Deep Listening
by cehryl
December 1, 2025
i shut my eyes, this is a ceremonial practice. i enter this formless, pre-real and post-real realm space in my head — beyond it, actually, guided by the delicate melody that is sorrowful and contours upwards and downwards like a primitive speech. there are questions, there are exclamations, there are considerations, there are reflections, there are confessions. it encompasses everything i have ever touched and everything i have yet to touch and everything i will never touch. i surrender to it completely and in return it holds me. it is really the only thing that keeps me sane, and safe.
i shut my eyes, this is a ceremonial practice. this is ancestry, this is folklore, this is an echo from past lives and future lives, i know this song, i know this sound, i know this sensation. i couldn't explain it to you, not through an essay, not through a song. it is familiar and intuitive to me. it is kneejerk. i am sitting here with my spine curled and my back hunched but inside of me there is something screaming, crying, kicking, dancing. the movement is internal. but it connects me to the eternal something. what the thing is i don't know. but i trust and believe everything this music communicates to me. i am understanding something ancient.
sitting next to me there are these two people that arrived late and pushed through the silent, standing audience to colonise front row seats, now chatting and laughing over the music. with my eyes still closed my anger further inflames the intensity of what i'm feeling. hello??? can anyone else hear what i'm hearing?? the very essence of The Thing — transcendence, radiance, completeness, flow, the source of consciousness, whatever you want to call it — is present in the room with us, and you dare interrupt?
my frustration interrupts. i return to the sound. the oldest known instrument is the divje babe flute and it dates back 60, 000 years ago. but vocal music - melody - predates the instrument. melody predates language. people love to talk about how music is "like a language". nah. that’s far from the truth. that is a severe reduction of divinity. music is vibration of air, the consequence is decoration of time. speech is “like” music, but not even. it is spiritual energy. pushing atoms to reach those who are listening, really listening. only music allows us to surpass our physical form. when you really let music free you — your body, your ego — you get the all time access pass to travel through time, space and form. when you really surrender to being a medium of music, you no longer care to entertain material concerns, like society's views on beauty or success. when placed next to the cosmic, timeless gravity of Music, those fears are laughable, forgettable. when you surrender to music, all fear dissolves. in this cursed age where everything is heavily masked, only music will set us free (again).
i shut my eyes, this is a ceremonial practice. i think about clarice lispector, i think about hermeto pascual, i think about simone weil. i think about d'angelo. i think about laurie anderson. i think about i ching. i think about sartre, i think about john cage, i think about lamonte young. i think about john cale, i think about karlheinz stockhausen. i think about them and then i let go, i do not think. i let the music pass through me.
i shut my eyes, this is a ceremonial practice.