Step in Time
Music is woven into our lives almost seamlessly. From tv and movie soundtracks to the satellite music drifting through the aisles at stores or blasting overhead at restaurants, our day to day moments are often shaped by sound.
When there’s alignment of what we see and hear it can enhance our experience. When there’s dissonance, it can cause tension.
Avoiding this tension has been one of the largest obstacles in the way of my goal to create mandala visuals for sound baths.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a sound bath is, it’s a meditation session where you are “bathed” in the vibrations of various instruments, such gongs, singing bowls, percussion, chimes, rattles, and tuning forks. While generally people close their eyes during the experience, it’s not a hard and fast rule.
When I participated in a sound bath at a local planetarium last year, the facilitator encouraged people to open their eyes at different points in the session. The first time I opened my eyes, there was a still image of the Milky Way above me. The second time, to my surprise, it was the same image. No movement? No rotation? Not even different pictures? There’s a lot of high tech equipment at a planetarium. Why not take advantage of it?
Creating mandalas has given me a bit of insight that helped answer that question.
Sound baths aren’t planned in advance, meaning the facilitator doesn’t play composed songs. Things that a visual could synchronize with, like a chime, gong, or change in tone, are played sporadically throughout. There’s not a perceptible beat so if a visual were to move, it would need to be at a speed that compliments the sound.
How do you make a visual engaging (not just rotating or scaling) without knowing what the sound will be? How do you make it feel synchronized when there’s nothing specific to synchronize it to? My best guess is the Milky Way image was static because these are challenging questions to answer!
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Aside from musical timing, I’ve also been struggling with universal timing. Despite my best efforts and an understanding that I have little to no control over how things are received once I put them out into the world, I’ve had trouble shaking the “not enoughs,” specifically that I’m not improving my skills fast enough, along with I’m not trying hard enough, I’m not making enough money, and so on.
Two books have been instrumental in helping me turn down the noise a bit, both by the same author, Oliver Burkeman.
Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals
The Antidote - Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
(These are affiliate links, I receive a percentage of your purchase!)
I very recently started The Antidote so I don’t have any stand out quotes from it just yet, but what stuck with me most from Four Thousand Weeks was this line in regards to growing as a person:
“Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.”
Building new skills and changing paths has tested my limits for discomfort to be sure, but I’ve also seen growth, which is encouraging. I’m excited to keep going down this path despite the losses and challenges I’ve experienced along the way.
Until the next newsletter, be well.
Giesla
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