How music can change the world
The notes sing under my fingers. Music fills the room, banishing outside noise, filling my mind and eradicating worries, irritations, my running to-do list, and thoughts about what to make for dinner. It’s just the piano, the music, the composer, and me, and for the length of my practice time, the rest of life is suspended. This is what each of us experiences every day when we sit down to practice. This is what pulls us back over and over again when everything else in our lives asks for our attention.
Life is complicated. Regardless of how serene we may appear to outsiders, there’s not one of us who isn’t being affected by world events, family issues, health concerns, or other worries. That’s because none of us—regardless of where we live or how much money we have—are immune to the reality of being human. We’re frail. We fail. And we rarely have control of anything but our own thoughts and actions.
It is in seasons of unrest that we see the true gift our piano practicing offers us. The discipline of coming to the keys each day provides structure when things feel chaotic. The incremental progress each practice session offers gives us micro accomplishments when everything else feels like it’s going wrong. Best of all, the beauty we create through the notes we play offers a joyful, life-filled answer to the ugliness we’re bombarded with every day.
There are those who say that playing the piano is an act of elitism or escapism. Many want to keep us in a constant state of outrage or to pull us into mindless escapism that leaves us out of touch with ourselves and our lives and offers little in return. To these people, making music is a waste of time. It’s selfish. Frivolous. I disagree. When we’re pulled by conflicting demands and the very real problems of life, the sanest thing we can do is to take care of ourselves first. It’s like the advice we hear on airplanes; first we have to put on our own oxygen masks before assisting others.
It’s up to us to give ourselves this gift—the gift of creating beauty, of communing with composers—and to celebrate one of the best things that make us human. And it’s up to us to then take the gifts our practice time gives us and share them with the people around us. Perhaps we play the music we love for someone we know will appreciate it. Perhaps we take what we learn in our practicing—diligence, attention to detail, patience, and joy—and apply it to the rest of our lives. Perhaps it’s as simple as treasuring our practice time because through that daily communion with beauty we find the equanimity to deal compassionately with the rest of life.
There have been pieces of music that have changed the world, but for most of us, our musical efforts take place on a much more modest scale. Many of us who made music our career bemoan the many ways we’ll never leave our mark on the world, but we fail to remember that the real power of music lies not in the applause we receive for creating it but rather in the ways it changes people from the inside out.
Can music change the world? The doomsayers and outrage experts will assure you that it can’t. They tell us every day that it is only through anger and violence that things change. They forget the most basic truth of humanity, namely that while circumstance change and governments rise and fall, people are still people with all the same failings and beauty. They forget that rage, like a forest fire, eventually burns itself out and that when we’re left with the wreckage of what’s remains, humans seek things that are life affirming.
And so, to the doomsayers and nihilists out there I say this: yes, music can change the world—music, along with all the highest moments of beauty and compassion and tenderness human beings are capable of creating. Music doesn’t change circumstances, stop wars, or solve climate change, but through the power of wordless beauty, music changes us. And through our changed lives, we can change the world, one compassionate encounter at a time.
Photo by Ben White, Courtesy of UpSplash