The choice is always yoursMage Music 28
The Universe is bigger than the gods that humans cast in human form with human characteristics that are larger than life. The reality is that the Universe is infinite. For humans in physical form, that should mean that the Universe is profoundly and fundamentally unknowable, since physicality is a subset of the infinite and subsets don't encompass the whole - that's just the way it is. But the human condition is more than physicality and if everything is a holograph of the Universe (a basis for Magick), then subsets are in a sense the whole and then humans can know something of the infinite.
The Universe is always offering
The Universe has no constraints (infinite, remember?) and does not hide anything. Like a lighthouse's beams that shine out in the gloom, the Universe sends a message of What Is for any being capable of receiving it. Anyone capable of choice could receive the message - it is transmitted in an infinite number of forms - but not everyone makes the choice to do so. Having the choice is part of the gift of being human in the first place.
Choice is a part of being alive. No one is forced to heed the warning beam of a lighthouse. Eyes can be shut, ears can be covered. Refusing to choose is a choice, too.
Choice is so fundamental to being human that all our mythology and learning sagas are about it (the Garden of Eden being one of the more familiar examples) and most of our best music embodies it, because the choice offered by the Universe is always basically the same: To remain the same or to open to enlightenment, to allow self to receive the message of What Is.
Magick in music
Some artists have chosen to be messengers. Receive, transmit: That's what an artist who is a messenger does. The message is a truth that the artist chooses - be it a statement about the human condition (most common) or about the infinite. In choosing to convey the What Is message an artist's job isn't to tell the Universe what to transmit, it isn't even to provide meaning to the message - it is simply to translate the message as captured into whatever medium the messenger speaks with: Words, paint, stone, music.
Magick is what happens when the artist has got it right. Whether or not you hear the Magick in music is not simply about whether the artist has got it right, though - it's about your choice to open or not to the message of What Is.
Do with that what you will.
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YouTube Playlist - Do What Thou Wilt
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1967 Jimmy Page/Yardbirds, White Summer (studio) Little Games
1969 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (studio) Album: Coda
1969 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Fillmore West San Francisco January 10, 1969
1969 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) L'Olympia Paris, 10/10/69
1970 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Royal Albert Hall
1970 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Julie Felix show April 26
1977 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Cleveland, Ohio - April 27, 1977
1979 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Knebworth
1993 Page & Coverdale, White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live) Osaka Coverdale/Page Dec 20 1993
It’s all about the song. A songwriter doesn’t really write a song- he finishes it. The songs are all written- the songwriter is tuned in to some unknown frequency and he receives the song like a radio transmission. The song is processed through the person and comes alive through his personality. Some artists stay tuned in their whole lives- Bob Dylan- Neil Young- Van Morrison. Jimmy was tuned in for 10 years, but his antenna was very sensitive and the most unbelievably great music came through him. I write music and the new song comes in the first few minutes after I pick up a guitar. I just start playing and something new might come out. You just have to be listening to hear it but not really thinking or forcing it. The work is finishing the music- I am not much of a lyricist, but I know what’s bad and that’s what I usually come up with. Bob Dylan is the greatest lyricist in my book. He’s words are not literal all the time- he’s painting a picture with words. Keith Richards says his technique is to just play songs he loves and every once in a while, he starts playing and realizes he’s playing a new song. He says it’s so subtle that he always thinks it’s a song he knew along time ago but then he realizes it’s new and he was just given it. No artist knows what it is or can explain it. They just know it’s magic and they are the receiver odf the gift.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully described, wildwall. I'm not a musician, so I very much appreciate your input!
DeleteIronically, while I am a writer, the least interesting part of a song, to me, are the lyrics. I like Dylan's - and Robert Plant's - because as you say the words aren't always literal. Dylad and Plant can provide lyrics that are more tone-poems, painting with broad strokes that imply rather than describe.
He is our link to the Divine. He is the bridge. the Hundredth Monkey. If you listen very hard you will know he is teaching us a greater truth. And I thought it was just rock and roll:) Thank you Lif:)
ReplyDeleteThe beauty is that it is also just rock and roll!
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