He sat back, so I did the same. I could hear the bartenders and waitresses as they chatted and closed up for the evening. There was music playing over the sound system that I hadn’t paid attention to until that moment, as well as the sounds of cars and people outside. I hadn’t realized it before, but all of the noises were causing us to speak louder.
“What would happen,” the drummer asked, “if all the noises suddenly stopped?”
I thought about it for a moment before he answered for me.
“You would become ‘dead’ silent. Your ears would perk up and you would listen intently in the direction the silence came from. You’d be searching for a cause and your awareness would reach out to the next available sound that stood out. Now what you have to do is learn how to create the same effect. When you’re playing to an inattentive audience, you and your bandmates are the background noise. Something must change before you can cause the audience to listen. They may decide on their own to start listening, or you can decide for them. You can make them listen without their even knowing it. The best way to do that is through dynamics, or even better, through space. Create silence and let the next sound that speaks to them be your bass. If done well, they’ll listen to you for the rest of the night. That’s all I did for my solo.”
“You used space and you really used it well,” I remarked.
He pointed a skinny index finger at me and responded in a serious tone. “Right, and as you noticed, no one said a word. They were sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to hear what I was gonna do next. The space came from my direction, so they all looked at me. I had them in the palm of my hand. At that point I could’ve done anything with ’em, but I decided to let ’em off easy. How did I do it? By playing nothing! ” He sat back, smiled, and continued chewing his gum.
That was remarkable to me. I couldn’t wait to learn how to use space in that way. Even though everything he said made complete sense, I didn’t know where to start. He sat up quickly and replied to my thoughts.
“Start with rest,” he stated. “Learn how to make a rest speak louder than a note. Play a musical line and then start leaving notes out, putting the emphasis on the rest. You should end up playing more rests than notes. Have you talked to him about projecting his intentions?” he asked, looking at Michael.
“Yes,” Michael answered.
The drummer scooted his chair closer to mine. Leaning over, he put his mouth to my ear and whispered. “Create space in the appropriate way, then fill the space with a solid emotion. You won’t have to project it nowhere. The space you created will draw the listener right into it. And then . . .” He scooted his chair away and began to stand up. “Aw man, that’s the good stuff. Learn how to make that work, and you are on your way.”
With that comment, he was on his way. As he turned to leave, I thanked him for the lesson and told him that I hoped to play with him again.
“Oh you will,” he replied as if he knew something I didn’t. “Life is a lot like Music. You’ve gotta put some rest in there. And right now, I’ve gotta go get mine. Later! I’ll catch you another time.”
Before he walked out the door, he turned to take one last glance at a beautiful waitress walking by. “Just admiring God’s work,” he remarked. I watched in silence as he made his way to his car.
Michael sat there smiling the whole time. He seemed to enjoy watching my mind get blown by someone other than himself.
“He’s incredible,” I stated.
“He is also credible,” Michael replied.
“I think he enjoyed playing with my mind as much as you do.”
“Most people work with their minds when playing with them can be much more effective,” he responded.
“Did you teach him all that stuff?” I asked.
“What I showed him is not as important as whether you learned anything tonight, or not. Did you learn?”
“But of course.”
“Good, because we must leave now.
We have a meeting with a frog.”
MEASURE ELEVEN
Listening
We think that Music stops at the ears.
That is a mistake. Vibrations can be felt in all places and
at all times, even with the eyes.
We drove for a few miles to a place called Radnor Lake. "Radnor,” as it’s called by the locals, is one of Tennessee’s most beautiful state parks. Located near the Green Hills section of Nashville, Radnor is home to an abundant variety of wildflowers, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The eighty-five acre lake attracts naturalists, bird watchers, and hikers from all around. Its trails, which traverse some of Tennessee’s highest hills, along with the lake, make it a popular place to visit all year round. It’s a favorite site of mine, and a place I’d been to many times before but only during the day. I’d never been there after dark.
We parked at a nearby store and walked down a darkened street which led to the park entrance. It must have been cloudy because no moon or stars were visible. That, coupled with the fact that there were no streetlights, made the walk seem as dark as if we’d had our eyes closed. The distant sounds of the forest added to the eeriness of the morning. Michael walked slowly in silence, often pausing as if he were listening for something.
"This way,” he said.
He led me to a bench on the far end of the lake. “Listen,” he whispered, as he quietly sat down. We sat in silence for a time, listening to the chorus of crickets, frogs, and other insects that filled the air. The sounds were mesmerizing, and lulled me into a trance until Michael spoke.
“Pay attention to how the animals are listening to each other,” he instructed.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but the animals did seem to be listening to each other. It sounded like the different species were taking turns singing. When the animals did speak on top of each other, they did so in a different register. It was like listening to a well-orchestrated masterpiece.
I was enjoying the music until an airplane flew overhead, causing all the animals to become silent. After the sound of the plane faded, the animals attempted to restart their chorus. It took awhile for them to get back in sync, as if each musician wasn’t quite sure when to come back in.
"There is a species of frog,” Michael stated, “that uses their unison chorus for survival. When they speak together, they sound like a much larger animal. Unnatural sounds, like that airplane, break up their unity, and when they try to join back in, one by one, they are picked off and eaten by predators. Because of that, some species of frogs are becoming extinct. It goes unnoticed by most people. We have forgotten, as a species, how to listen.”
I’d never thought about the possibility of noise pollution leading to the extinction of animals. I knew how awful certain noises made me feel, so it was not too farfetched for me to believe that these noises could severely affect other animals too.
I sat in a melancholy trance thinking about it. That is until Michael started making low guttural sounds. I didn’t know what he was trying to do. He kept it up for about fifteen minutes, taking short pauses and turning his head as if to listen in all directions.
All of a sudden I felt something land on my left leg. Then, it jumped to my right leg. It startled me. Inside my body, I was screaming. Outside, I was frozen and silent. I would’ve knocked it into the water if Michael hadn’t picked it up first. I tried to focus my eyes in the dark. I couldn’t tell what it was until I heard it make the same sound Michael had been making. It was a frog, a rather large frog. Michael turned the frog upside down and started rubbing its belly.
“All animals like to be petted,” he said. "This is Betty; she is a friend of mine. Her brother Jeremiah died recently.”
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog?” I asked.
“Yes, he was a good friend of mine.”
I started to laugh but then realized that he’d said that Jeremiah had died. Just in case he was serious, I acted sad.
“How did he die?”
“Pollution,” Michael replied.
"This area cannot sustain the number of frogs that it once could.”
“What do you mean? I come here all the time. This lake is well taken care of. The rangers make sure that nothing is dumped into it, and—”
“Noise pollution,” he replied, interrupting me, “or you can call it ‘vibration pollution.’ Either way, it is caused mostly by the airplanes and the nearby construction. The Friends of Radnor Lake Foundation has tried for years to get the air traffic rerouted so that the planes don’t fly directly over the park. They have tried but have not succeeded.
“Besides adding noise, the planes actually change the vibration of the park. That is not good for the animals or the visitors. Environmentalists know that the planes aren’t good, but they do not fully understand why.”
“Did Betty tell you that?” I asked, feigning seriousness.
“No, I could sense it. That is why I come here almost every night and sing to the animals. It helps reset the vibrations. The frogs seem to enjoy it the most.”
“You sing to them?” I asked, no longer hiding my disbelief. “And you’re trying to get me to believe that they actually listen?”
“I am not trying to get you to believe anything. I am just telling you what I do.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re a remarkable man and everything; I’ll give you that much. I’ll even go so far as to say that I believe you’re crazy enough to come here every night and sing to frogs, but you can’t expect me to believe that they actually listen to you.”
“Oh, they listen all right,” he stated, “better than most humans do. Most humans can’t listen past their limited intelligence. The more they think they know, the less they honestly hear. Humans only hear what they want to hear. Play a record for a musician, and before he can listen to it, he has to know who it is. And once he knows, he decides what it sounds like before he ever hears it, solely based on what he thinks he knows about the performer. What difference does it make who it is? What does it sound like and how does it make you feel? That is what is important.
“You could learn a thing or two from these animals; they know how to listen. Some of them don’t even have ears. They can’t hear at all, but they can feel. So with my voice and my whole being I create healing vibrations that combat the damaging vibrations in the air. The animals allow these vibrations to penetrate their whole bodies, the vibrations acting somewhat like vitamins. That is the best way to listen. Allow your whole body to pick up the vibrations, using the whole body as an eardrum.”
“I’ll have to work on listening like that,” I noted, trying to calm myself down. Michael spoke in a tone that seemed to match the peaceful place we were in. I, on the other hand, was speaking through emotion alone which made it hard to articulate my true feelings. Also, the dynamic of my voice was way too loud for the quiet space we were in, causing my rhythm to differ from that of the woods. Maybe a different technique would help. Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax before I spoke my next phrase. (Although slow, I was learning. )
"That’s an interesting thought,” I said, proud of my composure.
“Yes, but not a foreign one.”
“But you’re still pulling my leg, right? The animals don’t really listen to you, do they?”
“You know that plants respond to Music, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ve heard about that before.”
“Do plants have ears?”
“Well no, I guess not.”
“Music, like all things, is vibration; that is all. Because we humans can hear Music with our ears, we get stuck on the idea that that’s all there is to it. Most of us wouldn’t even consider the thought of seeing Music, or of hearing a flower. What we hear, we do not see, and what we see, we do not hear. We think that Music stops at the ears. That is a mistake. Vibrations can be felt in all places and at all times, even with the eyes. Music can be seen if your awareness is broad enough.”
Years earlier, while living in Virginia, I’d played a few shows at a school for the deaf and blind. It always surprised me to watch the deaf kids dance. They could really feel the music. Sometimes we would aim our speakers at the floor to help them feel the music even more. Some of the blind kids even claimed to be able to see the music. I knew that they were responding to the vibrations of our music, but I don’t think that I’d thought about it since then.
Although I couldn’t imagine seeing music or hearing a flower, what Michael was telling me made a lot of sense, but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t going to continue letting him suck me in with his sense-making nonsense. He was talking about singing to frogs! Now, that’s crazy talk in my book. Feeling my composure backslide, I started to respond but he beat me to the punch.
“Vibrations,” he continued, “are penetrating. Like ripples in the water, they bounce off you and they go right through you. An important thing to remember is that vibrations never stop vibrating. Think about that. Vibrations may change, but they never stop. That means that we should pay attention to the vibrations we’re putting out there.”
I wasn’t buying it. At least I wasn’t allowing myself to buy it, and I was ready to let Michael know it. “Do you charge the animals admission?” I smirked.
"They pay me in their own way,” he answered.
“Stop it, Michael! Just stop it! I’ve heard enough! You bring me out here at—I don’t even know what time it is—and spoon-feed me this nonsense! Do you really expect me to—”
I was enjoying creating my own noise pollution when, all of a sudden, I was stopped mid-sentence by a gentle sound. Michael started singing. There were no words, but the most beautiful sounds filled the air. It didn’t even sound like it was coming from his mouth. The music was just in the air. I don’t have the words to explain what I was hearing. I wish I did. It was angelic. It was . . . well, angelic is the best I can do.
I closed my eyes and let the music envelop me. It was easy to do. It was the first time I’d ever felt music with my whole body. I thought I’d done it before when I heard music that made me get up and dance, but even then, I was only hearing through my ears. At that moment in the woods I was hearing with my whole body, and the music was causing my whole body to tingle. It was a pleasant feeling.
I remembered my earlier lessons dealing with the tingle. I allowed the feeling to permeate my whole being. It felt so wonderful that I wanted to share it. Focusing on the tingle, I allowed it to travel outside my body. I pushed it out as before, but this time I expanded with it, keeping myself attached to it. (It’s hard to explain, but I know what I did.)
After a few moments, I felt something wet and cold touch my hand. I opened my eyes and saw a deer standing right in front of me, her nose touching my open palm. Even though I should’ve been shocked, the feeling was natural and wonderful. I reached out and touched her on the head just to make sure she was real.
I wonder if I’ll be able do this again while listening to ordinary music? I pondered.
“Already on to the next experience, I see.”
I didn’t know where those words were coming from. It felt as if someone was sending their thoughts to me. Then I realized that they seemed to be coming from the deer. I wasn’t sure, but as soon as I looked her in the eyes, more words entered my mind.
“All experiences as well as all Music are ordinary. It is up to you to add the ‘extra’ quality that makes something ‘extraordinary. ’ But like most humans, you risk missing much of the present experience by putting part of yourself in future or past experiences. I highly recommend you spend this moment in the ‘now’ so that you and the experience can share with each other all that you have to offer.”
Her voice was tender and sweet. I’d never been given advice by a deer, so I decided to take it. I closed my eyes again, allowing myself to be fully in the moment.
The Music Lesson Page 22
