So OK you’re listening. You’re in the wilderness waiting for the sign from above. You’re sitting in the ashes of humility with your best friends waiting for a relief from the curses that have been inflicted upon you (Job from the Book of Job). . .
It’s not like that. It’s not like some bolt of lightning that hits you and suddenly you have freedom – suddenly you are emancipated from the darkness and haze you’ve been in and now you have peace, happiness and even joy.
I have been told that I am not looking for the answers. Answers come later - I am looking for the questions. In order to know the questions I have to listen.
But what am I listening to? What am I focused on? Am I really paying attention to this life, to my soul, to my heart?
Do you remember going to the pool and play the game where you talk and try to understand your friends underwater? Do you remember the muffled sound? The ability to semi-understand what is being said, but in general you’re not having a deep conversation. If someone says watermelon, the game is over.
Are we so buried in noise and sound that we’re no longer sure of what to listen to? What I think about more, as a musician, is the loss of purity of sound. Have we become so accustomed to layers of "perfection" that we no longer understand how to take in sound that is pure, genuine and real?
How can we find our authentic selves, stripped of layers of artificiality without being able to listen to what is authentic? Have we become so glossed over that we don’t know the difference?
A friend of mine was talking the other day about preferring the sounds recorded to tape, and instantly recognizing a digital recording (and, by the way, virtually EVERY musical recording you hear nowadays is recorded digitally). He preferred recorded sounds that are more raw and real.
And I told him it’s impossible to record that way nowadays and be competitive. While you struggle as an independent artist to even get satellite radio airplay, there’s NO way that you could receive anything close to the mainstream with an analog recording.
Because we don’t want real. We want perfect. The irony of this is that we are still obsessed with “reality” shows. Reality shows that have shown over and over that the more they play up the drama, the better the ratings are. So reality becomes manufactured reality. And we drink it in.
Take a day and just listen. Go out to a park and just listen to the sound of the wind, the leaves, the birds, the insects, the frogs. Find a place that has a record player and listen to a vinyl recording (if you can find a 78 to play, EVEN better). Go hear a live band. Sit down at a water fountain. Hear kids at play on a playground. SING IN THE SHOWER.
LISTEN. But listen to something REAL. Listen to something that hasn’t been run through a machine, then reworked digitally on a computer so that whatever the engineer “perceived” as an imperfection got taken out. Listen to hear a voice within you that connects with something authentic. THAT is the way the revelation comes. THAT is a way that the lightning bolt hits – in that moment of hearing something that echoes within yourself.
Because YOU are the one with the answers inside of you. Waiting.
Listen.
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