Life Experience or Experiencing Life?
Art by Tomás Saraceno. The work is called Cosmic Spider/Web.
For the first time in a long while, a piece of music has given me an indescribable sense of excitement and inspiration. Penetrating deep into my soul, it ignited within me a profound sense of “oneness and wholeness.”
When I listened late one night to Peter Gabriel’s “Put the Bucket Down,” a composition from his forthcoming album O/I, due to be released this November, the surge of life energy it awakened in me kept me awake until morning.
Perhaps what I experienced was a kind of “awakening.” Perhaps this is exactly what the ancient Chinese medicine tradition means when it speaks of the fluid energy of Chi flowing through the meridians—the channels of our body.
Just as we nourish and help our flowers grow with water and sunlight, the impact that every form of art has on us helps us cultivate ourselves and feel whole. Music, poetry, painting, theatre, cinema—every form of art enables us to experience life more deeply, to connect with that unchanging nature within us, and to bear witness to the miraculous beauty of existence.
Peter Gabriel’s song became such a force for me.
All the artists from different religions, languages, and cultures who contributed to the creation of the song awakened within me a sense of unity through a language that transcends cultures. At the same time, they helped me once again realize what an extraordinary richness our differences can be.
Perhaps being born and raised in these lands, and carrying within me what I might call an “Anatolian leaven”—that deep cultural ferment shaped by centuries of coexistence—has much to do with why I feel this sense of unity and togetherness so instinctively.
I began listening to the song over and over again. As I listened, I surrendered myself both to its lyrics and to its melody and enveloping rhythm.
“I am the sum of all the signals
That move inside the head
The less you have
The more you can make of it
With all those senses and those feelings
That light up in the brain
And they paint the vision
Build a brand new world again
World again
Whose mind is this? Just tell me who
Whose mind is this? No meaning coming through
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Put the bucket down.”
The next day, as I continued listening, I began to analyze the song; and as I analyzed it, I began to notice the associations it was creating in me.
Passages from other singers and other songs started appearing in my mind.
The tone of the guitar reminded me of Mark Knopfler’s Money for Nothing; the backing vocals in the interlude sounded like a reversed version of the “Ah, ha, ha, ha, Stayin’ Alive” part of Stayin’ Alive; the guitar riff brought Diana Ross’s Upside Down to mind; throughout the song, there was something that reminded me of Sting’s History Will Teach Us Nothing; and in a few places, Peter Gabriel’s voice began to evoke Neil Young…
And then, all of a sudden, I realized that the unique taste the song had originally left in me was gradually beginning to lose its flavor through all this analysis, comparison, and association.
“The bucket…” Peter Gabriel says.
“I think it represents all the unnecessary mental noise and burdens constantly circulating inside our heads. In other words, putting the bucket down means letting go of those mental burdens so that we can find our way. The person singing the song is not even sure whether the thoughts in his mind are truly his own. He questions whether he is inside his own mind, or inside someone else’s.”
Apparently, my own bucket had begun to fill—and was even starting to overflow.
But the beautiful thing was that this song I loved had, almost without my realizing it, turned into a kind of mindfulness practice.
A way of remembering once again the truths we already know so deeply, the truths embedded in the very code of our being…
As the writer and poet Mark Nepo has expressed so beautifully, “if we want to feel the whole—to “be whole”—it is important that we free ourselves, or at least temporarily suspend, our criticism, prejudices, and habitual patterns of thought.
Because life is not a matter of deciding what we like or dislike, what we prefer or reject, and limiting ourselves through our choices.
It is a matter of awakening. Of enlightenment.
It is not about finding what is pleasant or unpleasant; it is about discovering what completes us.
It is not about whether we love or dislike something; it is about opening up the geography of our own soul.
This approach offers us something far more profound than simply having a life experience.
It gives us the possibility of experiencing life with our entire being.
When we encounter a new piece of music, we can notice the liking or dislike we feel toward it—and, most importantly, suspend that attitude for a moment.
When we allow the pure energy of the music to meet the pure energy of what is new within us, something begins to happen.
It gives us new inspiration.
It opens entirely new doors and new horizons.
And perhaps, as I experienced myself, it reveals in many of us that deeply buried feeling that—
we are one.
…..
Listen to “Puut the Bucket Down” here.
