Length

Sometimes I wonder if it is right that music can stop time for me, that music can transform the colors and shapes of existence into joy, into an aching joy I don't want to end. Is it delusion? Is it idolatry?

How can beauty be so piercing, when it is beauty made by man? Or is it the hand of the Lord God reaching down into what I can understand, and forming with His own love something that can give me respite?

But I wonder what it is that I need respite from. I wonder what it is in the world that makes me want to contract into a photon and disappear into the place where all light dwells. For I love the world. I love the the expanse of blinding whiteness outside. I love the texture of narrative and history at my fingertips. I love the faces of the gods who know how to weep and smile, even for me. No, it is not the world from which I need respite. It is myself--the eyes that see not only good but evil, the fingers that not only heal but hurt, the self that not only loves but rejects, resents, fears.

The songs are beautiful, but they are only a temporary, solitary escape. The confused cacophonies, the uncertain silences, the familiar human voices--these are the sounds of my life, and to these I belong. But in the meantime, there is the monumental hope. For these sounds are already the beginnings. They are the beginnings of a song that will become unmixed with aching, a song for which time will have no meaning, a song which you and even I will sing.

The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

La la la.