Music of the Oceanic Surround

MUSIC: Soul of Ineluctable Pain and Suffering

Accumulating horrors assail us today, in the most chilling concrete ways for millions or, for most of us, through images of these horrors “harmlessly” assaulting us through the mass media. What possible connection could there be between this chaos, horror, unbelievable suffering and…music?! This essay is not concerned with any musical or artistic rendering of our modern horrors, or with composing. a poem to express this or that emotion rising up in the author when facing horror. I am referring to a music that has no composer; poetry that has no author, speech that has no speaker. This essay concerns our human loss of connection with what I call the “oceanic surround”: its heartbeat, its surges and swellings, retreats, dissonances, resolutions, and harmonies. Reconnection with the music of this oceanic reality, for some individuals in our technological civilisation, occurs through an initiatory passage of considerable pain and suffering, in the most physical manner possible.

Essay may be found here