Why music saved my sanity

Words are such untrustworthy things. They cling to the edge of the impulse-to-live as it dies. Scavengers. Every moment of consciousness is a reflection of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. So often the translation is I think, therefore I am. But thinking is so far removed from I, much better to translate it as I am aware, therefore I am. To get from the impulse-to-live to thinking requires a fair number of steps; become aware, assign meaning, fumble in the mental dictionary for words that might be appropriate, string them together according to the rules of grammar, and finally listen to the result. By which time, the world, and the impulse-to-live, has moved on. So there we are, right out on the edge, clinging to words, living in the past.

Do you see what happens there? Where the wriggle room is? Between becoming aware and assigning meaning. That’s where past experience, outside pressures, conditioning, all perk up and claim a piece of the action. They scurry away to the dictionary to slap a label on the impulse, often erroneously. Words can take life and skin it, dice it, discard most of it and then triumphantly proclaim the morsel contained in a single word as The Truth, complete, whole and entire. Nothing to see here, move on, move on…

When I say music saved my life, I’m not being entirely fanciful. It definitely saved my sanity. At a time when all the words in my head were cruel, judgemental and manipulative, music was the thing that revealed a piece of me to hold on to. I’m not talking about lyrics here, I’m talking about notes. There’s the impulse-to-live, and that grabs hold of a note—a sound—and follows it to the next note, and the next. Instead of words imposing a meaning, the impulse-to-live inserts it’s own meaning into the note and feeds it back before that dictionary of predisposition can literally get a word in. What music showed me of myself was melancholia which is a much misunderstood term. It is not depression, it is the exquisite beauty of sorrow. The musicians of the 16C understood it perfectly. And if you would like to hear what that means, try listening to John Dowland’s In Darkness Let Me Dwell. The beauty of the song is not in the words, which are of such despair, it is the music that makes it so beautiful and life affirming.

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