Music is a language that any being can enjoy and understand. We are moved by music universally. Even without being able to hear, music carries a resonance that alters our energy in this dimension. Words and language can fall short in being able to capture experience. Words can describe an experience but they rarely are able to actually carry the weight of it adequately and truthfully. Only truly word-blessed individuals can accomplish moving and opening us up and, rarely, can they ever move us quite like music can.
This is why I make my blog multimedia. Words are a thing and important but adding music dance and visuals? That feels more true.
Hafiz talks about wishing his words actually carried the same experience music does in this poem. He must wrestle with this rudimentary tool of words only to approximate the rendering when he truly wants our souls to dance, dance, dance to what he is saying.
Thank you for listening.
Video: And so we dance... The music carries us onward and few do it, lyrically, as well as Stevie Winwood does in this song, Spanish Dancer. He describes what it feels like to have the force of a soul moving through a body when creating and performing. There are so many of us fumbling with our tools to express ourselves and so few who can actually get it right. We are blessed that so many DO get it right and are able to deliver the goods so splendidly.
I can feel the beat like a Spanish dancer, under my feet
Makin' the world go 'round, I can't come down, hey
You can't hold me, when I get to feelin' this way
It's all over, I'm inside the music that's playin'
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.