I discovered Mark Isham’s Miles Remembered: The Silent Way Project recording today…listening to the opening track, “In a Silent Way – Milestones.” I can’t get over how strongly Isham recalls Miles’ playing and spirit on this track. For the first time since his death in the late 80’s, I again feel like I’m missing Miles; his music, his presence on this planet, his talent. Just knowing that someone with that kind of talent is now gone from amongst us.
As I continue to reflect on my own experience as a musician and explore the connections between music and spirituality, I repeatedly arrive at questions of meaning and validity: In a world of finite creatures, why should music-making be so important? How can it legitimately lay claim to a life to the extent that it is the singular activity to which one wants to devote oneself? There are greater concerns in the world, greater realities that people encounter and have to contend with, and which impact our lives. If nothing else, the reality that one day each of us will cease to walk in this world. Against that, shouldn’t we apply ourselves to addressing those weightier concerns?
The answer I keep coming to is simply that music is a gift received and a gift to be given. It is the most ephemeral of the arts, yet it holds some of the greatest power to move. This fact alone lends a great poignancy to the life of music – sometimes flirting with the edge of despair. Even someone as talented as Miles Davis had to die; his art could not stave off his mortality, and it did not heal the all the world’s ills in any practical, readily apparent way. Yet it did – and does – continue to enrich lives the world over, making our journey here that much more beautiful, tolerable and evolutionary. It gives comfort and strength, it inspires, it provokes and helps us to grow.
Music may not be the Highest Good, the Ultimate Truth or the Final Goal in and of itself, but it certainly would be a poorer world without it.
