Richibi’s Weblog

       “Meditation“  (1936) 

 

            René Magritte

 

                  _______

                  

a story

 

while I volunteered at the palliative care

unit of our downtown hospital, a family 

asked if I could monitor their mother

while they took time off for lunch

 

of course, I agreed

 

their mother lay unsettled on her hospital

bed, jittery, shaking, distressed, incoherent,

out of touch, in her own nether, dissociated 

world, while the family, about ten of them, 

had been chatting, seemingly oblivious to, 

or unconcerned with, their mother’s flailing

 

they left

 

I sat by her side, placed a palm tenderly on 

her quivering arm, to impart what calm I

could, to bring her warmth, care, attention, 

and began to sing a mantra I’d learned at 

an ashram I had been attending, weekly, 

for months, after the death of my beloved, 

in order to find solace, consolation, Om 

Namah Shivaya, I chanted, gently, quietly,

over and over again

 

little by little, she settled, was becoming 

calm

 

then, in a whisper, she began to join in, 

Row, row, row your boat, she sang, 

over and over again, along with my 

own mantra, a duet of communication, 

despite even the incongruity of the 

tunes, we were meeting at an even 

deeper, primordial level

 

something stirred behind me, I turned,

the family was standing in the doorway, 

all held their breath, watching, as though 

they were witnessing grace

 

I think they were

 

a mantra is a distillation of the three

pillars of Western music, tempo, 

tonality, and repetition, what we sing 

to children to lull them to sleep, that’s 

what a mantra is

 

Row, row, row your boat indeed

 

the history of music in the West is 

the disintegration of those norms,

for better or for worse

 

here’s a solo, note, violin sonata of

Bach, no accompaniment, no piano,

his Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003

                  

Bach is of the late Baroque Period, the 

tail end of the Renaissance, when art 

was directed by the Christian Church,

Bach was in fact cantor, music director, 

of several churches in Leipzig

 

it took Mozart to kickstart the Classical

Era in the West, the purview, now, of 

the aristocracy, a process that started 

with Louis XIV, the Sun King, the art 

that he commissioned for Versailles, 

leaving the Church behind in a 

secularizing world

 

with Bach, tempo, tonality and repetition,

set the uncorrupted standard for the

ensuing ages, Bach is the next best 

thing, to my mind, to meditation

 

 

R ! chard