The phrase Churchill is said to have coined when he refused to take the culture budget and allocate it to the war budget, declaring "then what are we fighting for?", is more than a phrase.
When I see the staging of a policy that swears by growth while having lost its meaning, I know that art, by the time we've finished destroying everything, will be all the more inescapable. I'm not talking about art as an added value in times of trouble, or even as a pleasant decoration in a dull environment. No, I'm talking about the very foundations of our existence. What differentiates human from a machine. This more in more tenuous boundary... Paradoxically it leads us to the essential, that lowest common denominator: fine, subtle, impalpable, unalterable. Whatever we may say, there's a world between human consciousness and the most sophisticated of machines.
But what is it?
Some say that what differentiates us from robots is intuition. I'm not even sure about that, given the colossal scale of technology. On the other hand, there's one aspect of life that no machine will ever be able to come close to: love. I don't claim that humans know how to love! In fact, it's perhaps the most contradictory subject of our existence. What is love? Even without knowing it, it seems to animate us every day, in one way or another. To love without reason. To love because the opposite, when it persists, is a nightmare.
This impalpable vibration is not a feeling, as French author Christiane Singer so aptly described it. It's not a mood nor an opinion. It's the very substance of Life. The substance we are. And yet, we can hate, be angry, be fed up... It doesn't change our fundamental substance.
So why art? Why music?
Neither religion nor science. Neither irrational nor rational. Neither reasonable nor futile. We could define music in a thousand ways that it is not. Like the most elusive of truths, it reminds us to see beyond our beliefs.
It is said that music is good for your health. In my opinion, it's because it keeps the heart open, or reopens it when it's in danger of closing for too long.
That's the real danger. The threat around every corner!
If we cut ourselves off from our heart, we cut ourselves off from our power, our intuition, our mental or physical health, from the Other and from ourselves, and therefore from life... In short, we suddenly see a disillusioned, mechanical, uninteresting world. Like the virtuoso who cuts himself off to appreciate the agility of his hands, the machinery will never be big enough to satisfy us. Boredom will set in, and worse, that emptiness we've been trying so hard to escape! Greater still, more overwhelming... No amount of entertainment will be enough to stave off collapse.
To those who are wondering how to create the life of their dreams and are looking for the right strategy, be it external, like a business plan, or internal, like the laws of manifestation conveyed by the New Age movement, I say it's neither the one nor the other.
It's the story of a garden!
Once the seeds have been planted, there will be sunshine, rain, storms and droughts. But if we stop caring for our garden at the slightest disappointment, it will die. Logically. It won't be the storm's fault, or our optimism or pessimism in the face of it. It will simply be because we didn't garden those days.
So, how do we keep the impetus to garden when we see no evolution, when all we seem to see are cataclysms? By knowing why we garden in the first place. It's not to "make" evolve. That would be so narrow... On the contrary, it's about infinity!
In truth, if quantum science says that information from the fields of all possibilities abounds at every moment, this world we call "subtle" is constantly ready to allow the path of our dreams. So why should we want to take its job?
Letting life take its course, without knowing how, gives us free rein to tend our own garden. This we can do. The rest is up to life.
Instead of questioning our degree of confidence in ourselves or in Life, it's better to simply tend to our garden! This is the creative act, this is what art transmits to us. Useless. Necessary. Suddenly, you don't know whether you're in a dream or in reality, life smiles, you dance come rain or shine... here appear cascades of joy and a myriad of miracles!
To each his own gardening.
Music, like gardening, heals wounds to prevent them from becoming gangrenous. It's the antidote to self-corruption, when the body hardens and the restless mind begins to lie to us. When it's time to rediscover the song of the soul...
Musicians are like shamans who heal us of our darkness. Paradoxically, sometimes with sad melodies. Sad enough to cry out even louder before wringing the heart out. At other times joyful, to remind us to be happy, for no reason at all.
The musician, when inhabited by his music in every cell, in every atom, in every breath, is one of those old man-children whose neck is impossible to wring, so pure is his heart. His eyes are clear, translucent. He is one of those travelers who sprinkle the sweetest perfume on their journey: that of love. A love that crosses rages, shadows and night.
Unchanging love, the infinite lightness of angels.
And this musician... is in the depths of each one of us. There is no human being who is not a melody, no heartbeat that is not a rhythm.
And so, deciding to prioritize our inner ministry, we can choose the direction of our battles, if any, and perhaps even end up lowering our weapons as harmony takes hold of us, as art reminds us of the alpha and omega of our existence.
In this month of February, the month of love,
I'm sending you all my music!
From heart to heart,
Hélène Tysman
