There are No Words

Here in 2020, I feel like there are more of us than usual feeling a certain amount of emotional pain due to all of the separation we face.

For some time now, this season has been a heavy time for me. I’ve mentioned in entries past that my partner of 32 years passed away in 2012. To be more precise, it was on December 19, 2012. This on its own makes the time of year a bit melancholy for me. Kieth’s Dad also passed away on Christmas morning in 1993, so a certain sadness has been present for a long time.

And yet this sword is double-edged as Kieth and I met on Christmas night in 1980. So the hard memories mix with the pleasant. I know of no words for this bipolar feeling, simultaneously warm and cold. Bittersweet just doesn’t hit the extremes correctly. It is a moment that has to be felt.

This brought to mind the day Kieth received his diagnosis of Stage IV cancer. It came in a phone call. I listened to Kieth’s part of the conversation from another room. When the call ended, I asked what happened. He explained that he was told he had Stage IV cancer in the liver and lungs, but the primary was unknown, and that he was to schedule a colonoscopy. He then went back to watching TV. I asked if he wanted to talk; he didn’t. I asked if I could do something and he just said no, staring at the TV. It was the most helpless I’d ever felt.

I went outside with a flute and something just came out. I gave it a title of “There are No Words” as that is what I felt. You can find a video of this piece below.  The video only contains an all black image, as I want the feeling of the music to stand alone in this case.

I never played this for Kieth until about an hour before he passed. He was under sedation, but the only others in the room, my mother and the wife of Kieth’s cousin told me after, that as I played it, the vitals on the monitors starting moving all around, so I do know he heard. No words were needed, he felt what was intended with the music.

In thinking through how I’ve been feeling this week, I became aware how appropriate that song’s title is and how language is simultaneously a road to growth and to limitation.

If you’ve read my other blog entries, you know I’m verbose and try to bring what is in my awareness to language. However, as language is based in the illusion (Maya) in which we live, it can’t describe the energy-based reality. Music without words can do that. Words can lead us up to the edge of where reality lies, but they cannot carry us across. Most lyrics that most people want to hear reinforce what we already believe in the world of illusion. Trying to describe the nature of reality is confusing and can only be done in small bites and is desired by few. Those small bites can act as pieces to the puzzle, but the music will be required to convey anything close to a complete picture. And we just have to admit that there are occasions where we must descend or ascend to where only music can take us…where words become meaningless.

This is what I have meant by this website’s tagline: “Transforming the world through music.” Words alone can possibly take us to the edge of reality. But music is what will allow us to take flight. The words point us in the direction where will will find the lift to take us off the ground. My hope is to be able to contribute to that. My prayer is that I can find the words to show myself and anyone interested where we can take flight and that music will come to us and through us that will help bring that lift. But first, we all need to know that flight is possible.

May the very many meanings of this season help lift you to where you are going.