music , mind , thought and emotion

I really must get back to the silence for awhile, but let me seek return back to detlof (now that we are all here...)

What is the purpose of music?

We've had some interesting discussions above about where it might have originated as far as patterning in our cultural/primordial past, but, here, in our present, why are we drawn to music and not just sound?

What is "in" music that causes us to feel that it is a meaningful activity? Is it just because it makes me calm - its own sort of pleasure (absense of thinking pain) - or is there something else that is happening? Just an emotional tonic?

If our listening is more than just listening to sound patterns - that we derive meaning from the experience - then what is that meaning?

Why does it happen at all?

What is the purpose of Music?

Detlof asked many questions, but before we can answer some of the others, maybe we need to answer his question: "What is music and what does it do to us?"

Be well.

Be well, detlof.

To me music can be as a catalyst, which opens my mind, which silences thought and all wanting and in the openess it can afford, and in what rushes in, there is a taste sometimes of the essence of our existence. Words here are nothing but a clumsy translation, hypostasising a myriad of emotions of all hues, images and flashes of insight, which come and go. What remains often however, is a deep gratefulness of simply being alive. Music (and rythm )touch me more, than anything else ever could. I've had this since earliest childhood and it has never been otherwise. When someone very close to me died and I was raging in anger and despair, in the night after she died, I dreamt that I myself was dead and in some "other place", where I suddenly met Bach and we both played four handed on an organ. We made the most swinging and beautiful Jazz I had ever heard in my life, before or afterwards, dreaming or not, and when I woke up, I was still sad and bereaved but calm in my loss. The rage was gone and never came back.... Music...my questions still stand.

Music, to soothe the savage beast.

What is the beast?

When the beast is gone, the white dove flies skyward in silence, a halo of Light all around.

What is the purpose of Music?

What did you feel when you just read what detlof wrote, what bach wrote - both in words/notes - now into your mind...

Maybe the question is not what music brings "in", but once there, in our minds, what leaves?

If so, when that leaves, what remains?

PEOPLE, WHAT IS THE WINNING PRIZE FOR LOTTO THIS WEEK. I'S RAHTER GET THE TICKET. HA...HA... HA...HA...HA...