Music Opinions, 2 cents' worth

Music is the most powerful form of art. It beats out painting and poetry and all the rest of the arts, in my opinion. Sometimes I base my opinions on study and research but with music, my opinion rests entirely on my emotions because that’s how music communicates with me. The sound of it bypasses my intellect and goes straight to the beating heart. That’s why I rate music as the highest art form. Minds are such dicey things.

I don’t deny an intellectual awareness of a given piece of music can enhance your experience of it. I’m thinking here about Leonard Cohen and some of Bob Dylan’s work. But my brain is not required to lift a finger as music evokes those powerful emotions ~ sadness, joy, spiritual uplift, melancholy, peace, whatever. The succession of notes creates an emotional response.

Sometimes I’ve wished that I could compose music instead of poetry. The composer doesn’t have to worry if the words he used to paint a scene strike the right chord or not. The poet has to contend with the fact that every word and statement will be filtered by unknown readers, and she is powerless over those filters. Poetry is heavily dependent on the conscious awareness and mental processes of each individual reader. Take the simple word “mother,” for example, in a sentence like “the mother stood at the sink / contemplating her hands.” I might mean it to be a meditation of the labor of motherhood, but your history with a sharp-tongued, very vain mother, for example, will arouse a completely different miasma of feelings.

Anyway, this week’s Poetry Jam is musical and directed by Brian of Waystation One. He asks that we write a poem inspired by a song or using a line from a song. I offer a piece that was inspired by Sarah Brightman’s “Il mio cuore va.” I didn’t know what the words meant when I wrote the poem since I don’t speak Italian and I didn’t know the English translation of this love song from the Titanic (“My Heart Will Go On”) until I Goggled them this afternoon. Her voice, then, was an instrument like an oboe or a cello creating an emotional reaction to the idea of long-term love.

Look at It This Way


this is you
this is her
twin threads twining in space
up and up andupandup
sinuous as snakes
the dance of the double helix
making life grow high

this is you
this is her
round notes soaring
high and round as the moon
in a purple sky
full of light a bird in flight
a waltz of wind and feather
mounting waves of air

this is you
this is her
a swelling-rising-rearing-
crashing wave
shatters on the sand
and the sand soothes
calms and suckles
a soft sighing washing smooth
the rough edges and the fury

this is you
this is her
strong arms gripping
across the precipice of loneliness
strong limbs bowing with the wind
strong lines moored in heavy seas
above all holding fast
in the face of all storms