Music musings...

I was watching Portishead's DVD of their performance in 1997 at the Roseland in New York City. Incredible performance. I really like their sound. It's dark, moody, trippy (of course), noirish, all those words that have been used to describe their music. But it was a different kind of enjoyment, almost an intellectualization of it, a recognition of brilliance. I realized, about halfway through, that it is soulical, for lack of a better word, confined to this world.

Not a bad thing, mind you. I say that in comparison to my experiences during worship. It isn't that the worship music is necessarily different but there is something in the lyrics, the corporate worship and the aim of the music that sets it apart. It "lifts" my soul, quite literally, from this world. I'm still here but it elevates the experience here. It digs deep, stirs up all that is within, and carries it upward. It is cleansing, humbling, moving, stirring on a spiritual plane. Somehow it transcends in a way that "secular" music does not.

Secular music speaks from experience, telling a story from the soul. Somehow "spiritual" music circumvents this and sweeps underneath it all and blows it away, even if only for a moment, transforming our perception of our experience and purpose here. It is an ascent toward love.

There is thus a contrast between music such as that of Portishead and that of the music heard during worship. I'm not saying one is better than the other but there is a contrast.

As time has gone on, certain music that used to speak to me just doesn't speak to me anymore. I don't judge it. I'm just not there anymore. I gravitated from the Pink Floyd kind of darkness to the darker rage that would find a voice in groups such as Guns n Roses, Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana (all of whom seem 'pop' by today's standards).

I hear these groups today and it is a distant memory. Even some of the other groups I've enjoyed in the not too distant past are falling away. Mazzy Star, Morphine, Concrete Blonde and some others that used to drive me have lost their hold. Slowly, it seems, the same is happening with many of the techno artists that have buoyed me along.

I "want" to be into them, on the inside of the "cool", but am simply not there. So I experience it from an intellectual distance. I can't embrace them completely because I have heard a voice that speak over and above anything these artists ultimately say.

They may place into words temporary, "soulical" experiences, but they are not able to help me transcend the very things of which they speak. Poetry, certainly, even brilliant, genius, in many cases, but not transcendent.

I have a selection of lyrics from "secular" songs that have struck me which I will compile should the mood ever strike.