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by Cynthia Snodgrass.
Paraview Press, 2002
ISBN: 1-931044-37-6
Spirituality
Paperback $15.95 |
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Sonic
Thread
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As far back as I can remember, I have
been in love with the phenomenon of sound. Maybe it was because I
was born “blind as a bat” and during my early years
my ears learned to compensate for what my eyes lacked. As a
childhood game I would close my eyes and pretend to be completely
blind. I’d imagine that I could negotiate the world with
only the use of sound to help me navigate through a maze of
objects.
Maybe it was because I grew up with classical music in the
house, accompanied by expositions on the importance of its
meaning. Or, maybe it was because on hot summer nights, after
dinner, my father would read out loud to the family long sections
of ancient prose and poetry, old morals, and stories spun from
some of the world’s greatest sounds.
Or perhaps I was so fascinated by sound because there were so
many wonderful things to listen to in the world -- clicks and
thumps, the whirrings of mechanical devices, the pounding rhythms
and swirling eddies within the physical body, the exotic trills
and glides of various bird calls -- all so fascinating to focus
on and to fathom as a child. There were times I even thought I
could hear the sound of atoms humming in their orbits as their
miniature worlds spun around.
Or maybe it was due to a dream experienced in adolescence,
wherein I crouched, late at night, out of breath and in mortal
fear, on the side steps of an Eastern temple as the sounds of a
Dream-Wind saved my life.
Or it could be because every day for as long as I can remember,
I have spent countless hours practicing some kind of musical
instrument. As a child, each day I was required by my mother to
practice intervals, repeat scales, memorize melodies, and count
to the beat of a metronome. Each instrument had its challenges --
the single reed, the double reed, the bowed string, the plucked
string. T.S. Eliot wrote that “between the ideal and the
reality falls the shadow,” and indeed, between my ideal of
being able to issue forth radiant streams of celestial sound and
the reality of God-given talent fell the shadow of hours and
hours of practicing.
Intense listening in order to produce the right pitch, with
fingers placed just so, was followed by the intricacies of
coordinating left and right, high with low. The brain completed
one chore while the body learned to automatically execute
another. Rhythms were learned (three against two), chords were
built from the bottom up, and melodies were spun from the center
out. All for the sake of the beauty of sound.
It was beautiful, too. After hours of practice came the
perfectly placed interval or the exact contour of a line that
could open doors. Working in tandem or in chorus with others,
harmony realized was a truly remarkable thing. When focused
intently and breathing deeply, with the voice placed and tuned
with consummate care, could come the amazing sensation of flying,
the energetic explosion of having “slipped the surly bonds
of earth” to glide and float high above the physical body.
Music was a transcendental pathway and it could take one into
higher realms.
Maybe it was in the fact that music has turned out to be my
avocation, while a quest for the deeper perceptions of sound has
continued to be central to my life’s work, as well as to my
spirituality. For, when I recognized vibration to be more than
this world’s music I realized how important the study of
sound has been to my soul.
© 2002, Cynthia Snodgrass |
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