A close friend of mine and I have been having interesting discussions for over 20 years now. It started over email, now we do it via text. After reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” enough times (and I especially love reading interviews of artists interviewing their artist friends), I realized what a powerful form of sharing this can be even for those who don’t even know you. Same reason why “My Dinner With Andre” was such a popular movie in certain circles. Two friends who haven’t seen in each other in years catch up for 2 hours over a meal – and that’s the plot of the film.

They share their successes, their disappointments, their philosophical differences – maybe even gloss over the hard truths at times for the sake of not being too vulnerable. But it is the existential, philosophical conversation between two once very close friends that is so meaningful.

This is why we hold onto these friendships, however rare. They are a mirror.  Even when two people end up leading totally different lives. With this other person, you can remain a solid witness to your life. Otherwise, it can seem like you are just an unobservable person living out your mundane routine. You’re alive of course, maybe even experiencing a whole range of emotions, but the context is slipping away.

Forgive the gravitas, but it is true. Especially for those of us who have moved across the country or world; married and divorced; changed careers; evolved; experienced loss; grieved alone; maintained superficial relationships; discovered that our lives were/are very, very different that we thought they’d be.

I think it is difficult to talk about music. It’s difficult to talk about art. Why would we want to sit around trying to talk about creative things? When it’s not personal, these kinds of conversations can be nothing short of irritating. I don’t need to listen to a particular artist pontificate about his/her/their process. I would like to hear about what makes them feel things – if they are comfortable revealing those thoughts to total strangers.

Anyway, here is the conversation. Maybe it’s more interesting to us because we are both musicians and good friends.

I am C, he is P.

P: Musicians are intuitive beings. Even the analytical ones rely on deeply, bodily learned intuitions about intonation or the amount of pressure to put on a string – all of this unconscious, inaccessible knowledge that is at play every time they play a single note. The complexity of feeling and meaning in a single melodic phrase is almost infinite in itself. There is so much about music that truly cannot be known or understood. Especially by the musician. But all of it can be felt and intuited, down in the subterranean tributaries.

Shit, “Hello, It’s Me” is playing now. There is so much visible sunshine in this song.

C: I think about the percentage of people in the world who actually care about music – then of that percentage, how many can feel it? I’ve learned that not many people feel music, or know how to – it’s a lost language in the modern world. Then you go to parts of Europe or places that haven’t been so culturally saturated, and music really affects people.

P: And of that percentage, how many can make sense of the feelings? This is why I’ve begun to read music criticism obsessively lately. Somewhere in one of those books, one of those writers must put their finger on something I can feel urgently but cannot articulate. I live for that. It is my life’s centralmost pursuit.

C: That book that I bought recently: Electrodynamic Man – should have a sequel that observes frequency changes in the brain/limbic system in response to certain pieces of music. I think resonance and timbre impact people the most.

P: Yeah — I looked that title up. It sounds very fascinating. Keep going, if you’re able. I would love to understand where this is coming from.

C: It’s not an intellectual process – feeling music. It’s something far more primal.

P: True.

C: It’s why drums became an integral part of ceremonies across the globe. Mimicking the sound of the human heartbeat: the first sound we hear.

P: But I yearn for some, like, unification of all of the parts of myself with which I apprehend music. I want to feel the understanding and understand the feeling.

C: You’ve just described mysticism. We cannot rationalize mysticism. This is part of what has ruined us.  So many people reject mysticism because it doesn’t come from a rational, scientific or reasoned place. But we can talk about mysticism in more spiritual terms.

This is why people reject astrological research, or cosmology, or soul retrieval – all of the things ancient peoples understood but couldn’t break it down in re: reason. I don’t believe we live in a reasonable universe.

Mysticism requires relinquishing control to something bigger and more mysterious – it requires a certain level of vulnerability.

Like what you wrote earlier about what I might feel living in New Orleans: “it’s the confluence and the release: The Mississippi synthesizes and the many-channeled attention span of the Delta’s mind wanders as it falls away.” This is mysticism.

P: And drums entrain the musician and listener. Whether it’s a foot tap or dancing or playing an instrument in time. That entrainment is actually a very sensually bodily experience — my favorite part of making music with sympathetic others. When you can feel what they feel because you can hear yourself feeling them and them feeling you. That’s the shit.

So – what you’re saying is hitting me pretty hard. It’s one of those things that is making sense in a way that is making me a little queasy. Like hitting too close to home or something.

C: Absolutely – feeling is everything when music is involved – or most things for that matter.

P: I’m thinking about my experiences with LSD. I get almost nauseated with anxiety on acid. Just like crippling anxiousness.

C: I know I have suffered from trying to wrap my head around things intellectually when the answer is either simple or simply unexplainable.

P: And I think it might be partially to do with what you’re saying above. If there is anything I hold true about myself it’s that I can find interesting fucking ways to communicate interesting ideas. That’s like, who I am. That is central to my sense of self. When LSD takes that away from me, I get violently seasick with anxiety.

C: Mysteries aren’t always solved. I have found intellectual solace in pattern recognition but can’t always explain much further. That’s where mysticism takes over. I understand. So often it is about control. I suffer from this too.

P: This is why I compulsively joke. Even in the midst of a transcendent experience, I will crack incessant wiseass remarks. Creating language is this thing that I fucking do. Take that away from me and nothing is okay. Yes- it’s about control.

C: You are a deeply mystical person – that’s what’s always drawn me to you.

P: Have you read anything about self-objectification? Or have I talked about it lately? It’s been heavily on my mind.

C: The things you understand and can articulate that move me deeply aren’t intellectual – they are mystical.

P: I am a mystic in my thinking and in a sort of spiritual sense, but I am intensely fucking resistant to letting a mystical experience just happen. Not without popping off at the mouth about it. And then panicking if my jokes aren’t funny!

C: Not specifically that subject.

P: Yes – playing by ear.

I’ve been composing in a new guitar tuning because I have no analytical or intellectual understanding of what I’m doing whatsoever. And what surfaces is this whole world of music that I could not compose by using what I know about music.

C: I too have suffered from personal identity crises – strongly identifying with anything scientific to prove that my intuition has validity. It’s the world we are living in.

Yes – I can relate to you so much. It was relinquishing control that opened me up musically.

P: Here is a question I’m tempted to ask but I know it won’t get me where I want to be – or that where I want to be isn’t really anywhere: What don’t I understand about the mystical force that operates within me? Other than that it can’t be understood? What are the operative misunderstandings that influence my ability to experience this mystical layer of experience that I’m, much of the time, actively suppressing by controlling it…?

C: It took me years to do it. I think trauma helped release it.

It’s the American ideology around fame and recognition that has helped make the musical experience more about control. It was getting out of my own way that opened me up. It was letting go. Not micromanaging, not judging…

P: I love it when I hear you let go of control on record. I think it’s because it’s like it captures the moment of you apprehending the enormity of this force that inheres within your body. And that is just intrinsically erotic.

C: I completely agree and feel the same way. I hear that in my voice. Naturally that’s erotic because it’s about totally letting go.

P: It almost requires the sacrifice of one part of the self for the restricted part to be given itself. Or the silencing of the self-critical part. Self-objectification is a concept that has actually helped me physically relax in socially awkward situations like meetings where I feel like I’m supposed to say intelligible and not egregious things. The idea is just that our idea of who we are is inevitably tied up in an idea of who we’re supposed to be. And when we identify only with this idea of ourselves we’re identifying with only the most narrowly defined infinitesimal sliver of our actual being.

This simple thought has allowed me to relax my body in ways I haven’t been able to in years. It has drastically decreased the debilitating social anxiety I feel constantly. And it’s almost non-cognitive. It’s not an idea I think about intellectually. It’s a reality I remember and it removes the filters.

C: That’s wonderful. The journey to self allowance is inextricably bound up with self relinquishing. The stronger we are in our spiritual sense of value, the less the external world has control over us. It’s a lifelong journey.

We don’t need to disappear or people please to relinquish either – we just need to allow experience to happen rather than enter with dukes up.

P: I think my body is still operationalized by trauma in the deepest ways. I feel a sense of urgency to do something about it because, as they say, hurt people hurt people. I also owe it to my kiddo, who suffers very much from similar pathologies to mine, to show him that healing is possible.

C: Yes – we were raised by traumatized people who then imparted their trauma onto our personal traumas. It’s a vicious cycle. All comes back to seeing the world around us as one giant therapy session.

P: Did you watch any of “Get Back”? You know that today is the anniversary of the unspeakable, yeah?

C: I haven’t yet.

P: I’ve been giving more and more thought lately to the idea of Rock n Roll as a religion. It’s actually totally plausible.

Theologians hold certain foundational beliefs to be irrefutable, but everything else is up for grabs. The Church of Rock n Roll would just be endless debate about the merits of the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart. Today would be a holy day on account of Lennon’s assassination.

This may very well be the only organized religion I would have any interest whatsoever in participating in. But I would go every week.

Yeah – and you can watch Paul McFuckinCartney do the same thing for the song “Get Back”. Best part: as he’s writing lyrics out of these nonsense sounds, he keeps or tosses them by saying it “doesn’t sing right” or “it sings right”. This speaks back to that intuitive apprehension – the sound above the sense of the syllables.

C: I heavily relate to this – I started doing this on “Winds Take No Shape”. If the words get in the way of the music, they need to “get back”. Music is precognitive that way. It tells a story of life before we understand what happened.

P: Yep. Preverbal.

C: Music enters my consciousness like a dream of somewhere I’ve been before –  but I can’t remember the details, only the feeling. Similar to how we experience light with our eyes, but because our ears take in information in our peripheral, it’s more complex.

P: I love what you did there. With “get back”, I mean. Yes. And great songs frequently feel instantly familiar.

C: For example, seeing danger isn’t as threatening as hearing it. When we see something coming towards us, our instincts know what to do. But hearing something threatening produces different stimuli. It can take us many different places neurologically. Especially when beautiful music is associated with traumatic events – that happens for some people. Arguably, sound is the arena for our deepest traumas but also our greatest joys.

P: Especially very low very loud frequencies.

C: Our lives are often so structured – everything in its right place. Then music comes along and creates worlds out of thin air. Maybe there’s a structure in it that resonates – maybe a lack of structure that helps us transcend to other realms – but something my choral director in high school used to say: “you can’t hang a piece of music on a wall. Once the song is finished, it disappears. You can perform it again and play it back, but there’s nothing tangible or constant.”

P: “Songs build little rooms in time…”

C: Maybe its a reminder to us that we are not constant either – we are temporal.

P: And maybe that’s why the songs of our youth hit so deep – they stay the same while we change.

C: And remind us of a time we can never really return to.