The Power of Music
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
- Aldous Huxley
My friend Tam sent me a beautiful video recently about the power of music. It brought tears to my eyes. I was thinking about it yesterday during a Creative Empowerment Workshop that Deb and I were running - I looked around watching the participants do their art, all listening to music. Many were listening to the music that we supply, softly playing in the background; a few others had their own music playing on their ipods, but everywhere I looked people were immersed in some sort of music. Near the end of the workshop, one participant said: "I really like the music you play during the workshop, I feel calm when I listen to it."Friedrich Nietzsche once said: "Without music, life would be a mistake." Too harsh perhaps? But reading this article in one of my favorite blogs, Daily Good, I am moved to see Nietzsche point. The article describes music "bridging life and death." It is an interview with the woman who founded The Threshold Choir, Kate Munger. In the article Munger describes the beginning of The Threshold Choir.
"In November of 1990 I was invited to spend a day with a friend of mine who was dying of HIV Aids. He was comatose, but very agitated. I sat down by his bedside and didn't know what to do. I waited and waited. All I knew to do, to calm myself, was to sing. So I sang one song and I sang it for two hours. I sang it over and over again. I watched his breathing slow, and he got much calmer. And I got much calmer, because it was a song that was really soothing to me personally. So as I got comfortable, he got comfortable and at the end of the experience I felt like I'd touched something very deep."
Attached is the video that Tam emailed to me. A lovely representation of the power of music.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player]Please let me know your thoughts on this video, and I'd love to hear any stories you have about the Power of Music in your life.And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.