Many of us take the ability to listen to music for granted. The phonograph was not invented until 1877.
Before that, if you wanted to listen to music, you would’ve had to either play it yourself on an instrument, listen to your friends or family play, or buy a ticket and go to a concert.
Nowadays, we can go to YouTube or Spotify and listen to just about anything that’s ever been recorded for free.
This is an incredible privilege, but also something that is weaponized in order to lower consciousness, and make a few bucks along the way.
It started with Rock and Roll, which helped destroy the nuclear family by promoting self-destruction via the normalizing of easy pleasure (sex with strangers and drugs), and has led to where we’re at today, which is an amplified version of that.
The pop music at the top of the charts is not intended to uplift and provide solace to the soul, which was music’s original purpose.
Soldiers would historically sing for morale (this is also why there are army bands). Chain gangs would sing to make their excruciating lives bearable.
Speaking of prisoners, one of the greatest scenes in movie history is in The Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne locks the warden’s office and blasts Mozart on the prison’s sound system, and everyone becomes hypnotized by the beauty of it.
They couldn’t understand it, but they could feel it.
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t wanna know. Some things are better left unsaid.
I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.
I tell ya, those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in the great place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away.
And for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.
Modern music is mostly about violence, spending money, petty relationships, ego-trips, sex, trends, and making money. These are much easier to sell and get people addicted to because they appeal to the lowest, fundamental parts of our being; the animalistic, flighty aspects of who we are. Pleasures of the flesh.
To go a step further, this music can also be tuned to frequencies that deeply impact our physiology by leveraging our chakra systems, which resonate at certain frequencies.
The ultimate goal is obvious, and is to reduce us to animals, specifically cattle. Cattle are much easier to control and harvest than wild, intelligent beings in tune with their true natures.
I’ve often wondered how this devolution came to be, but the thing is, people used to be more intelligent. Brain volume is decreasing. IQ is decreasing. Everyone’s bodies are pumped with metals from birth now. People’s pineal glands are calcified.
Having said that, what still differentiates us from animals is that we have the unique ability to choose what to do with our time. As in, if we’re resourceful enough, not all of our time has to be spent on activities that keep us alive, but also that resonate with our essence.
(*The amount of free time to do this is dependent on our resourcefulness)
Classical music has the ability to do this; elevate and free the soul while still in its body by relating to it and speaking its language. This type of music can only be intellectualized to a certain extent. The real message cannot be expressed in words.
What is “classical music”?
The Classical era is usually understood to mean the period in which the central ‘classics’ of the standard repertory – essentially, the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – were composed: that is, from about 1750 to some time between 1800 and 1830.
The word ‘Classical’, which is derived from Latin classicus (meaning ‘of the first class’), is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘Of the first rank or authority; constituting a standard or model…’
It is used to distinguish cultivated music that is not popular or traditional, and is used in a sense that implies acknowledgement of some kind of authority, seriousness of purpose, superiority, and of the idea that it has stood the test of time.
It is applied to the music of composers of any era, from the Middle Ages to the present day, and might even be understood to include serious music of the avant-garde.
Along similar lines, classical literature was written to provide inspiration, courage and direction for the soul.
Classical literature and poetry with second and third-degree meaning behind it has evolved into first degree thrillers and non-fiction self-help.
Everyone’s trying to “heal their trauma”. Show me a human life without trauma (impossible) and I’ll show you an individual who probably hasn’t learned much, and is traumatized from that.
Classical music and literature are tools to help us accept the hardships of life as universally human. Heartbreak, regret, confusion, sickness, abuse and loss are nothing new.
We’ve lost our ability to cope with hardships because we don’t actually accept and live through them. We instead distract ourselves from them because we so easily can, so we’re not actually present. We cheat the pain that eventually comes back to bite in other ways because it’s not addressed, but the debt has to be paid at one point or another.
It is life-changing to have the internal tools and resources to face hardship head on, which most people in the modern era don’t have, because they weren’t instilled. These resources, which can be developed via classical music and classical literature, make it easier to put things in perspective rather than jump to the next distraction.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have parental figures or teachers who actually exposed them to these resources. Most children these days are not raised by their parents in the rat race, but pop culture.
I doubt in 300 years we will be listening to Miley Cyrus, Post Malone or Travis Scott outside of an analytical context. I’ll bet that people will still be studying and appreciating Bach, Liszt, Chopin, and Shakespeare, though.
The difference is these artists didn’t create their art for the same reasons. They didn’t do it for fame or a quick buck, but because they were aware of their timeless genius, devoted their life to developing it, and wanted to share it with the world because there was nothing better to do.
Is there anything better to do?
Listening to classical music is an act of rebellion. Reading classical literature is an act of rebellion. Being spiritually and mentally equipped to face anything life throws at you without needing to distract yourself or poison your body is gangster.
