The Mystical Language of Music: Dylan, Son or Daughter of the Sea

The poet Alice Oswald has said recently that ‘the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction . . . The physics or nature of water is metaphysical, meaning that its surface expresses more than itself.’ That is water’s allure: it can always mean more than itself. It is a substance in the world and yet its meaning, or the meanings it can carry, are as elusive as meaning in music. When Schumann was asked what one of his compositions meant, his answer was to play it again. In music, meaning and being are inextricable – it means what it is – and water shares that quality.- Adam Nicholson

I am not just talking Zimmerman!

Dylan was derived of the Welsh components dy and llanw, meaning “sea.” In Welsh mythology, Dylan was a legendary sea god who prompted all the waters of Britain and Ireland to weep when he died.

Baron Friedrich von Hugel, in his book, The Mystical Element of Religion speaks of the need for Science, Religion and Mysticism to Interact and Rise to the Challenges of Human Evolution. I will focus in my Presentation on the “Role of Music” and how it interacts with Science and Religion to take us Into The Mystic as Van Morrison once sang.

Viktor Shklovsky, founder of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language, said: “The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar.’ We find material obviously created to remove the automatism of perception; the author’s purpose is to create the vision which results from that de-automatized perception.”

At times when the world feels unstable and unsustainable both environmentally and socially, many people no longer believe in any ideologies, which are view merely as marketing for the wealthy and powerful. Confidence in Media, Expertise and Governance is in tatters at present as all of those sectors are not trusted as working for the future of the common good.

As Gary Gerstle has written in his book, “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era,” we are coming to an end globally of a faith in the rising tide raising all boats and that markets unfettered will take care of us all.

Amidst the turmoil and despair that creates the temptation of authoritarian submission to quell the angst that has arisen alongside the abandoning of scientific mantras, the fear of not knowing where to go or what to do is haunting. Faith in organized religion is also suspect. Not in the philosophy per se. But in the human institutions that are viewed with suspicion as they dance with human yearnings for social control that are channeled into our corrupted politics.

As Bob Dylan once famously sang:
How Does It Feel To Be On Your Own, With No Direction Home, Like a Complete Unknown, Like a Rolling Stone.

We cannot just resign to the spiraling down on, as Barry McGuire sings The Eve of Destruction! What is the pathway to healing our environment, and our trust in governance and society?

I grew up in Detroit, Michigan USA at a devastating time.

Marvin Gaye famously sang that:
“We’ve Got to Find a Way to Bring Some Loving Here Today”.

And Motown’s Stevie Wonder beckoned us to search for “Higher Ground.”

I believe that Friedrich Von Hugel’s third dimension, “mystical arts” can rise to the challenge and fill the void in conjunction with religion and science. But mystical arts are being called now to lead.

Friedrich Schiller, who hailed from Stuttgart, where my marvelous artistic grandmother was born and raised before coming to the USA to become an artist, agreed with my sense of the importance of arts in human evolution.

His book, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, (Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen), first published 1794, which was inspired by the great disenchantment Schiller felt about the French Revolution, its degeneration into violence and the failure of successive governments to put its ideals into practice.

Schiller wrote that “a great moment has found a little people”; he wrote the Letters as a philosophical inquiry into what had gone wrong, and how to prevent such tragedies in the future. In the Letters he asserts that it is possible to elevate the moral character of a people, by first touching their souls with beauty, an idea that is also found in his poem Die Künstler (The Artists):

“Only through Beauty’s morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.”

It is from that perspective that I will visit the role of music and key periods in social history, and illuminate how often arts, music, poetry, pottery, painting and sculpture are rising to the challenge of healing the incoherence of society.

As George Harrison wrote famously with an eye towards his learning from Indian mysticism, on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:

“Within You Without You”

We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth
Then it’s far too late
When they pass away
We were talking about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew
Try to realise it’s all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you
We were talking about the love that’s gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul
They don’t know
They can’t see
Are you one of them?
When you’ve seen beyond yourself then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you

We are at an ominous time. As Baron Friedrich von Hugel intimated we need all three dimensions of social evolution. But right now it is time to come together. As the Youngbloods sang to us in the 1960s in their famous anthem entitled, “Get Together.”

Love is but a song we sing
Fear’s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why
Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
If you hear the song I sing
You will understand, listen
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command
Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.

As a son of a Scottish musical mother, I tune in to the Scottish band “The Waterboys” frequently They once sang about daunting challenge:
These things you keep 
You’d better throw them away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!
Now if you’re feelin’ weary
If you’ve been alone too long
Maybe you’ve been suffering from
A few too many
Plans that have gone wrong
And you’re trying to remember
How fine your life used to be
Running around banging your drum
Like it’s 1973 Well that was the river
This is the sea! Wooo!
Now you say you’ve got trouble
You say you’ve got pain
You say’ve got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust
Nothing but chains
You’re scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea yeah!
Now I can see you wavering
As you try to decide
You’ve got a war in your head
And it’s tearing you up inside
You’re trying to make sense
Of something that you just can’t see
Trying to make sense now
And you know you once held the key
But that was the river
And this is the sea!
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!
Now I hear there’s a train
It’s coming on down the line
It’s yours if you hurry
You’ve got still enough time
And you don’t need no ticket
And you don’t pay no fee
No you don’t need no ticket
You don’t pay no fee
Because that was the river
And this is the sea!
Behold the sea

We can surf the wave of the arts again and again and invigorate our hearts to rise to the daunting challenges before us.

Where is our destination?

John Coltrane called it:
A LOVE SUPREME