Language or the Kiss (The Indigo Girls)

Still feeling overwhelmed and less verbal than usual - the best cure for that is live music, and I'm headed down to a local coffeehouse to hear the most amazing Sam Pacetti (video above)...

The following appeared in my inbox today - the title is The Music of Language... but I believe the converse is true as well ("and music was my church" indeed... :-)

P.S. It's midnight and I'm just back from seeing Sam - I apparently conjured the song in the video this evening, as it was his first set opener, without any prompting from me - he began the second set with This Shirt, one of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter tunes. The remainder of Sam's repertoire was magical, ranging from other eclectic covers (Tom Petty, Greg Brown and Bob Marley) to his stunning originals - plus... he's a guitar wizard with an incredibly captivating voice. Sam feeds my soul, not only with his music but with his spirit as well - I come away from his concerts (and after-show conversations) feeling equally blissed out and regenerated...

Today's DailyOM
November 2, 2007
The Music Of Language
Words Are Energy

When we speak or write, we use the vehicles of words to carry meaning, as well as energy, from ourselves to another person or group of people. We may be speaking to our baby, our boss, or to an audience of 500 people. We may be writing a love letter, a work-related memo, or an entry in our own diary. Whatever the case, each word we speak or write has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves in the same way that a note of music creates waves. And like musical notes, our words live in communities of other words and change in relation to the words that surround them. When we are conscious of the energy behind our words, we become capable of making beautiful music in the world. If we are unconscious of the power of words, we run the risk of creating a noisy disturbance.

Some of us know this instinctively, while others come to this understanding slowly. Most of us, though, speak without thinking at least some of the time, blurting out our feelings and thoughts without much regard for the words we choose to express them. When we remind ourselves that our words have an impact on the world at the level of energy, we may find within ourselves the desire to be more aware of our use of language.

A fun way to increase our sensitivity to the power of words is to simply make a list of our favorite words and notice the energy they contain. We can write them down and post them where we can see them, or we can speak them aloud, feeling them reverberate in our bodies and in the air around us. This is like learning to consciously play an instrument that we have been playing unconsciously for most of our lives, and the effect can be startling and delightful. As we grow more comfortable and confident playing the instrument of language, we will begin to compose beautiful messages, creating positive energy every time we write or speak.

SONG: Language or the Kiss by The Indigo Girls

BOOK: Musical Languages by Joseph P. Swain

POEM: Prefix: Finding the Measure by Robert Kelly

Finding the measure is finding the mantram,
is finding the moon, as index of measure,
is finding the moon's source;
if that source
is Sun, finding the measure is finding
the natural articulation of ideas.

The organism
of the macrocosm, the organism of language,
the organism of I combine in ceaseless naturing
to propagate a fourth,
the poem,
from their trinity.

Style is death. Finding the measure is finding
a freedom from that death, a way out, a movement
forward.
Finding the measure is finding the
specific music of the hour,
the synchronous
consequence of the motion of the whole world.

QUOTE: "Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes