I can’t stop the music; I could stop it before

[ornoth]

These days, it’s not so outré to live without a car, or a television, or to not bother going to the movies. But tell people that you’re giving up music, and you’ll be surprised at how strongly people react.

Music obviously has a great rep. It’s the stuff of life, it’s how you share emotions, it’s something you need in order to get through the day.

Meditation is all about watching your mind, and after seven years of practice, it’s pretty obvious to me that in addition to all that, music also has some negative aspects.

One is obvious to anyone who has taken mass transit or visited a school in the past five years: for most people, music is how they escape the unbearable tedium of whatever’s happening right now. All they need to do is stuff a pair of ear buds in, and they can avoid interacting with other people, escape being alone with their thoughts, and avert their attention from the present.

As you can infer from my language, I don’t consider those positive attributes. Without social interaction, life is bland and featureless. Without solitude and introspection, life lacks depth and self-knowledge. And living for some other moment than the present is an outright denial of life itself.

“But,” you say, “not everyone’s so desperately trying to avoid life. It’s possible for me to enjoy music in moderation, right?” Let me tell you what I’ve observed.

We’ve all experienced the phenomenon known as an “ear-worm”, a song you can’t get out of your head. Sometimes it’s a song you really like; sometimes it’s a song you really hate. But there’s a reason why we say some songs are “catchy” and have “a hook”.

What I’ve observed is that after you listen to it, every song echoes inside your head for a while, bouncing around at random. In addition to this short-term resonance, a verse can lie forgotten for decades, but has the power to interrupt your thoughts, leaping into the present from some vaguely-remembered childhood exposure. From Barney the Dinosaur to Pink Floyd, from Bach’s Brandenburg concertos to Einstürzende Neubauten, and from ABBA to ZZ Top, music resonates in our minds like nothing else.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing until you look at it with the perspective of a meditator. Meditation is about developing sufficient concentration to examine one’s sensory input and thought processes in detail, and the steadiness and equanimity to accept everything that this process of self-examination unearths. Meditators value attributes like stillness, calmness, and peacefulness of mind, and they seek to avoid mental states of agitation and distraction.

I’ve gone through long periods of my life that were filled with music and equally long spaces when it just wasn’t important to me. In my meditation practice, I’ve taken the time to examine my mind and how it operates when I’ve been exposed to music and when I’ve gone without, and the difference is clear. Music agitates the mind, interrupts concentration, and causes one’s thought patterns to return to the tune over and over again. But one doesn’t need to be a yogi to understand that an ear-worm interferes with calmness and steadiness of mind.

Interestingly, music never got much attention in the Buddhist literature I’ve read. However, I was intrigued to find the following passage while reading Bhante G’s “Mindfulness in Plain English”. While he is discussing storytelling, music clearly produces the same kind of energy for similar reasons.

Mental images are powerful entities. They can remain in the mind for long periods. All of the storytelling arts are direct manipulation of such material, and if the writer has done his job well, the characters and images presented will have a powerful and lingering effect on the mind. If you have been to the best movie of the year, the meditation that follows is going to be full of those images. If you are halfway through the scariest horror novel you ever read, your meditation is going to be full of monsters. So switch the order of events. Do your meditation first. Then read or go to the movies.

So I’ve gradually reduced the amount of music I am exposed to, and for me it has been a net positive. Naturally, there’s both benefits and drawbacks to this approach, and there’s clearly a middle way: a path of wisdom and balance to be found that allows one to integrate music into one’s life in a way that doesn’t agitate the mind nor encourage withdrawal from the real world.

Although I don’t consider myself particularly deprived by this action, I’ve been surprised by the visceral reactions people have when I mention it, as if music were the absolute last thing they would consider letting go.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

An interesting idea.

"Visceral reaction" Are people startled or offended?

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

I think a bit of both. I guess music isn't something people really ever think of as having negative effects, and so they have a hard time relating to the idea of reducing it as anything but an expression of arbitrary and misguided renunciation.

Music is something a lot of people hold dear, and Americans don't seem to be particularly good at accepting that others might make different life choices, whether it be religion, politics, sexual orientation, living style, sports teams, or whatever.