***life raft - Brad Neale

Wordsworth once wrote in a little poem, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey:

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

That is harmony. The sweet song of everything beautifully intermingled with one another; not synchronized, but in tune. Nature, humans, Earth, "God", etc... the whole Oversoul thing. It's all in there.

The feeling you get when you sit down on a grassy hill, somewhere, and look out over something green and non-industrial. The smell of Nature. The fragrances of flowers'n'such permeate the rigid city-nostrils; a little bunny hopping somewhere doing something... blah blah blah. You've heard it all before. Harmony, peace, green stuff, and it goes on and on. Most of us are relatively well versed in the sort. Well, if you haven't tried it, you ought to; it's actually pretty cool.

Harmony is music to my ears, sometimes. However, the Happy Bunny Harmony isn't necessarily the best kind, all the time. Finding harmony amidst chaos can be quite beautiful, in some sort of sadistic sense. The stress of doing hundreds of things at once; everything blows up in your face and you have to begin anew while trying to stay insane. The insanity of it all. Only an absolutely neurotic twit can stay afloat in craziness. There's nothing wrong with that, now is there? We all know that feeling. There is something good and some bizarre fun involved in being "in a zone," no matter what it is dealing with.

The more I think about it, only true beauty and peace in the world come from harmony. Whether it be the sentimental melancholy of a knoll in Wessex. Possibly being strung out on caffeine as you see the sun come up and the last page of your term paper (you know... the one worth 33.3% of you grade) prints out. Maybe even the frantic drive to the all-night printer shop to get another cartridge of ink as the last page of your term paper comes out blank. Perhaps the ridicule of a peer, with the subsequent beat down. Almost everything I enjoy has something to do with either being harmonious, or coming into it. That is, MY harmony; the harmony I have selected as music to my ears.

However, the idea that harmony must be one specific thing for all people is not practical. It seems as though people take pleasure in returning themselves to whatever they perceive as harmony; regardless if their sense of order is contradictory to the norm. For example, a man that steals for his starving family. Necessity brings about justification to many otherwise inexcusable acts. A father stealing in order to eat and survive is simply bringing the chaos of that family's starvation back to order; having nothing to do with what anyone thinks. Stretching the point a bit, perhaps, but even stealing and killing for drugs is justifiable in the eyes of the people committing the crime. Looking through the eyes of a person hopelessly hooked on drugs, without the fabricated pleasure, their life would become out of control and slip into total disarray; only with the drugs could they return to their delusion of normality. With an even greater torque of the subject, the explanation of bombings could be a disgruntled citizen trying
to bring his government back to order. This is all taking into consideration the various situations here and most of these examples involve an understanding of order in no way anchored in reality. No, I don't condone stealing, killing, lying, cheating, bombing, and all of that socially unacceptable stuff.

In 1990, Kerry King wrote:

Nothing here remains
No future and no past
No one could foresee
The end that came so fast
Hear the prophet make his guess
That paradise lies to the west
So join his quest for the sun

Kerry King is the lead guitarist for a band called Slayer. For those of you who actually know who Slayer is, take a break for a while as I try to explain it. Slayer is a band; a band that plays the music that can exercise my mind, envigorate my body, and try my soul. It's metal. Speed, death, heavy (marginally), whatever you would like to call it, chances are you've never heard anything quite like it. Why is this music to my ears; this anarchical, "Satanic," droning, violent, political noise? For all of you out there with the loud opera music and closed minds, one of which revels in the false understanding of knowing me well, I will try to reveal to you why the insane youth of today listens to this.

Release. This music is intense; pounding, aggressive, angry; yes even strangely melodic at times. It drives me and keeps me whole. The cut-throat rhythms are a vehicle to release frustration that otherwise cannot be vented. The music doesn't anger me; please don't be so naive as to think that. I bring my own anger to it: suppressed anger brooding deep inside. Certainly, some of this is dealt with on the field or on the mat or in the weightroom; but some rage will not surface so easily. It's just as important to be able to sit in a chair and emote by oneself as it is on a football field or in breaking things. I've never been a huge advocate of rap, but gangsta rap does, I assume, basically the same thing for those that listen to it as it does for me. Ideally, the reasons for listening to these intense forms of expression are only because of the love of it and what it does for the listener.

Only with outside sources, such as music, can I truly explore and test my morals, beliefs, and core feelings with whatever the artist is trying to portray. The aforesaid music is raw and tries what I believe. It puts all that I know and live by on the table and shoots holes in it so that I may see and understand what could be problematic or hypocritical. People need to do that; check what they believe. Some of it might not be all it's cracked up to be. My music, among other things, helps me to do this; through it I can live a better life and clear up a lot of the inconsistencies in whatever drives me. Note that I'm not saying this music rules my life and brainwashes me into living by the devil and killing indiscriminately. It just lets me examine myself and prevent unwanted brainwashings by whatever might be out there: school (not education), religion, etc..

Along with all the above stuff, it sounds pretty good, too.

Here are some things that are music to my ears:

The crack of my joints as they fall into place in the morning.
The Spring breeze blowing through trees and across grass (ah, to reminisce).
The final whistle of a football practice (after conditioning).
The first chords of my favorite songs.
The smack of a referee's hand on the wrestling mat.
The clank of weights at the climax of a repetition.
A door opening.
A mouth closing.
Silence.
Thunder.
Whispers.

Whatever it is that tames your mind and cools your heart, let you hear it,
see it, or feel it; and may it never leave you.

Quotes of Random and Questionable Relevance:

"There's dignity in suffering --
Nobility in pain --
But failure is a salted wound
That burns and burns again."
-Margery Eldredge Howell "Wormwood"

"Though all society is grounded on intolerance, all
improvement is founded on tolerance."
-George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan

"When people hear good music, it makes them homesick
for something they never had, and never will have."
-Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings

"Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any a drop to drink."
-Samuel Colerdige Taylor, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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