Blog o' Gnosis

The first ecstatic/musical/lucid dream I remember happened when I was about 15 or 16. At that time, I was the principal bassoonist for the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, and my life was strung with a pattern of lessons, rehearsals, concerts, after-parties, and more rehearsals. It was a good life, a great orchestra, and our conductor Denis DeCoteau knew exactly how to coax the best music from our hearts and souls. We had a dynamism and group energy that many older orchestras lacked, and I remember many ecstatic moments in our playing together. I sometimes felt, as my breath coursed through my instrument with every note, that not just my part but the whole piece was playing through me. The resonance of every part seemed to vibrate within each of us, and just by breathing together we made the music flow.

At that time, the city of Oakland was renovating the beautiful Paramount Theater, an Art Deco wonder in the center of downtown. By some fluke of scheduling, OSYO was the first group to hold a concert in the newly re-opened theater. As the curtain call approached, we lucky teenagers whispered nervously and peeked through the heavy velvet hanging at the back of the stage, watching our audience enter the hall.

Then it was time to play and we filed silently onto the stage with our instruments, professional and serious in concert black, as a gentle patter of applause rose from the plush seats below. From the stage the theater looked like a giant gilded music box, all gold leaf and tapestry, with titans and goddesses sculpted on every surface. Denis lifted his baton, and the surging of strings and jewel-toned brass slowly brushed over every surface, collecting in corners and rising to the rafters until the whole hall was filled with sound and the aging theater woke from its slumber to witness our musical offering.

Shortly after this I dreamed that:

I am backstage at the Paramount, and there is another orchestra on stage. The curtain is drawn so I can’t see them, but I am enraptured by the music they are playing. It is nothing I recognize, part Debussy and part Beethoven, with strains of Mahler, Shostakovich, and here and there a hint of Mozart or Dvořák. It is such a fluid sound that just as I try to pin it down, it changes into something completely different and I am newly enraptured. Then I realize that I am not reacting emotionally to the music, it is reacting to me, shaping itself according to my shifting moods. I am somehow composing this mysterious, complex and beautiful piece in every moment! It is a huge revelation, and wakes me up.

Like a music box itself I marveled at this dream, and have kept it on a high shelf since then, taking it down now and then to wind up and listen to once again. I have kept in mind its advice, too, and slowly through my adulthood have learned to act as though I were composing my own life, not just reacting to what was around me.

Two nights ago, I found myself by a tricksterish fluke in the orchestra seats of the Paramount at the first of three nights of Leonard Cohen concerts. I had ordered balcony tickets but that’s not what we got, so after freaking out about money for a few minutes, my friend and I went ahead and took our seats way down in “industry row.” It was a very good move, because that was the most remarkable concert I have ever experienced. Ever.

Leonard Cohen has spent a lifetime writing with scathing honesty, clarity, and wit about the range of human experience. His finely crafted songs stand on their own, each word placed just so to reflect light over to the next verse, where the same thought comes back again but this time with a snap and a shock of something unexpected. Most artists with his catalog of songs would wear them like medals, letting their gleam be the first thing one sees upon entering the room. Yet somehow, maybe through years of Zen Buddhist practice, Cohen has separated himself from his songs. He looks on their lives with wry amusement and a deep tenderness, knowing they are not him but being able to completely surrender himself to them the moment the song begins.

I have never seen someone sing with such passion and emptiness. He is like a reed through which the song blows, and yet he is present in every slow syllable of its passing. When it has fully passed, he takes a deep bow and returns to stillness, just himself, surrounded by the exquisite musicians that share the stage with him. Though he was obviously the master, they all stayed with him on the journey through each song, and every part was played with such precision and care that it took my breath away.

And there I was again, in the music box dream. This man was actually doing consciously, for an entire three-hour show, what I had dreamt about once, and only for a split second. The theater walls gently held his testament to the beauty and transience of life, and my heart rattled in its rib cage as I was pulled gently along into the flow of music by the power and artistry of his performance.

I don’t expect to see another show like that in my lifetime. There is simply no artist I can think of who matches Cohen on all fronts: poetry, voice, grace, wisdom, humility, passion, humor. Two days later, I still feel transformed by the experience. Yet it is not just the concert that has me energized. Out of the blue, the lid to my music box dream was lifted and music came pouring out. Only this time it wasn’t a memory, it was in real time. And I am still reeling from that unexpected convergence.

Who knows? Maybe a song will come from it someday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Dreams, Music, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.