Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way–Healing | Panacea

29 Dec 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I share many of the posts from that blog when I write them, as they fit in well here too. This one is about Nietzsche’s philosophy as an inspiration for an energetic/emotional stance towards life, for instance. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, and I’ll be writing another for 2022 in the next couple days, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

The emotional associations we have with music can be profound. We can tie pieces of music to places, people, times, feelings, or likely other aspects of human experience that aren’t coming to mind right now. Music has been depicted as speaking to our emotional depths since ancient Greece (Plato’s Republic comes to mind, and Nietzsche rehabilitates the Platonic concern around this emotional impact in his Birth of Tragedy with the conclusion at the end of a Socrates coming to his senses in his final days and making music). In other words, it’s long been seen as something that speaks to the soul, so to speak. I’m struggling to write this, in fact, because phrasing anything about it as a concept or a cultural history feels too weak, as it feels like a simple and undeniable truth that music speaks to and influences us emotionally.

For myself, the strongest versions of this emotional association to music are when I’ve associated it with a person and then have had that relationship end. It’s been nearly impossible to return to emotionally charged songs after breakups in different times of my life. I actually wrote about an instance of this years ago in another post. Facing emotional associations with only the resonance of something beautiful that has been lost is hard to sit with mindfully in any way. It’s hard to sit with at all.

For me, reclaiming the positive experience associated with music like this is a crucial part of the healing process. In a way, that’s a far more accurate description of the healing process done mindfully than “time heals all wounds” (which I’ve critiqued before as an incredibly poor metaphor); just moving on by diving into some sort of river of Lethe or, even worse, revising history – isn’t really healing. It leaves wounds unaddressed and open for more festering or vulnerability that could lead to defensiveness and other ego shittiness if challenged at all about what really happened. True healing is about finding meaning in loss, facing it authentically, and reintegrating the shards of a broken heart with new meaning and accepted vulnerability. It’s about authenticity, meaning-making, acceptance, and reintegration. This means that for something like previously loved music, it’s about finding your way back to it, and if it still feels beautiful and inspiring in some way once you can get past negative reactions, reclaiming it as part of your life – authentically facing the difficulty of this being part of your story, finding new meaning in it, accepting everything that happened and your struggle to get past it, and reintegrating it back into your life with that new meaning. The healing of an authentic, engaged, mindful, spiritually driven life is one of kintsugi.

With this in mind, I’ve recently been returning to a band I have more or less ignored existed for some time, even though at this time 2 years ago, I listened to their second album roughly non-stop, becoming one of my most listened to albums of 2020 despite discovering it only in the last few weeks of the year. That band is Silent Whale Becomes A° Dream, and the impetus for this return to encounter is that they remastered their first album, Canopy, recently. The album I was hooked to previously was their second album, Requiem, but this lower bar for reclamation feels more doable.

I was surprised to find in returning to this masterwork that any concerns about pain were completely washed over by just how unbelievably beautiful this album is. This band is one of the most amazing and most overlooked post-rock bands out there. They take the orchestral sound that Mono is either loved for or passed over for and take it even a step farther. It is magnificent, multi-layered, and epic. Furthermore, it is incredibly poignant. The second album has a description (I’m not going to quote it because its long) about looking out from an oceanside cliff on the ocean and feeling the pull of existential angst – that Sartrean idea that I’m free to jump off – and combining it with the sublime desire to merge with the beauty of such a moment. It’s the pull of that existential feeling as well as the loss of the ego in identifying with this beyond oneself, the power of the sea. That may sound dramatic, but this level of sentiment is within their music. It can shake you deeply.

Their first album is just as moving, and the final song caps it all off in full intensity, and fittingly enough, it’s titled “Panacea” – the miracle cure. In this song, we can feel the miracle cure of healing by facing our fears, our angst towards death, and the painful limitations of our ego’s stories which try to protect or cover over while perhaps avoiding the truth of things. This can all be overcome in a music-induced moment of kensho where body and mind fall away, and in returning, “you” are changed. Ironically enough, it is the perfect song for the spiritual endeavor of reclaiming and the reintegration that is healing. It is truly a symbol of that panacea that is an authentic spiritual journey if we’re open to the aspect that is the Untergang, as I spoke about in a recent post. I highly recommend you open yourself to the experience and listen to this song. I’m glad to have returned to it and reclaimed it for my own journey.

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Cross-Post: The Post-Rock Way – Hymn | Spotlight: Sigur Rós

15 May 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Music Tags: , , , , ,

This post was originally on my other blog about exploring spirituality and philosophy through post-rock music. I felt it must be shared, as the song I highlight and the experience I had in the described concert really resonate with the last post I just wrote. I recently wrote a post on the best albums of 2021 in post-rock, so I recommend checking that out if you find the music in this post interesting.

Last night, I saw another post-rock legend, Sigur Rós, and like in the experience of my previous post on Mono, I was left feeling touched in a way that’s difficult to describe – nearly moved to tears on multiple occasions. This surprised me, as even though they’re revered by many in the genre, I’ve never been deeply into Sigur Rós. I wanted to share a bit more about this experience.

First, I want to repeat a quote that came from Taka, the songwriter for Mono, regarding the spiritual experience that music can present:

“Music is about experiences,” Goto says. “Witnessing extremely loud sounds live is one type of experience. It’s almost like seeing a spark of thunder in a quiet night sky, then hearing the echoes of loud thunder. It’s beautiful, yet crushing – an unusual experience.”

“At the same time, subliminal music is extremely spiritual. Every sound and melody start to soak into every cell in your body, takes them subconsciously and moves them. Music can speak to everyone more eloquently than words. It’s close to philosophy. It’s a gift from God.”

Taka, from this story

Watching Sigur Rós evoked precisely this sentiment in me a few times throughout the performance, even though I wasn’t that familiar with their oeuvre. The super-fans around me were much more amped, clearly experiencing every note deeply and profoundly, much like I did in seeing Mono recently, but even at a more basic connection, the supreme artistry and intensity of this band moved me in similar ways with certain songs.

Personally, as a post-rock super-fan who has grown much more deeply into darker emotional soundscapes with very technical instrumentation over the last few years (for instance, Russian Circles is my most listened to band of the last two years), I found Sigur Rós’ instrumental aspect a bit more lackluster. It truly hinges around Jonsi’s amazing vocals to really create the emotional soundscapes that awe the listener.

Furthermore, this still fits post-rock in the way my first post on this blog outlined, as they have played with language to move beyond any easily understood concepts, even pressing a gibberish, created language into many songs to push beyond the barriers of language into an emotive space that the listeners are meant to resonate with and fill in the meaning themselves. This article really digs into that well.

For me, the songs that moved me were the songs in a major key, where the instrumentation resonated fullest with the falsettos of Jonsi’s voice. These songs gave me goosebumps and teary eyes, feeling like there was some deep cleansing of heart at play. They felt much like Taka’s description above, but the incomprehensible vocals that expressed emotion more than actual words pull the heart along like some sort of transcendent hymn to human experience. As Taka said, those moments are a gift from God.

There is probably no greater example of this for me from the set than Sæglópur from Takk… Takk means “thanks” in Icelandic, and Sæglópur means “lost seafarer”. The song is a mix of Icelandic and the band-created Hopelandic. It is one of their more well-known songs. I have been aware of it for years.

In listening to this song, you’ll likely feel a lot of emotions in the delicate, lonely beauty of the beginning and the crashing intensity when the rock experimentation in sound comes to the fore in mid-song. It pulls at the seeking heart, yearning for solace, facing challenge and pain, and continuing to press onward.

It’s a hymn to the human heart, and that feeling is what shone through for me with Sigur Rós time and again. The songs that felt like existential hymns, every last one of them evoked a sigh from the audience when they were over. That’s a spiritual experience that goes beyond words.

Philosophy Riffing | Heartbreak | Lack of anger, Chöd, the Hermit, Truth, and Kindness

09 Feb 2022 Leave a comment

by zeuslyone in Anger, Buddhism, Philosophy Riffing, Presence, Tarot Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This recording was about as much a pensive self-care/processing exploration as any kind of philosophical analysis, but there are some good ponderings in here without many real answers. I hope that it will be of value to others who are also stumbling along the Way of the Hermit/Sage.

Heartbreak | Sitting with Suicidal Thoughts

12 Nov 2021 1 Comment

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Heartbreak Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve kind of touched on the thoughts here in a recent post, but I thought they were important and weighty enough to address a bit more directly rather than abstractly. I’m hoping the vulnerability and sharing of process will support anyone else who needs it as finding the acceptance of friends and family has been crucial to continue sitting through these difficult feelings, whereas those who tell you you’re wrong, confused, or self-involved make it much more painful. I can only hope to give some companionship and feelings of being seen to those who need it.

I’ve honestly dealt with depression off an on throughout my adult life. It’s always around big changes and losses though – not the seemingly random nature of major depressive disorder, more the grief of the difficulties of a human life.

I’ve never really felt suicidal in depression, no matter how empty or meaningless life has felt. Not until this time. I’ve had the deep yearning to die regularly and escalating ideas of suicidal ideation since around mid-summer. It’s hard, and ultimately, it’s scary and tiring. Part of me has to struggle continuously not to sink into the abyss. Honestly, as someone deeply involved in existential psychology, I feel like it has to do with the famous quote: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How” (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning). I’ve personally seen the withering away when a “Why” is lost. In many ways, this is precisely the problem of suicide that Camus lines out in his discussion of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus. Facing one’s existence and projects in life as meaningless is the ultimate existential angst. It’s facing the feeling that life wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t here. Rather than the Heideggerean state of being verfallen and covering over one’s death, it’s the inverse – staring life in the face and asking why you were even born at all while struggling to find any answer, as any you used to have have dissolved in your hands.

That’s all cerebral, but the experience is anything but – those are just philosophy riffs to explain the experience. The embodied experience is much more raw and crushing. I’ve thought numerous times how great it would be if I had the courage to jump out my window. I even had a sudden urge to stab myself with a knife recently, but ultimately, none of this has ever escalated to the point of having true plans, means, or intentions enough to where I felt I needed help, beyond some time to sit, cry, and be mindfully present for my feelings.

For me, it’s been all pulled forward by having attached to ideas of partnership and love – ideas that I didn’t fully realize were such a strong piece of my identity, desire, and meaning in life. Now, I’m just not so sure of those ideas, and ultimately, I don’t think the answer is to try to find them again with someone else, so it feels as though my life doesn’t really have something to aspire to, to build, to find meaning in.

Speaking of attachment – this is a klesha: clinging. Clinging to those ideas has caused such a traumatic crash of meaning and identity, and it doesn’t seem effective enough to take the existential, well, rather, Nietzschean, approach of building some new meaning/project/values, i.e. creating some new take on love or relationships. Instead, I’ve been inspired by the Buddhist ideas regarding attachment. I’ve tried to sit with the feelings of attachment and let them dissolve. Instead, I try to show up, connect with people, and provide my kindness and compassion for the struggles they go through, and ultimately, every time, it has led to gratitude and sometimes, even, growth in the engagement.

I feel that showing up to these hardest of feelings is like what I’ve posted about previously as a famous quote from Zen that before enlightenment you chop wood and carry water, while after enlightenment you chop wood and carry water. Facing the toughest moments of life is about mindfully sitting in them, realizing that it’s just more life. The world is as it was before. Your perception and emotional reactions are all over the place, but ultimately, the same billions of years of history are before this moment as in the past. The same world is there. It merely seems different because of that Wittgensteinian idea that the world of the sad person is different than that of the happy: i.e. your evaluations of it are different, but the aspects of living your life as a human being in your life and home are the same in the broader sense (this could very much be lined up with Stoic ideas as well, especially Epictetus).

Mindfully being present and being focused on showing compassion for others is a simple and yet deep shift in approaching the mystery of living in an existence that’s always greater and more mysterious than the meanings you find in your personal projects and interpretations. Being present and vulnerable in such a way offers the possibility of seeing life as precious, just as it is, just as painful and heartbreaking as it can be in its most samsaric of moments.

Which brings me to the greatest counter-perspective I can emphasize to that of the suicidal abyss: experiencing life as precious. I’ve recently been thinking of Atisha’s slogan practices from Tibetan Buddhism. The first slogan “First, train in the preliminaries” was key to facing my dad’s death a few years ago, and recent Buddhist classes I’ve been attending have been key to bringing these ideas back to the fore.

There are four “preliminaries”. I’ll attach a photo of a post-it note I wrote years ago with my own take of them to remember them by. It’s on my fridge. I took a picture of it before a recent trip because I was thinking about these suicidal thoughts and the counter effort I’ve been working on in seeing compassion and wisdom to pull me back into this more engaged mindset.

My summary of the preliminaries

I’ll speak of slogan practice more thoroughly in the future (hopefully), but I’ll summarize these points here. Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes how rare and precious it is to be born as a human being in a time and place where you can learn the Buddha’s dharma – the truths and wisdom that offer you the possibility of breaking free from the painful reactions that make life so difficult. In a way, this summary of preciousness captures the point of the other 3 preliminaries as well as the Four Noble Truths in one go. A sentient life is one of the pain, disappointment, and suffering of dukkha. It’s one of standard patterns of action, walking through life with the same conditioned ways of re-acting (writing that way because we think of it as action, but it truly isn’t – reactivity is the most passive of ways of being. The only truly active freedom is in being able to sit with challenges and see your inclinations and choose differently in ways that do not continue the reactive patterns of suffering in your life). Waking up to a different way of being requires seeing the opportunity and wisdom that is available to you, embracing it with gratitude, and rethinking your actions based on the outcomes and results you bring to yourself through them (recognizing the 3rd preliminary that all action is karmic), working now to embrace that opportunity because you see your time is limited (recognizing the 2nd preliminary that death is coming), and finally, doing all of this out of the understanding that there is dukkha (the first of the Four Noble Truths which opens the whole Buddhist path before you).

When I think of the samsaric pain of loss and meaninglessness that I’m going through with all the suicidal thoughts attached to them, in other words, when thinking of the fact that there is dukkha, I remember another Buddhist passage I’ve brought up before, the poetic lines from Dogen’s Genjokoan: “Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them” (Shohaku Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo). Desire and aversion put us at odds with the changing circumstances of the impermanent world around us, but if we recognize those samsaric poisons within us, we can take pause and sit more patiently with the difficulties of life, allowing us to instead continue on with compassion for others and mindful presence for the moment at hand. We may no longer have the flowers of beauty, or we may need to contend with the weeds popping up, but we can be right in this moment, doing our best in it, and giving to all the others who are here struggling with their own pain at the changing circumstances they’re in.

May these words inspire and offer companionship to those who need them.

Gassho!