Given all current events...

Given the events of this week I find it impossible to post any further without a certain acknowledgment.  There is much I could have said on many matters during these past four years.  While I find it necessary to speak, the overall commentary has been deafening, amplified and distorted as it is by social media. I’ve also been grappling with the tension and overlap between moral/ethical concerns and political action.  On this blog I’ve tended to emphasize universal values in music which have distinct parallels in everyday life.  There is always the risk however that without addressing the facts on the ground these universal truths could be seen as wishful thinking.  They are not.  To me they are more real than the things I see with my eyes.  Meaning that interpretation of what is seen allows for both understanding and misunderstanding.  That’s why I have largely chosen not to offer too many unsolicited opinions, of which I seem to have an endless supply and which inflame my own passions.

I was speaking with a friend recently about intensity in music.  I said that it’s almost more a matter of receiving that intensity rather than creating it.  We aren’t passive about it, when it’s time to raise the roof don’t hesitate.  But in truth it’s more the case that we create the conditions for this intensity to come about. It’s more an act of accommodation than force.  As applied to day-to-day life in these particular days, raw and explicit as they are, I wonder how it might apply.  It’s very tempting to want to tell other people what to do, proclaim what is right and what is wrong.  Substitute the word truth for intensity in this case.  We are all struggling to find the truth in our own way, distracted by our personal desires and too often willing to cause harm in the process, in large ways and in small.  I can only trust that what is true is true and that there is in fact no need for me to try and impose my view of the truth on anyone else.  At the same time I cannot hesitate to act.  Rather than an act of force the best thing I could possibly do is to try my best to cultivate the conditions by which someone else can see that truth.  In doing so perhaps it will be reflected back to me, so that I can see more clearly myself.

Wishing you all peace and sanity as we move forward.