what music actually is

My third run this week. Listening to music in all three runs. I went with symphonies: Bruckner 7, Scriabin 1, Beethoven 3.

A habit I had mysteriously lost.

Both the running and the listening.

I decided to start training for a half marathon I’ll run in September, and today I went running immediately after a gym session (why shower twice? That was my reasoning).

I chose a nice park with open space, sunset, yellow shoes, and Beethoven’s Eroica.

One minute into the music, my mind started elaborating entirely new thoughts, full speed. Assembling elements that were always there, but which today clicked together.

The Eroica is in many ways the best symphony ever written. I can explain this, but not now. Anyway, I was running in the pleasant summer breeze and this realization struck me with the utmost simplicity: music exists as testimony of the energy of life.

When you listen to the Eroica, you are listening to a man who is condensing the purest form of life energy into notes on paper.

Someone who understood this energy very well, and was truly in touch with it. His goal is to remind us, to shake us, to wake us up to the power of this energy.

“Fellow man!!! This is what life is about! Don’t ever forget, and stay immersed in its sacred flow, for your dear life!”

A second thought I had: “What does it mean when you listen to the Eroica and feel very little, or nothing at all?”

It means you are out of life. You have walked away from the source, for a thousand possible reasons. If you don’t feel much, you’ll probably even mumble to yourself: “Beethoven, chill bro. What is all this unnecessary bustling and fussing?” 

And that is a deadly sign.

Take notice and seriously go rethink the design of your life.

We admire artists who overflow with energy.

It doesn’t mean they are hyperactive and extroverted all the time. Life energy manifests also in very quiet but intense ways. And if being an artist is your mission, you have the duty to cultivate your energy to an exceptional extent. In ways that the majority of the population considers unattainable. That’s how you will be a testimony of life energy yourself.

Now go listen to the first movement of the Eroica.