Entering Resistance - Vibrations of Music

Hello Friends;

I guess I've known in my head, oh - decades now - that music is different for a Deaf person. During my hard-of-hearing years, I recall enjoying feeling the sounds I could not hear, mixed with the base tones I could. It was cool, and I never passed up a chance to do so, often taking a balloon with me to help the experience. A year ago, the base sound had all but gone too, and music sort of dropped off with me. Several months ago, I tested myself musically to see where I was at. The base tones were gone too, now, and I began experimenting with putting headphones over my temples and over a shoulder. I could feel the music. This comes in handy with movies, and lets me feel the explosions, screams and louder stuff.

Last night, I became aware that I had set aside what little music I was enjoying with a feeling of resistance. Maybe even anger and self-pity. I've always been a fan alternative music, and discovered a couple of months ago that all the Ray Lynch, Enya, and other New Age, was completely gone. That music not only tends toward the synthesized, but relies heavily on the higher notes as well. Both of these ranges disappeared long ago. I miss that kind of music, and realized that I was resisting trying to feel New Age & Classical music, as this would require letting go and mourning another loss.

Barn Owl played some music last night, here at Zen Center. It's genre is listed as Blues / Psychedelic / Trance. OK, this should be interesting! I chose to sit on the bare floor, "lodge" style. You know, that way we tell mediators NOT to sit? For music, lifts the shins and knees for me hold, and the whole arrangement forms  a sensitive position where it's easy to feel the different vibrations. (I was fresh out of balloons.) Not good for Zazen; but great for feeling sound.

jp/ec vancouver 2009. thanks Heidi

As they warmed up, I adjusted and moved and was able to feel it out. I did  not know what the genre was until I looked it up later. I was curious because it was two guys with guitars and and array of a dozen odd & colorful looking boxes arced out in front of each of them. All through the performance their attention was as much on these boxes' buttons & knobs, as they were on the strings. It was sort like getting to watch the painter paint the art, rather than looking at the finished work. It lent more to  my experience.

I think the songs must have been vastly different from one another. The first, the intro, I felt mostly through the floor. Oddly, I felt nothing through the floor after that. The second was felt in the chest, and knees, as I am accustomed to, and has a nice beat. The third was the highlight and was something I did not expect. I think it was enhanced because I could hear nothing of the music at all, and my attention was thoroughly into the sensations. Different parts of my body started vibrating with different parts of the songs! Thighs, shins and places my jeans stretched tight. Then my organs began to alternate! Lung lobes, then kidneys, heart, bronchial branches, collar bones, and some organs that must have been the liver or stomach. All  with a pattern! It was timely and organized. Quite a novel experience! The last song seemed to be in the skull and mastoid region, finishing up with the legs.

Music is not only sound, but vibration and visual as well. My clinging to music as sound was several layers deep. Below wanting to hear it, was the fear/belief of a boring simplicity in the vibrations, below that the need to let go of what I cannot change, and below even that, the need to just feel the loss of the sound of music, letting it have it's birth, life, and death, opening the door to experiencing music in a new way.