“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read
some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”~ Charles Darwin
Some weeks ago my main cable TV connection went out. The wiring into the home, I had been told last year, was not up to the standards of the latest equipment, but it had managed to work for a long while. It actually worked fine until it was necessary to disconnect it briefly one day, and then it was never really the same again, and very soon, it gave out completely. I decided not to reconnect it.
At first I missed it.
You see, somehow I had apparently stopped noticing the noise. And when the noise was gone, it felt very strange. The noise was actually generally the cable news spouting opinions about the state of the world - because "the news" isn't "the news" anymore and probably never was, but nowadays it doesn't even pretend to be "news" - it's shrill opinion, with a little "news" mixed in, no matter what the leanings of the "news station".
It turns out I didn't need it. I learn what small amount of "actual news" I need to know in other ways. Yes, I missed the old movies I liked to watch on TCM, but that's why we have libraries and DVDs. And even those were tending to distract me. So were other forms of talk, at the times I didn't need to hear it (as
a radio host myself, I know helpful conversations have their place, but we need to personally respect what that place is).
I needed the Peace. I needed the Stillness.
When family is here, we needed the Stillness, too, especially during dinner. We used to be tempted to turn on the TV and generally watch "the news".
So what are evenings like now?
Musical. Beautifully Musical.
I realized one night it is shared, well beyond this home. When I turn
on the local Classical station, like I did on both Christmas and New Year's Eve (and Christmas and New Year's night, too, and all of the nights in between), it's like going to a concert. (It's on at times during the day too, in between sometimes switching the station
to Jazz. It's on right now.) When you are listening to a particularly good station, it has a way of
surprising you - you come to realize the Music is lovingly woven
together by the hosts, over time, night after night after night and day after day (the hosts are actually artists and composers
themselves - that's what the weaving is). You yourself become woven into the form. It becomes inextricable.
There is something here that I've been missing. I've felt I've known it before, and then somehow I lost it. But I have found it, again.
I'm
reading more. I'm feeling personally poetic (though I've been no
stranger to poetry). I'm even blogging right now (though I've been no
stranger to writing).
It is changing me. I feel it, already. There is a new pattern. There is a Divine majesty to it. There is a kind of an unfolding. It's like walking in Nature. Perhaps it's just Beauty, and a kind of re-centering.
It is Still, even when not.
How is it the Music connects me even more to "the world" than "the news"? Yet, exactly, so, it is.
