Spirituality and Music

At Christmas, I had a book about drone metal and spirituality, which was a fascinating read. 6 months later, this is a much deeper reflection on the wider issues around this.

Now, just to do this properly, I will start by defining terms. This is not just about drone, but wider, however, it draws on experiences recently attending a gig with two drone bands. This will therefore be a longer post than usual, seeking to explore the wider understanding. I have also seen some interesting techno artists at Bluedot, which also feeds into this.

Spirituality

This is a difficult question as to what this means. Especially coming from a Quaker perspective, because we don't really like to define this. In a broad sense, and for this post, I am defining this as a sense of connection to an "Other" a "numinous". An understanding of a wider reality. This is deliberately broad, and covers a vast range of experiences.

And specifically, this was my experience with the gig I attended. The band - Nadja - make a lot of noise, and it is all-enveloping. And as part of this, I found that I experienced something very special - a real sense of being enveloped by the music, held by it, and transported by it. That was a spiritual experience.

Music

This is actually as complex a question as the spirituality one. And the answer will be as challenging to define.

Most formal definitions of music would include the elements of Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. This is where is becomes difficult, because some drone music has none of these. Well, sometimes there some rhythm, but that is usually all. And lyrics are scarce and utilised as another instrument, rather than as words to sing along with.

While one of the bands I saw did have some interaction - the singer came into the audience to scream into her mike. But there are a lot of bands of various forms (not just drone) known as shoegaze which is explicitly not interacting with the audience. It is - for these - about the music, not the performance, although the actual performance of the music is a different experience to just listening at home.

For the context here, music realy covers any aural experience. Probably a positive one for at least some people. Even though my parents might say "You call this music?".

To add to this, a lot of techno is heavily dependent on rhythm - although that is often also played with. And often little or not melody or harmony.

So, worship songs then?

Let me make one point firstly, that is probably contraversial, but I feel very strongly (which means that there is a very good chance that others feel the same).

Most of the music that we consider "spiritual" isn't. It is words put to music, and so often the purpose of the music is to lend a background to the words. Whether this is hymns played on an organ or songs played by a band, the music is not the important part. In fact, if the music is too prominent, there will probably be complaints that the band are "performing". This applies to great classical works too - those mostly considered very deeply spiritual includes words - singing.

Often, when we sing songs and hymns, while the words are considered important, we often sing them without really engaging with them. This is why songs can be really good for remembering information. We remember, but don't engage with the meaning of the words so much. It means that whether the information or idea is correct, we will embrace it. That is part of the power of music and songs, that we can absorb the words easily.

It is important to remember that, just because an expression rhymes doesn't mean it is good theology.

This sounds obvious, but I have seen so much theology that seems to think that word-plays make for good theological ideas - sometimes, they do, but that is when someone has worked to make an easily-remembered phrase from a truth.

A lot of the music traditionally associated with "worship" consists of "tunes" - either hymn tunes or song tunes, often designed to be straightforward to learn and/or play. Which does not necessarily make for good music. Songs are great for learning and remembering. But not always for anything deeper.

Songs without words?

For me - spiritual music is just music, without words. I am not down on words, but they serve a different purpose for me. 

The problem for me is that I want to - need to - engage with the words and understand them and process them. But when there are no words, but there is music, I can let it flow through me, take me on and move me. Music engages with a different part of the brain, and that part of the brain engages with our emotions. 

For grabbing and engaging, for taking you to another place, doing without the words means that you can engage with the emotion of the music instead, the feel, the other-ness.

Spirituality and music is complex.And so often, in church environments, because there is a clearly defined place for music, we don't explore this any deeper. And, of course, in Quakers, we typically have no music at all (which is fine for me, because I get my music injection elsewhere). But maybe we miss out, because we don't have ways of exploring spirituality and music - we dont have the discussions either, because they are not seen as specifically relevant.

And why is this on a Quaker blog?

Always a relevant question! But I think there are good reasons for this.

When I look at words, when reading, learning, exploring, I focus on the words. There is an intensity of word-focus there. Within Quakers, our silence is also intense. We do have words, of course, but they are also brief and intense in intent. The ultimate focus that the silence gives us is the purpose, and anything else comes out from this intensity.

But the music I love most is also intense. And, I think, for me at least, it is this intensity that helps me to engage with the more, the other, and so inspires my spirituality, my sense of the reality of the other. And I think - to an extent - this is why I could no longer stay in a church where the music was not inspiring. Rather - where music as a concept was not really given prominence.

What do you do?

 ,,, in a Quaker time of silence?

It is sort of a strange question, but the church is marked by doing things that we need to have explained to us. We stand to sing (because you can sing better standing); you sit, kneel or stand to pray, because of all sorts of different reasonings; You sit and listen to sermons, maybe you take notes, maybe you occasionally shout "Hallelulia".

And even in silence, there is - in most traditional churches - some direction. Two minutes silence "to remember those who have died". Silent retreats, where there is usually some input to consider on and work ones brain around.

In most churches where there is an expectation of new people, it is common to give some direction as to what book to look in, or that everything in projected - with directions.

But when you go to a quaker meeting, I was given a leaflet to explain a little bit of what would happen. But there is no real direction as to how you spend the time of silence. And - actually - that is quite good in many ways. Not least, because it takes some time to understand the nature and the meaning of a meeting.

So what should you do in a quaker silence. The answer is - as always - whatever you want, but this is some insight into what I feel is a way of using it. There are a number of stages that I find I go through.

Firstly, there is a time when you need to settle into the meeting, the silence. Some people will turn up to church early to quieten down before the service starts, and this is what the first part of a meeting is about. Settling down, maybe dealing with the issues you bring to the meeting or the distractions that have given you an issue, and let them disappear. That can mean giving them over to the divine for a period, before trying to deal with them later.

I find that next, something from the week tends to remain, and that seems to be my focus for the meeting. Not always, but often that is at least a starting point. Sometimes I stay there, and that is quite enough.

Of course, sometimes, someone will minister. Ministry is usually at least a chance to reflect on what I was thinking, and give a different direction to it. And sometimes, of course, it is unconnected to what I was thinking, is no help to me at all! Which is the way of meeting sometimes.

The time after is then, often, very productive, because I am wrestling to thoughts together. Sometimes there is some other "distraction" - something that occurs around the meeting house (or home) that gives me this other direction.

What I find is that, sometime around 45 minutes, there is a point of completion (for me). I find resolutions to the thought I have had come, but also, there can be other ministries - or maybe I have worked through to something to minister myself. What I find most intriguing is that the best ministry often comes 40-50 minutes into meeting.And the timing of meeting them becomes really important.

Anyhow - that is the anatomy of silence for me. There is more to it, but I find it interesting to consider the flow and progress.

Quakers, Spirituality and Drone Metal

 Now there are things that don't often go together, but I feel that should. I do need to explain first.

I should also point out that this post is coming out of reading a book by Owen Coggins  about spirituality, mysticism and drone metal, which is a very academic - but very interesting - consideration of this overlap. And, in the midst of reading this, I went to head Divide and Dissolve, a new drone metal band. 

Actually, whenever I try to explain what drone metal is, people make faces at me, and tell me how terrible it sounds, so I will address it in different ways.

Drone music as a whole - it can be applied across varieties of music - does not really comform to the usual assessment of music, which is usually driven by the three parts of Rhythm, Melody and Harmony. In that, id doesn't have a strong or consistent rhythm, there is usually no melody and harmony is also only present in very broken or distorted ways.

Drone metal in particular very much has a focus on volume, and because of this, the whole process of listening to drone metal is experiential. That is, you don't really "listen", because that is not how you interact with it - you feel it, you are enveloped in it, it is a whole body experience, not just a hearing experience.

There is also an interesting visual experience. I have not been to that many drone concerts (OK, just one, but I have another one in the calendar), but Coggins explains more about the visual aspect of a concert - especially by bands like Sunn O))) (pronounced just sun, and one of the leading drone metal bands) - which is less watching the musicians, and more seeing the towering speaker systems. In fact, there is a view - outlined in Coggins - that the real instrument on a drone metal performance is not the guitar, but the amplifier.

So how does all of this relate to spirituality? Well, mainly that there is a drive to force you to experience the sound, and the performance. People say that they have experiences while listening that are not dissimmilar to deep spiritual experiences - being elsewhere, encountering a reality that is different to the normal one.

The nature of the music - the all encompassing experience, the way that it utterly removes a chance of remaining untouched, or unconnected - is important. It refuses to allow other random thoughts, or distractions. It is so all-encompassing that it forces a review of the world. Like other spiritual practices, it takes you out of yourself.

Another interesting aspect is that drone metal usually it produced by a downtuned bass string with fuzzy distortion. This means, in lay terms, the bass string(s) (sometimes all of the strings) are tuned to be lower than usual, so it doesn't have quite the tightness and sharpness it normally does. Also the effects are used to make the note very fuzzy - so that even the natural harmonics that you would get are often not present.

The effects of this are to make the sound very earthy. It means that the music has a tendancy to ground you, to make you feel part of the earth (that may well be shaking!). In fact, as Coggins points out, there is a lot of imagery around this genre that focuses on weight and solidity - and this whole experience gives a sense of our connection to the earth, the planet. There is something deeply spiritual in that - it is not a fly-away form of spirituality, it is about our existence as part of the planet we spin on.

Incidentally, in case you thing this is all very strange music, bear in mind that Pink Floyd on "Shine On" start with several minutes of a single note with some guitar on top of it - a style that is close to a drone style. And John Cage's As Slowly As Possible is being played on a church orgen in Halberstadt over an estimated 600 years. So others have toyed with these ideas. It is only in fully fledged drone metal that the intensity and volume are also added to make the experience even more immersive.

But can I relate this to Quakerism in any way? Well, at Christmas, I did describe a meeting as like a drone version of other churches 2 minutes silence. But it is more than that. The spirituality of drone metal is an all-embracing sense of connectedness, sense of earthiness, and presence-with-non-presence.

There is a spirituality in meeting that is not always easy to understnad or appreciate. It took me several meetings before I started to understand what the silence was about, what it meant to be there. When you first hear drone metal, if you are not used to it, there is a sense of it just being noise (like a meeting is just silence).

Spirituality in drone metal, as well as in a quaker meeting, is about being both in the here and now, and in another place. It is the sense of connection with "here" and "elsewhere" is the essence of the spirituality. It is the connection with the numinous, the divine, that is so important as Quakers. But it is this connection with the "other" that many people find in drone. That is spirituality.

The Luddites were right.

 This may be a strange idea coming from a software developer. But I will return to that later.

I have been reading Kropotkins "Mutual Aid" recently, and it is an interestsing thesis. What is more, as I watch programmes like Digging for Britain, ther eis a resonance there. Let me explain in my own words - drawn from Kropotkin but my interpretation.

We have an idea - promoted and established throughout our society - that the Western, industrialised world is more advanced than "Primitive" cultures. In particular, the paternalistic, heirarchical society in the best way to be, and the natural organisation for our society.

The truth is, I think, that this is a myth propogated by those who wish to keep their power.

History tells us that the Roman Empire was the peak of civilised society, for all its problems. They made roads, they waters their cities, they protected their people. Those outside were called barbarians, because they didn't have this civilisation. Well, actually, it is beause they didn't speak Latin, and their language sounded like "Bar Bar Bar Bar" to the Romans - this is just the common demeaning of "others" that we see even today (Rees-Mogg is considered to talk sense because he has a posh voice, Rayner is demeaned because she has a Stockport accent).

When the Romans left, of course, the UK fell into the "dark ages" of uncivilised society. Of course, what that means is that the records we have are minimal, the structure of society becomes more hidden. Without the admin and documentation, we assume the society is less "civilised".

The truth is, I think, that it was more civilised. The inequalities, the murder, the rampant empire building of the Romans (under the guise of "Civilising the Natives" as was the British Empire centries later) was corrupt and broken.

"Ah no" those in charge will say. "Look at the monuments they built - that is the indication of their civilisation." Monuments build - usually - with slave labour. To honour someone who was not worthy of it, but had power to make it happen. Often the worst of people. But people wrote about them, so we know - admin and documentation.

I would take the view that these are the indications of a broken society. In many of the "primitive" societies, they communicate their stories and their skills verbally. I would say this represents a far more advanced environment than one where everything is written. Stories told have so much more life and vibrancy to them - this is why we read stories to our children, sometimes even when they are able to read for themselves. This is why poetry that is performed is so much more engaging than poetry on a page.

And skills - well, I know that in my business, documentation is both something I hate doing (along with most others who are developers of some form) and very difficult, because it needs to go into such a lot of detail. Passing on ideas, approaches, concepts is much easier in person. You cannot learn skills form a book, you need a person to work with you. 

And I am also reminded that the film industry also sees this divide. Look at, for example, Avatar. We are definitely encouraged to be on the side of the Na'vi. The people who are the community, who work in harmony with the Earth. And we are expected to be against the RDA, the technologically advanced side. We see it in Lord of the Rings as well. We are always expected to be on the side of the nature-lovers in the films. And yet, in the real world, we are expected to be on the side of the technological teams. And they are not compatible.

 

But what about the Luddites? It is the same thing, in a different context. The mill owners insisted on running things for their own benefit. When they found they could introduce machines to produce their products cheaper, using machinery, they did, and removed the workers. They did this to make more money for themselves - to increase their market share. To keep their money coming in.

The problem here is that, by reducing the VALUE of a product to financial, we don't take into account the HUMAN aspect. If people work together to produce what they need, it is entirely possible to introduce new machinery (as Kropotkin describes) for the benefit of the whole group. By losing this, the ideas of mutual aid are sacrificed to the god of capitalism, and that is why I think the Luddites had it right - they saw the route we were going, that has lead to global outsourcing, and the tragedies like the Dharma collapse. Losing the mutuality is a bad thing - the more advanced societies are, oddly enough, the ones where they do not have the Wests sociopathic capitalism drive and insistence of paternalistic heirachies.

More recent evidence has come from the pandemic times in the UK. The biggest success has been the vaccine rollout - largely done by volunteers, which is the mutual aid principle. Driven by the NHS (which is an example of a mutual aid organisation on a large scale). The biggest disaster has been teh Test and Trace, which was just throwing money and failed to achieve anything.

What if?

 What if the Christian story originated in the North? I mean, not Wigan, just somewhere in more Northern lattitudes, rather than on the Med.

It is a question that struck me recently, with the shorter days here - something that doesn't happen to the same degree in Israel, but is important in the UK and even more so into Scandinavia. I am not saying a different understnading would be better, just that it might be different.

Phrases like "From the rising of the sun to the setting, the Lords name be praised" (Ps 113) - well, in Norway that would mean a couple of hours praising God in the winter, and 22 hours in Summer. This is not the intention of the passage, but the change of day length is so core, so fundamental to those of us in more Northern locations that it would hold a different meaning.

The sense that God departs in the Winter - something that is quite common in folk legend - becomes part of our inherent understnading, whether we mean it or not.

There is a related matter that is also important - in Israel, at around 6:00 in the evening, the sun vanishes, and it turns from light to dark in a matter of minutes. In the more northern places, we have a think called a "sunset". Especially in the summer months, this can be an important part of the sun going down - this transition is significant, and in some places even further North can be very extended. Even to the point where the suns light does not entirely vanish. The low sun, even at this time of year, lightens up the horizon. This is so much a part of our understanding of the evening, it would have featured. The transitional times are at the core of our relationship to the world. The rather black and white interpretation of good and evil that some put on the Bible messages comes from this light and dark relationship to the world.

Maybe in the North, we would have introduced more gray into the equation.

The context was also one of a very consistent seasonal pattern. Of consistent patterns across the year, of hot times and of rain. I am reminded of Luke 12: "When you see a cloud in the West you know it is going to rain". In the UK at least, it just means you are East of Manchester. Clouds not only don't mean rain always, but they don't always mean a lot of rain where you need it. Or when you want it.

Now, of course, farmers do know the patterns and signs of the weather, but it is far more complex than the comparatively simplistic weather patterns seen in Israel and that area. This is why in the UK we always talk about the weather - it is highly unpredictable. This is why the Weather Gods of the Northern lattitudes are seen as a lot more capricious. It is why the mythology of Northern Europe is so much more about a battle with nature, about adapting ourselves to the world, than about rights to land.

That might have proven a much more environmentally sound approach.

Finally, one of the features of Israel is the desert - or wilderness. the barran land, where Jesus went to be tested. In the UK we don't have deserts, and even in the further North locations, the wildernesses are more likely to be ice-deserts. Equally inhospitable, but in a different way, meaning the temptations would be different. I wonder, also, if some of the imagery of Hell would be different - maybe less burning heat, more freezing cold.

 

The conceptions of this world and next are very much based on the environment these stories were developed in. The challenge to those of us living in different environments is to take these stories and images, and understand the messages contained within. And then to re-interpret them in ways that fit and work for us. To see the reality of the divine as it related to us, here and now.

And not to ignore the cultural and environmental influences on the story we tell.

Evil

This came up today in meeting, and I have been thinking around it since - it never quite solidified into anything within the time.

I come from a tradition that tends to personify evil - the Devil or the Demonic. One of the problems with this is that it tends to lead to a combatative idea - which turns into an "Us and Them" mentality: good vs evil. Of course, the Christians are on the side of Good.

I have moved from that position. In fairness, I get why it can be helpful to personify the evil, and the good, to be able to identify these as differing sides to people. But I think we need to understand that there is no "us and them", there is only us. That there is no devil and angel on our shoulders, there are just our own desires and intentions, and we need to balance these to make the right decisions. It is our own responsibility to choose what to do and to take responsibility for those actions.

This came partially from the conviction of Sarah Everards murderer. It is easy to assign this to "an evil person" and so to "other" these types of people, that is, to make them fundamentally not like us, and so deny that there are evil intentions in all of us, that most people manage to control. That is, to deny their humanity, because it is challenging to accept that they share anything with us.

But near the end of meeting, something else happened. I look out over a tree in the park opposite, and it has been interesting to watch it over the year as it changes. Now, of course, the leaves are starting to turn brown as Autumn sets in, and at this moment, the sun shone through it making it glow golden. The reality is that this golden picture is only possible because of the dying of the leaves - it will, in a few weeks, be bare, I am sure. The death of leaves, and the regrowth is part of the life of the tree. Without this death and regrowth, the tree will not grow

And it made me think that the reality of ourselves is that the dark side of ourselves - the parts we might not want to acknowledge - might the parts that make us grow. That make us shine golden. That make us the well rounded people we are. They are part of us and accepting that is how we grow.

Edge of Tomorrow

I am actually watching a film with this title, but it is also referring to the so called "Freedom Day" that is tomorrow (19th July) as I write.

I know that many who are clinically vulnerable are really worried about the relaxing of restrictions, and for then, "freedom" means precisely the opposite - it means they are unable to go out as much.

So it made me consider the difference between "Freedom From" and "Freedom To". There is a lot of celebration of the supposed freedom from restrictions. I totally get that people want to be free from the restrictions put on us - because wearing masks is uncomfortable, and keeping social distance is inconvenient. Yes, I totally want freedom from these restrictions.

But also, we need to see it as freedom to - freedom to wear a mask, to protect others, freedom to act in a way that considers the needs ot other people. That is also freedom.

Freedom always has two sides. I have freedom to use the roads to drive on to get places, but that freedom means that I have a responsibility to drive safely, and it constrains others from their freedom to drive however they like. These restrictions are not that severe, and they make the world safe for all.

For some, it would seem, the need to keep wearing a mask is too far, too much. Some people celebrate freedom day when they no longer have to. But "freedom from" restriction should also mean "freedom to" make the right choices to keep everyone safe. They are no longer legal requirements, but that does not mean they are no longer a good idea, for everyone.

Keep safe.