I wanted to bring all my senses into the experience of awe. So much of our view of the world is visual, and there is so much richness in the other senses. I recall reading somewhere, that no animal can survive if they are deaf. The loss of hearing is more detrimental than the loss of sight. I see that in my father as he sits watching his family laugh and play without being able to be in on it. My father has lost a lot of his hearing. He has hearing aids. When the group of us get together, the hearing aids can become just a bunch of noise. He makes up for it by taking lots of pictures.
I began exploring haunting music. Music, more than other art, seems to be personal. My husband is a big Led Zeppelin fan and I could take it or leave it. Classical music doesn’t seem to have the same polarizing effect. To experience awe from a rich melody, if you don’t care about classical music, I suggest you watch Ben Zander’s TED talk before listening to a most beautiful Mahler symphony.
My awe practice for today is to listen to Mahler’s Adagietto Symphony 5. It reminds me that there is beauty in the world and in the heart. Listen with an open mind and open heart, and let time stop.
In the fading forest a bird call sounds.
How out of place in a fading forest.
And yet the bird call roundly rests
in this moment that it made,
as wide as the sky above the fading forest.
All things sound together in that cry:
the whole land seems to lie within it,
and the moment, which wants to persist,
stops, still, as if knowing things
arising from that cry
that you would have to die to know.
Rainer Maria Rilke