Musicmaking and
Healing the Breach

by Clement Jewitt

II - Sensing

What actual perceptual possibilities do we bring to collective soul making activity, enabling conscious awareness of the experience? In group musical improvisations there is naturally hearing, but beyond that other senses play their part. Smell, and possibly taste, no more than in any other group situation, subliminally or even consciously inform us about the emotional states of our fellows, part of our knowing the extent to which trust may be given in the situation. Vision and the tactile sense, however, have more direct roles, as has proprioception.

In the flow of active participation, as well as listening to what sounds others are making, we also look at them, against the background of where we are working. We read facial expressions and body language, clues to the trajectories of supportive or interpolated sounds, data for our judgements on the placings of our own contributions, supporting the information from the sounds flowing all around.

The tactile sense, clearly, is part of the way we are able to play instruments. We feel our fingers on the keys, down the pipe, or on the strings and bow. This becomes unconscious as we advance our skills, necessarily, so that precise and rapid physical movements are removed from the inefficiency of conscious control. It is though, I believe, also part of the way in which making music enhances our sense of well being, via the joy of movement: enhanced when within the mutual support of the trusting group.

There are also internal sensations. The movements of muscles and joints as we bodily express the flows of sound, and the changes in breathing required by our alert state in general, and the needs of singing in particular, all are stimulants for our proprioceptors. In fact while making music we tend to breathe with the rhythms, whether or not we are singing or playing wind instruments. Our heart and pulse also do this, tending particularly to entrain with the beat, if there is one. Body sensations are integral to the wider experience. In fact one definition of the nature of spirituality is that we become more fully embodied, more fully focussed in the conscious, aware present moment, concerns with past and future marginalised by the aliveness of the now!

I note here merely that it is simply not possible to make music effectively, whether improvised or pre-composed, without being fully present.

But we are in essence creatures of vibratory energy. Atoms vibrate at enormous rates, causing the molecules they make up to vibrate coherently both mechanically and electro-magnetically, but at a lower rate. Molecules emit, therefore, sound, and light in the ultra-violet range (UV), but both of very low intensity. Surrounding molecules entrain vibrations, imparting energy to the cells, and so to organs and through them to the body as a whole. From atoms through to the whole body, vibrations occur in harmonic relationships, stepping down in frequency with increasing mass, according to Itzhak Bentov. (Bentov 1977) And the mechanical and electro-magnetic vibrations find connections through the transducive qualities of a number of crystalline structures in the body, having similar properties to quartz, such as liquid crystals in the blood, salts in fatty tissues, colloidal structures of the brain, the pineal, and crystalline bone components. (McClellan 1991) Homo musicus is a naturally resonating system, a system which reaches out beyond the body, via resonance with it's surrounding electro-magnetic field (the aura) to interact with the fields of other persons and things. (Hunt 1996) Not strictly a sense, and entirely unconscious except for certain sensitives who 'see' or otherwise sense auras, nevertheless it is another mode of connection between us, which will play its mysterious part in the group work.

And in the developed group, in which all participants are fully focussed in the sounding moment, actively listening to each other, then in that heightened reality all senses are more acute, more finely discriminating, the cleared pathways for the mythic connections discussed in Part I. We may in that golden time once more become aware of our finger and tongue movements, without, however, returning to the awkwardness of early learning: now it is no inhibition, it is an added richness. We may very well become aware of our heart beats and body movements as other modalities accompanying and enhancing the musical sounds. Hearing will become more acute, and at our fullest functioning, vision too. We achieve a multi-modal experience. We may perhaps, through heightened sensitivity, even become aware of the finer vibratory workings, perhaps manifesting as intuitive knowledge of what someone else is about to do musically: we spontaneously connect our rhythms or pitches, for example.

On the other hand, if the circumstances are appropriate for a particular individual, the group music making can also overwhelm. The sounds themselves may transcend all other modalities, becoming an irresistible cathartic force.4 The group may inadvertently sound the 'personal note' of an individual for whom some psychological or other block is approaching the moment of clearing. I believe this to be more likely if all in the group are vocalising, most likely toning, though purposive drumming can also achieve the result. The topic is not enlarged further in this essay.

Heightened sensing will occur within what I have called the developed group, whether or not detailed recall is possible after the event. That depends on the energetic nature of the individual heightened reality. This subject is also not covered here. Valerie Hunt's work may be referred to for detailed information and comment. (op cit)

* * *

Beyond the obvious senses and skills, what additional resources may there be to engage with the sounds we make?

Lyall Watson describes and reflects on his sojourn in a small, remote, Indonesian fishing community. There he finds an extraordinary twelve year old girl, Tia, whose dancing with the village gamelan (a metal orchestra) was astonishingly and totally compelling.

Here he talks with her, walking on the beach. She is telling him the colours of sounds:

"Brown is the sound of katak".
Katak was the local toad [which] produced a derisory sound which was indeed rather brown.
The idea was beginning to grow on me.
"What makes a black sound?"
"Buffalo, and thunder."
"White?"
"The sea where it touches the sand."
Now I was really hooked. Tia was giving me these examples without hesitation, as though she were used to hearing sounds in colour. ...
I thought of the tawny roar of a lion; of the scarlet scream of a macaw; of the deep bronze boom of an important bell, and of how the little ones that tinkled tended to be silver. . . .
"All sounds have colours?"
"Astaga! You did not know?"
"No."
"How can you listen to talk or music without colour?"
Her eyes were full of pity. "When the drums talk, they lay a carpet of brown, like soft sand on the ground. A dancer stands on this. Then the gongs call in green and yellow, building forests through which we weave and turn. And if we lose our way, there is always the white thread of the flute or the song to guide us home." (Watson 1976)

He finds that all the other children also have this facility, though none so clearly as Tia. Reflecting on this, he comes to the conclusion that these are not simply mental associations, but complementary sensory inputs.

The study of synaesthesia is in renaissance now that Behaviourism has been largely superseded, together with the scientific refusal to recognize internal events. Current findings are that parallel sensing exists, as compared to imaginative figures of speech: it is an involuntary, unelaborated, primarily emotional experience. Colour hearing seems commonest, others such as smell / tactile sensations being less common. Even rarer are experiences involving more than two senses. There is no agreement among synaesthetes on the precise nature of their sensory parallels: for example the same sounds provoke different colours in different persons. The matter is quite idiosyncratic, and mysterious.

Seemingly female synaesthetes predominate, and the experience is prevalent in children, possibly 50%, adults maybe one third as many. As a group they may be more susceptible to 'unusual' happenings than the rest of us: clairvoyance, deja vu, a feeling of 'presence'; and may be among the more creative. A number of artists, writers and musicians may have been synaesthetic, such as composers Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin and Messiaen; poets Basho, Rimbaud and Baudelaire; painters Kandinsky and David Hockney; and novelist Nabokov, together with his wife and son - there would appear to be an inherited factor.

A straw poll amongst people known to me revealed three female and one (slightly uncertain) male synaesthete. For one, AB, music evokes tactility and olfaction:

When I hear music, I have strong tactile sensations though not necessarily in my hands. Music for me is characterised by being hard, soft, itchy, curved, stringy, sandpapery, etc. There is an olfactory link here too - Wagner's music definitely triggers an olfactory nerve. Some smells produce the same sensations in me as music- e.g. my handcream evokes the same sensations as certain kinds of abstract jazz and roses the same sensations as Brahms symphonies (slow movements) ... The sensations are memorable, involuntary, the same each time I hear a particular piece of music. I've always had this kind of reaction, not realising that it was not absolutely 'normal' until I was in my 20s. Not imagined, not overwhelming, and if I think about any feeling too hard, evanescent. 6

My own synaesthetic experience is completely singular (so far). At a guitar and flute recital some years ago, in a small intimate venue, one of the works played was Takemitsu's Towards the Sea, utilising the alto flute with its warmly rich sound characteristics. Halfway through the piece Takemitsu scored a handful of flute chords. Most wind players tend to blow through chords, producing the effect of arpeggios, but this player, Clive Conway, succeeded in the tricky task of holding the breath steady in the exceedingly narrow pressure band that produces a genuine chord. He succeeded for less than a second for each rich chord of many sounds. As each one sounded, a colour spectrum appeared fleetingly in my head. Never before, not since!

What meanings can be drawn? Richard Cytowic suggests that synaesthesia may be a premature display to consciousness of an early stage in the sequence of normal cognitive processes which for most of us do not manifest until the sequence is concluded. He emphasises that the limbic system, associated with our emotions, has many more neural connections flowing to the neo-cortex (humanity's prideful centre of 'higher' cognition) than flowing from. This perhaps illustrates the reality of the statement made in Part I that feeling is primary. During synaesthetic episodes blood flow to the left hemisphere cortex is (in at least one study) dramatically reduced, indicating apparent reduction in activity .7

Psychotropic drugs also induce the phenomenon. This is reported in many places, famously by Baudelaire on hashish. Synaesthetic components to shamanic experiences induced by drugs are also documented, notably all over South America where the vine banisteriopsis is part of the 'brew'.8

So, while traditional peoples not yet over-run by western culture may well retain the experience, as suggested by Lyall Watson's report, we in the occident may have largely lost it owing to overlaid inscribing of neural pathways relating to masculine left-brained analytical thinking during early social development. Homo logicus is a dominant part of our cultural myths, as discussed in Part I. Cytowic describes the process as the overlaying by more flexible, therefore dominating, cognition, and of course he is right as far as that goes. Watson surmised similarly a process of loss from childhood. And since left brain thinking is dominantly associated with the masculine, and therefore males, here may be the explanation why female synaesthetes predominate.

Certainly the loss reduces the wealth of sensory experience (though an excess can interfere with cognitive functioning.9 But could it be that we do not actually lose synaesthesiae, so much as cease noticing, because it is not part of the prevailing definition of what humanly being is, not part of our mythology. If this is so then it joins those other still small voices which it may take half a lifetime for us to take notice of, the voices of intuition, of 'that of God within', describe it how you will.

The route to uncovering, re-covering, our forgotten perceptions will then be via finding our way below, or round, the rational brain to the other side of being, with which we know now our culture must reconnect.

One arena for this is the musical improvisation group.

* * *

In the work of healing the breach between estranged and impoverished mankind and the earth that in the rage of our estrangement we have raped and pillaged, is it too far fetched to suggest that as we reconnect with the true ground of our being, in parallel with that healing we may recover lost abilities and perceptions that maybe once we took for granted, or were simply unconscious of, which may, consciously perceived, marvellously enrich our interactions with the world?

So, for those of us who work through the modality of sound at that breach, may we be conscious in all possible fullness of the vibrations of what we are doing, in hearing, vision and body awareness. But also that we who lack the synaesthetic enrichment may become open to the possibilities of parallel sensings? Not in over confident materialistic minded either/or thinking, but with an attitude of 'allowing', maintaining and developing a certain watchfulness, an awareness at the edges of our consciousness in order to catch faint traces of the unexpected, gifts in embryo, and to hold these in memory, half understood, without attempted analysis, the better to relate to them when next they come. We may become aware of what is in the spaces between our sounds and silences. That way we may help ourselves to open to beneficial transformation, not caught unexpectedly by sonic force majeure, but when we are ready within our being, and only then losing ourselves in divinely elaborated energetic interactions with all we are really, truly connected to, in order to find ourselves where our souls reside.

Into the labyrinth, with Orpheus as psychopomp!

This poem, written in 1993, expresses reflections made on several transformational experiences over the previous decade, which by the time of writing could be clearly seen for what they were: necessary, and inevitable, development.

In that dark pool where coldest secrets are
A needle point of heat has had to form:
Through time unmeasured gains against the dark:
Slow forms a roil, in long still waters born.

Vague insubstantial presagers of change
(Small messages let loose by turbulence)
To consciousness by secret routes ascend,
The fifty thousandth, only, making sense.

These signs, foreboding ends and startings, heed.
Do not think to quash that awe-ful pressure
(Formed sure, from in your life's beginnings, deep)
Which could then erupt in dreadful measure.

No, that fate upwelling fear not, nor blench.
Face fear and yield: therein does lie your strength.

* * *

The last, appropriate word will be given to this well known Zen koan:

Take away sound and sense, and what do you hear?

Bentov. Stalking the wild pendulum: on the mechanics of consciousness, 1977
McClellan. The healing forces of music: history, theory and practice, 1991
Hunt. Infinite mind: science of the human vibrations of consciousness. 2nd ed. 1996
Neher. 'A Physiological Explanation of Unusual Behaviour in Ceremonies involving Drums' - Human Biology 34(2)pp151-160
Watson. Gifts of unknown things. 1976
Baron-Cohen & Harrison (eds). Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. 1997
Cytowic.' Synaesthesia: phenomenology and neuropsychology - a review of current knowledge' - Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings (ed Baron-Cohen & Harrison). 1997
Reichel-Dolmatoff. Rainforest shamans. 1997
Roney-Dougal. Walking between the worlds (Lecture series). Tape, n.d.
Luria. 'Synaesthesia' in Baron-Cohen & Harrison op cit

Return to part I