www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpROaNue9GM

Here are some of my questions: How did Hembrey give himself the permission to do something so audacious? How did he come up with so much high-quality work in different media and styles? Are the two related? How many voices are inside us waiting to speak, if we would only give them permission? How much have I unintentionally restricted myself in searching for my own “voice”? What would happen if I let myself expression 100 different ways? Would it be exhausting? Would I explode with energy? Would I even recognize myself by the end of the process?

And  you?

I turn on the car radio to a blast of sound from KCRW, our great local indie station. My tastes are eclectic these days, partly thanks to Robert, but today I’m not in the mood to be blasted out of my seat. Instead, I switch to Classical KUSC. Instantly, a different world opens up before me– it’s Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto. Coming from a pop station, I’m hyper-aware of its clarity, containment, prettiness, sense of order– it’s almost shocking. And it gets me thinking.

The Mozart feels on the one hand, alien, and on the other, such a blessed relief. It’s a million miles from the stress and vulnerability I’m feeling today, yet I can feel myself moving moment by moment into harmony with it. It calms me. I feel nurtured.
And I think about worlds colliding.

Composers, all artists, create from the level of their consciousness. Their consciousness tends to reflect their environment. What they are not aware of, what they cannot imagine, affects what they are able to create as much as those things which pervade their consciousness.

It’s been said many times that 20th-century music’s overall trend from order toward disorder, harmony to disharmony, beauty to ugliness, nature-inspired to urban-influenced mirrors our world (and therefore our consciousness). And yet, maybe the last thing we need is to have this consciousness reflected back to us on a daily basis.

Those of us who are aspiring toward peace, toward upliftment, who are striving to have a vision, to make a difference, need to be vigilant about what influences we allow into our individual inner worlds, if we’re to create a different consciousness, and therefore a different world.