Magical Music

I’ve been reading this series of books. Its about magic, kingdoms, strange creatures from other dimensions, swords, shields, and crazy rifts in time and space; really anything a 13 year old mind trapped in a 23 year old body absolutely loves. The interesting and thought provoking part about this series is the way magic is portrayed. According to the author magic is nothing but the manipulation of the energy surrounding us. He calls this energy “stuff”, which is a real articulate name for something even we have yet to define (we actually call it higgs boson, but it has yet to be experimentally proven).

A few weeks ago I was sitting at a concert and began to think about this series. Don’t ask me why a book series popped into my head while listening to folk music, maybe it was the beer, maybe the relaxation, who knows. Either way I began thinking about magic.

As the musicians played I began considering how each pluck of the string is a unique way to manipulate the sound reaching our ears. And sound is an energy wave; a manipulation of some medium which, when coming in contact with three bones in our inner ear vibrates the molecules making up those bones. That vibration in turn vibrates a thin membrane and the initial energy wave is finally translated into an electrical signal. That signal travels to the brain and we “hear” sound. So I imagined each musician engaging in the manipulation of the surrounding air and invisible shapes taking hold; the beautiful tapestry of shapes traveling to my ear and giving me the intense pleasure of hearing a passionate harmony of instruments. The idea here is interestingly similar to the idea behind the definition of magic in these books.

Before the invention of the radio, and subsequently the TV, computer, mp3 player, iPod, etc music had a mystical quality to it. The musician was someone whom others looked at in awe, and in ancient times many of the musicians were given the responsibility of remembering the history of a people. Music had the ability to manipulate not only the surrounding medium, but more importantly the emotions of the surrounding listeners: hence the mystical quality.

Music still has this emotionally manipulative ability, but as I see it we’ve become a culture so saturated in music that unless a song speaks strongly enough it isn’t heard. And without being heard it has no ability to manipulate.

So maybe magic isn’t the Merlinesk explosions of lightening decimating large armies attacking Camelot but rather the subtle strumming of a master guitar player. And maybe we’ve become so used to this that it no longer is considered magic, but something mundane. But it still carries with it the ability to manipulate our emotions in a singularly unique way.

We need but to let it do so.