I first felt the
need to hear the music of the Universe early in my life. I spent
the summers of my childhood in the countryside on the outskirts
of Milan with my grandmother. One night I clearly remember walking
in the wet grass with my little dog by my side. 
There was a particularly bright sky, a full moon, Venus vividly
ascending, the Big Dipper so well-defined that I felt I could
reach up and trace its outline with my finger tip. Gazing heavenward,
I began to feel the most peculiar sensation somewhere deep inside
my chest. It was at once calming and distressing, a feeling of
profound serenity assailed by a feeling of desperate longing.
I knew even then that this serenity was born of my feeling of
oneness with the universe. But the longing -- what was that?
At that moment I heard a dog somewhere on the hillside start
to howl. Suddenly I knew exactly what my feeling of longing was
all about: I wanted to connect with everything out there. I wanted
to shout, "Look at me! I am a part of this glorious cosmos!"
I wanted to participate in the noise of the universe. I wanted
to join in the cosmic song! That is when it burst out of me --
part swoon, part primordial wail, part lyrical incantation. Without
thinking about it, without even knowing that it was going to
happen, I began to sing a song without words to the sky above
me. I was barely conscious of my grandmother standing beside
me as my song went on and on, now soaring, now a pulsing sound
coming straight from my heart. But when I had finally finished,
she took my hand and squeezed it. My grandmother knew this song. |
Over the years other songs have burst out of me since that first intense Experience of wanting to sing along with the entire Universe -- songs of love, songs of loss, songs of exhilaration, songs of total happiness. But they do not come so easily now. Self-consciousness comes between me and my spontaneous song. I too easily become trapped by words without a melody. I wish I had a recording of that first song I sang to the sky on that country hillside. It was the most heartfelt song that ever burst out of me. That experience of wanting to join in the cosmic songs is still reverberating in me today. More than 20 years have passed since that first ecstatic moment yet my need for music hasn't changed. As you said very well, music is to be the perfect medium in which to bring together "reason and imagination". My music today is at a point of a fusion of the artistic with the scientific, and at a new point, too where I believe enlightenment occurs. But I am not talking about enlightenment in new age terms at all. To me to be enlightened means to acquire spiritual understanding. It also means to be informed -- to have shaped the mind through teaching or training. Today we are slowly moving toward an era where people, capitalists, artists, scientists, musicians, and environmentalists, who once seemed to have very different points of view are coming together. We are going toward an enlightened community. One benefit of living in an enlightened community, with its greater breadth of experiences and knowledge is that our base of understanding -- our ground zero for how we view the world-- is expanded. The auto maker BMW has a new advertising campaign that captures what I believe is the very essence of enlightenment. The message is simple: "Engineering. Science. Technology. All worthless, unless they make you FEEL something." |
