Part One

One of the many quirks accompanying my ill health - this a fairly harmless one, I trust - concerns music. A lot of the music which I would happily listen to, or at the very least tolerate readily, became impossible to hear. Some would actually make me feel physically sick.

There have been a few exceptions. 'Romantic' orchestral music, and piano concertos, could still be heard as a background accompaniment to breakfast. Brahms, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Dvorak, Liszt. Music that, once upon a time, I wouldn't have been seen dead giving an earful.

And Santana. Not most Santana, mind you. I am pretty ignorant of his - or their - musical offerings post-1980. But even before then, too much of his - their - music sounded too much like background sound track to Californian soap operas or B- movies. Easy listening - which always makes for hard listening.

No. I would single out a small sample of the complete repertoire. Santana Three and Caravanserai. These are albums of a high calibre; listen carefully to the quality of the music, its intricacies, and you may be blown away. Plus parts of the collections Abraxas and Moonflower.

There were bits and pieces of the Doors, occasionally, an album called 'Mundo' by Ruben Blades, but that was pretty much it. I am currently finding that a wider range of music is slowly becoming acceptable to me without causing nausea. Maybe it's a sign of some kind of recovery.......

Part Two 

One thing that I remain grateful to my former Buddhist teacher for is introducing me to 'the arts', and explaining how, in his view at least, they can be intimately connected to 'spiritual life'. His efforts to create a bridge between western culture and the spiritual traditions of eastern origin were streets ahead of those made by anyone else at the time. In fact, many other Buddhist set-ups trying to get established in western countries were inclined to completely divorce the two. Tibetan Buddhism came festooned with incense and mantras, and the Theravadins from Thailand and Sri Lanka appeared to renounce any cultural trappings whatsoever.

So my former teacher had the chops to look a bit deeper into 'the western psyche' and to see that it could not simply be stuck onto the 'oriental religions'. And to have a good go at bringing the two together.

I benefitted from assistance provided by one or two Buddhist friends whose know-how regarding western arts was way ahead of mine. My own initiation was into classical music, but after a while more specially into visual art. 

Part Three 

In amongst the wise words and sweet melodies was, almost inevitably, a fair dose of silliness. In the realm of classical music my teacher developed what I came to think of as the transcendental league table. Some music is better for your consciousness than others, many people would have no truck with this. But when we begin to formulate it, to classify it, it does, in my mind at least, tend to become silly.

Thus it was that the music of the major classical composers came to be evaluated in terms of its proximity to, and expression of, 'the transcendental'. It goes without saying that the transcendental saturated species was the one to listen to.

Top of the list seemed to be Handel and Bach. Baroque was the way to go. Its refined and mathematical nature communicated something purer, more elevated. Mozart was further down the list, and Beethoven was a massive no-no. As for those romantic composers of piano concertos who featured earlier on, well their music didn't seem to even qualify for the music chart.

On one occasion a member of our community, who was a musician, went to visit our teacher with the specific aim of delving deeper into his ideas about music. He came back with portentous news. Haydn was considered pretty positive and healthy, far more so than his prodigy Mozart, some of whose music communicated quite neurotic emotion. Thus was laid out the way to go. Apparently.

Part Four 

Fast forward rather a long time, and to the Highlands of Scotland. I am about to do my exercises. A decade ago these could passably be labelled as 'yoga'. But over the years a succession of changes, modifications, additions and subtractions to the regime have lent it an air that is unrecognisable as yoga. It now goes by the more accurate terms of 'stretches' or simply 'exercises.'

I've never been very keen. Work with and through the mind - meditation and similar - has always been more my cup of tea. And now, with the Highland winter rendering most of the 24 hours of the day pitch black and freezing, and the affliction of the sciatica-like illness, enthusiasm is at an all-time low. I need some music if I am going to get this going - another aspect which bars it from being remotely like classic yoga.

Bach! Let it be Bach! Please, it must be Bach. In order to overcome this lethargy, this apathy, I will need to go for the creme de la creme. The top of the transcendental league table. And let's really do the job properly, with the pinnacle of musical composition: the partitas for solo violin. This is something I have listened to a small handful of times over the past decade or so. But if we are to fly like birds in the sky, this is surely the way to go.

I begin my routine. It is 5pm, but darkness has descended outside; the good thing about this is that it is not possible to see what the weather is doing.

For five minutes, maybe ten, things go fine. Then a feeling that is familiar from the past begins to creep up on me. It is a kind of irritation, and it is a characteristic accompaniment to Bach and his baroque buddies. There is this regular, geometric, mathematical quality to some of the solo music especially. For a short time it pleases, but then it begins to make me, well, more than irritated. I can feel like smashing the place up.

It is this mathematical quality which is lauded as being the bedrock of the 'spiritual' aspect to this music. God expresses in terms of maths, some people will say. The Universe is mathematical. But more recently my studies have pointed me in the direction of the source of my feelings. This regularity is not, according to some, an emanation of 'God', of Universal Consciousness, after all. The matrix, the fake and copied world is composed mathematically. It is the false god who manifests in terms of geometry.

I halt my exercises, and turn Bach off. Now, where is my copy of Wishbone Ash and Argus.....????!!!!