freedom gives us latitude to experience, not only music, but ourselves.
All too often, we blatantly misplace our critical evaluations. A great deal of popular music, for example, is formulated and commercially manufactured just like cars, beer, coffee tables, toothpaste and Lysol. Most of it cannot survive serious examination, nor is it designed to withstand such critical scrutiny. If we listen to commercially manufactured music with our whole being, and then evaluate it from a critical perspective that is perhaps appropriate for Euro-American classical music, we make a serious mistake.
For the most part, commercial radio-music is not intended to nourish us. It is intended to "entertain" us, often by inviting us to escape our deeper emotions. It can also help us explore those emotional levels which we perhaps generally regard as being "beneath" us. When rock or country music fails to communicate to jazz or classical listeners, the fault of non-communication lies not with the music, but in the way the listeners approach it. In order to receive the benefits of non-familiar music, we should not snobbishly castigate it. We should welcome it. Generically speaking, there is no such thing as "bad" music. If we are serious about expanding ourselves through music, we should simply listen to non-familiar musics through different ears, ears that do not demand more from the music than it was designed to give.
In contrast to manufactured music, "real" music (of any generic type) is generated from the wellsprings of the human heart. It is usually music that is conceptually original, unformulated by commercial motives, and designed to establish a deep, personal and meaningful relationship with us as human beings rather than as novelty-oriented consumers.
Just as we make a mistake when we subject manufactured music to the critical and emotional standards we should in fact reserve for high-level musics, so we make a similar mistake if we approach high-level music for the first time in hopes of being merely entertained in ways that are superficial, distracting, amusing, emotionally familiar or psychologically safe.
Effective listening largely depends upon recognizing which emotional mood we are in at any given moment, accepting it as our own, and then matching the music to it. If we ignore the reality of our moods, and avoid the musics those moods lead us to, we may give our egoistic intellect a boost, but at the same time we deny ourselves a great opportunity for self-exploration. Mood to music, music to mood. It works both ways.
We begin to liberate our ears when we realize that the fundamental point of view of each generic type of music is different from the fundamental point of view, the fundamental aesthetic intentions and the fundamental stylistic approach of every other music — at least as far as surface appearances go. On a deeper more metaphysical level, we can also view all apparently disparate genres as being simply different musical "spokes" protruding from the unifying hub of a giant Cosmic Wheel. Either way, all forms of music are valid and purposeful. Each contains its own pleasure and significance and justification, and each serves a deeply human need. All are available through recordings. Do we have courage enough to explore them?
In other words, the ability to listen is the ability to place ourselves in the presence of unfamiliar music and to courageously let it cast its spell. The ability to hear music is the ability to become empathetically attuned with it and to resonate with it as if it were our own. It is the ability to receive the music's full message, whatever that message may be, in any given instance and on any given level, following its connecting psycho-spiritual links to their very ends before making judgments about the music or our experience of it. When we become the music, and the music becomes us, we truly hear it. Listening is an action. Hearing is a state of being.
Instead of continuing to apply one set of absolute critical standards to all other musics and artists, thereby locking ourselves in our own musical boxes, we can begin to approach each music in relative terms. We then stop making "cross-box" evaluations. We stop applying New Age standards to rock, classical standards to jazz, rock standards to New Age, etc. In other words, we stop criticizing out of ignorance, and start developing the freedom and latitude within ourselves to enjoy it all.
By approaching music respectfully, and in relative terms, we sail far beyond our parental and cultural conditioning and develop our musical tastes naturally, automatically expanding and enlarging our inner selves in the process. Learning how to listen and how to hear on all levels can be infinitely more than mere entertainment. It can be a potentially invaluable aid to sometimes awesome self-expansion. Without exception, all of us can utilize the power, grandeur, subtlety and mysterious magic of music as a potent and mightily effective tool for transformative self-exploration.
NON-JUDGMENTAL RECEPTIVITY
What happens when, initially, we non-judgmentally place ourselves in the presence of new and unfamiliar musical styles? For one thing, we very quickly begin learning the languages of each genre. A rock lover will pass through the unfamiliarity of jazz or classical forms, the unusual sounds, the "odd" or "unpleasant" styles, and the music's historical-cultural-geographical trappings. A classical lover will do the same with New Age, jazz or rock.
Further, when we become comfortable with the style of a given genre, and acquainted with its particular musical language, we will inevitably discover at least a few individual artists within that genre who can move us emotionally, perhaps even deeply. We will become as relaxed and at ease in the presence of that genre and in the presence of those individual artists as if we were in the presence of new-found comrades. We will no longer be dominated by the psycho-culturally ingrained syndrome of pain-fear-contempt. We will be able to transcend the idiosyncrasies of style and begin to perceive just what it is that others like about it. We will begin to feel and lovingly embrace essences. We will no longer compulsively insist that music must be a mirror of ourselves in order for us to enjoy it.
In fact, because it may not be a mirror of ourselves, it gives us an opportunity to feel new emotions which had previously lain dormant, or had been self-censored to the point of partial or complete inactivity. Fearful need demands mirrors, strangles love and inhibits psychological evolution. Love and compassion courageously delight in all forms of reality — musically, and otherwise. When we welcome the new in music, we welcome the new in ourselves.
Once we learn how to hear, we can conceivably transfer these powerful receptive processes to virtually every other activity of our lives. When we become capable of hearing musics that are presently alien to us, we can very likely come to appreciate new human beings with equal ease. Learning how to hear music can be a powerful and effective way of learning how to love and appreciate the gift of life itself.
TRANSCENDENCE
Music does not offer more knowledge, nor does it offer tools for practical use. Music offers direct insight. Through music, we are able to experience that intellectually inexpressible contact with the inner world of compelling instinct and creative vitality, which is precisely the world we find ourselves so desperately seeking through various pop psychologies and self-improvement techniques, some of which work in time, but all too many of which are novel, superficial, euphoric and short-lived in their effects.
Music is the etheric medium that connects our personal inner lives with other individual lives, other cultures, and even with nature and the universe itself. Music can be an extraordinarily potent source of psychological revelation and spiritual communion. Music offers us the possibility of deeply experiencing both the personal and the universal.
As we deepen our receptivity, widening our sphere of musical connections through conscientious explorations of presently alien genres, and as we continue seeking and finding new artists who move us in each genre, then our sense of taste and discrimination begins to naturally evolve, naturally emerge, and naturally guide us. Only by such evolution does discrimination become enlightened and valid, and not merely the prejudicial bias and opinionated arrogance of ignorant, artificial, musical box-thinking.
In summary, hearing ultimately consists of being able to inwardly transcend our fears and discomforts, to match the wave-lengths of the music with our own, and to reproduce the music in our own imagination. We hear to the extent that we can identify with the music, without premature critical judgments, and, ultimately, without effort.
We hear to the extent that we can take the music into ourselves and make it part of our life, just as we take in nourishing food, or knowledge, or the loving warmth of another human being. We whistle it, we hum it, we remake it in our own consciousness. Or we condense it and remember it, not in terms of its specific details, but in terms of its more general sensations, its impressions, its textures, its impact, its quality of mood. When the music thus becomes ours, we hear it, whether that music be lightly diverting and entertaining pop music, brilliantly stimulating jazz or classical music, deeply moving and uplifting New Age music, or any other kind of music, including ethnic and sacred musics around the world.
Our contact with music is direct contact with emotional, psychological and spiritual vitality, whether that vitality be personal and novel as in rock music, or universal and archetypal as in higher forms of New Age spacemusic. Our degree of contact with the spectrum of creative musical vitality is a direct extension and reflection of our own inwardly developed essence — that unique blend of psycho-spiritual elements we call "ourselves."
The more integrated our creative-intuitional self is with our critical-rational self, the more we liberate our ears. The entire kaleidoscope of music already exists the world over. The ability to hear it depends upon our degree of inner freedom. When all is said and done, we hear what we are. The more we hear, the more we become. Our relationship with music can be the key to an inner door that opens on a self-perpetuating ocean of psychological expansion and potentially unlimited spiritual evolution.
