Listening

My favorite part of this song is the silence between the notes and the breaths between the highs and lows. It's titled "Wierd Fishes" covered by Lianne La Havas and originally created by Radio Head. When I first heard this song it instantly gave me a new perspective on creating, the affectiveness of expressing and communicating without sound. As I listened and as I still listen to this day I fall into a trance every time, wondering if other listeners can hear what I feel and see what I mean. The concept of sound being comforting when it's absent is exactly what our minds try to achieve with meditation. Meditation is to quiet the mind so you can hear yourself and your breath in order to limit external interferences that create nervousness, triggering your breath to shake with uncertainty or limiting your ability to gain clarity. In the book "Think like a Monk" by Jay Shetty, he quoted a piece from the sacred writings of the "Katha Unpanishad" which is a series of Hindu sacred writings in Sanscrit.

"When the five senses and the mind are stilled, when the reasoning intellect rests in silence, then begins the highest path"(Shetty, 2020).

This quote really resonated and offered a very acute perspective in what I was trying to understand with the concept of silence being so comforting. Not only silence by itself but the idea of silence inside of noise.

There is this line in, I have to say, the epic bridge that says "...I'll hit the bottom and escape..." This concept of going to the bottom to escape or sinking to the bottom, unwillingly and escaping unintentionally. Is this a thing? Yes! You learn the biggest lessons when you are at the bottom. You gain so much strength, resilience, and endurance while trying to swim back up just to get your chin over the water. Beneath the water you carry so much mass, it is what most will not see so when you come out on to land on land(I love words) it's almost a crushing effect on those who doubted you or judged you. This same effect vibrates through your environment as well, the way the world embraces you, the way things move around you. I have been to the bottom, so much of myself has been built there. Still to this day, I will go to the bottom to hide, not from other people but from myself, my ego. I will do without on purpose and push myself through strain just to see who I am, my truths, my defaults. I go down there to gain gratitude and realign myself and widen my perspective because let's be honest, sometimes we don't want to understand some things.

I want to share my experience with this song! Hope you enjoy it...

I was taken by the beat drum proceeding without haste and walked down through the slow down of the almost no sound with the eloquent keys played by the wind it seems... and everything controlled by the now steady heartbeat stick roll... I dropped in my feet once lifted now settling, wondering what's happening... then she came from what I feel like was the moon because emotions... and I'd lie if I say I was not moved, my tides were not ready for this type of pull... My ears became vacumes sucking up what was being unspooled in front of me and within me... I was so taken that when it stopped, I was still falling and I had trusted that like the beat I will not be dropped... suddenly so gracefully her notes carried me through the silence that had taken me... and I realized her tones were the effect of nothing turned into something... my anticipation of her creation grew... I listened .. and then I knew the lesson in the quiet, in the nothing, in the silence was gratitude for everything.

References:

Newman, J. (2020). Lianne la havas covers radio head. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lianne-la-havas-radiohead-weird-fishes-1020789/

Shetty, J. (2020). Think like a monk. Simon & Schuster Inc.