New ears for listening or: Music, deep feeling and finding that I was never lost

Some years back, when I and my partner Diz were courting, she told me about a remarkable thing that she did. As we were listening to Joe Cocker sing "You are so beautiful to me" she told me that as she is listening, she is singing the song to herself. She is singing to herself "You are so beautiful to me".

I found this remarkable and here I am remarking on it. Since then I have tried to do this many times and with many songs and I am finding some fantastic opportunities to feel myself deeply and to appreciate myself and my value. Finding how to sing to myself authentically is not an easy process, but it is an enjoyable one.

Let me continue in this discursive manner for a bit. A teacher of mine, a real sensei of the dramatic and psychodramatic world, Francis Batten, taught me about different dance responses to music. In one of his brilliant workshops he had me and the group respond in one of three ways to the music, through dance. We could either 1) respond to the music in our dance (very familiar with this one); 2) be the music in our dance (less familiar with this one) and 3) make the music through our dance (have the music be something that arises from us which I was wholly unfamiliar with). In a workshop with a variety of music this is a challenging and delightful process. Air guitar could be making the music. Head banging could be responding (depending on the music). Flowing as the music flows is being the music?

So here I was singing songs to myself. And finding it sometimes easy and sometimes hard. Some of the songs in our culture are really heavily laden with sentimentality. So I have developed a tangential way of listening that makes certain assumptions and builds, in a music sense on the work of Francis.This way of listening opens me up to a wider range of responses to the same music than I have had before. It may do so for you, in time.

Firstly, in order to do this process a person needs to buy into one idea of duality. That there is me and an inside me; or that there is superficial me and authentic me; or that there is the spiritual me and the material me; or perhaps there is real me and egoic mind; or there is me as inner child and me as outer adult; or that there is my soul, which lies within me and it is pure and perfect and there is the gross, crass worldly me. Personally I don't subscribe to these ideas but that wont stop me enjoying these ways of listening. This idea of the duality can be taken on in order to experience certain responses on the imaginal realm. So OK here I go.

Secondly we are working in the arena of music with lyrics. It can also work with out lyrics but that belongs to the deep cuts course and I haven't put it together. If you do so please let me know.

Thirdly we are mostly dealing with lyrics about loving another, hating another begging another, pleasing with another, complaining with another, inspiring another. These are relational songs. Sometimes they are about calls or complaints to the world, to god/goddess, to paretns, to culture, to friends. As you cotemplate this you will find your own songsthat work for you.

I will lay out the basics and then give some brief examples and link to longer version of those examples. 

Listening and self-singing type 1

This is the straightforward listening that many people are used to. You listen, you like, you listen some more. You listen, you don't like, you listen to something else. Sometimes, of course you or I need to listen to something a few times before we get it or understand it musically. Jaz is notorious in this sense. Sometimes you listen and the lyrics catch you and then you listen more to the music with, perhaps fresh ears. Sometimes it is all about the lyrics. When singing along to this music you could be singing it to a lover, to your friends, to the world or just caught in the spirit of the music and lyrics. So singing "You are so beautiful to me" is really me singing it to another person, to a person I knew or one I would like to know. It can also be simply singing out loud.

 

Listening and self-singing type 2

This is where as you are listening to the music as though you are singing it to yourself. (Note still no duality required just a good imagination). So if listening to "You are so beautiful to me" you sing that to yourself and get to relish or cringe at your own beauty. Imaginally you might have a picture of you outside of yourself singing to you or you might have a picture of you being outside yourself signing to you. Either being sung to or doing the singing. Both work OK.

 

Listening and self-singing type 3

This is the first of the types where you need to imagine yourself as a split being. In this type of singing you are singing to your soul or to your spirit or to your original and authentic self. You are in effect romanticising your spirit and encouraging it to join you and be with you and commit to you forever. This idea fits with a great variety of spiritual and religious communities and ideas where I am seen as trying to become one with my true self; and where my true self is able to see the world clearly and I needs my true self's guidance and support to have a real life.

This listening type is both easy and difficult. It is easy as it is a call from the heart so it fits with being a beloved separated from their beloved. It fits with being lost and wanting to come home. It fits with an idea that I am incomplete and need to be completed by being with myself. As I am still singing to myself I am not in a dependent or co-dependent relationship with another person and this also is a good thing. And because many of us have a high ideal about what our true nature or true inner self is, this is singing to our best aspect or best self and celebrating our best self at the same time. When I sing this way I feel at times the most wonderful elation as I am in effect singing to god within.

To sing "You are so beautiful to me" in this way makes complete sense. In the Hindu Bahkti tradition, I am the lover and my spirit is the beloved and I am entering into a loving a pure relationship with myself. Not a bod thing really!  A Sufi tradition would also work in this way. Some songs, such as those listed below are rather of a deeper nature and have longer term time frames such as "Until the end of the world" or "Until the end of time"which makes it a very lonfg term committment to myself.

 

Listening and self-singing type 4

This type of listening and singing is very challenging.  It requires what I think, is a quite novel approach to the inner self. One that is not so flattering, to either my being or to me. We are still in the land of the lover and the beloved. However in this type of singing it is I to whom the song is directed. My soul is singing to me.And sometomes my soul is well disposed to me, such as with romantic or passioante songs and at other times my sould is pissed off that I am mucking around with life and not taking it (my soul) seriously (See Evanescence below).

Now why is this difficult for me? You may not find it so. But when my soul sings to me I am reminded that I am great and valuable and I can make a contribution both to my soul, to others and to the world. I am reminded that all the gods long for a human body (According to some Hindu traditions). I am reminded that I have power to free my spirit and myself. I am reminded that I have much to do and that it is worthwhile to do it. I am reminded that I am love as I am, if only I want to be and allow myself to be. How else could my spirit be singing to me if I were not a wondrous and glorious being? This is the hard part as in my mundane world I very often do not feel worthy, do not feel to power of life nor the joy of living. In my pedestrian world I forget that I carry this soul, or spirit, or authentic self, or inner child that longs to embrace life.

As one of my mentor's, Dr J L Moreno, wrote "The child does not stop at self-realisation. The child wants world realisation"

 

As mentioned earlier I may also be being called to account for not taking my deeper self seriously and for spending time on the less important aspects of life.

This many be enough for you for now.

Each type I have listed goes deeper than the last, by a factor of about 10. So it is a type of Richter scale but going deeper.

I have annotated the lyrics for the following three songs. You could go and listen on your own and see which of these types of listening you find valuable.  The following are all available on u-tube in various guises but here are links to some of the version available. I suggest the lyrics ones for Evanescence as the lyrics are not so clear and the others are very clear. Please let me know  via my contact form or the blog response if this is sueful for you. Or on facebook or any other way you see fit.

Good listening.

Lamb - Gorecki, Bring Me to Life - Evanescence and Kate Miller-Heidke 'The Last Day On Earth' Official Video

Click this line to see the lyrics and suggestions for Evanscence for listening type 3 & 4.

Click this line to see the lysrics and suggestions for Lamb for listening type 3 & 4.

Click this line to see the lysrics and suggestions for Kate Miller Heidke for listening type 3 & 4.