Sound and Silence

Like every other folk singer, I’ve played some unusual shows. Stuck in the corner of a restaurant’s empty back patio, playing for no one, while the crowd inside watched football. Set up alongside a marathon route, playing for an endless stream of somewhat preoccupied runners. Performing on a cruise ship’s main stage with a pick-up band as the elegant room tossed and lurched in a violent storm. But of all the countless shows I’ve played, this was the oddest – a concert at a week-long silent retreat at The Chopra Center.

            The Chopra Center for Wellbeing is one of the world’s premier mind-body healing and educational centers. Nestled on the grounds of the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, the Chopra Center offers a full menu of spiritual and physical healing programs, as well as off-site retreats at Asilomar, Sedona, Costa Rica, and beyond. Built over twenty years ago on the groundbreaking work of Drs. Deepak Chopra and David Simon, the Chopra Center has changed countless lives and cultivated a bevy of teachers and facilitators, and I am honored to call myself one of them. Since I’ve entered into partnership with the Center I’ve offered two events, with two more on the calendar for this summer and fall. Mostly they’re lectures, or all-day retreats. But the one I did last month was different.

            I arrived a few hours early on the afternoon of the concert. I set up and waited. I drank some herbal tea. A palpable quiet permeated the space. As the start time approached, in they came, alone, or in twos and threes. No one said a word. They were coming from massages, Ayurvedic treatments, or meditation sessions. Many were wearing robes. It was their first full day of silence. We greeted each other with eye contact, nods, and welcoming smiles. When everyone was seated, the retreat leader introduced me and I began.

            As Trappist monk Father Thomas Keating said, “Silence is the language of God. All else is a bad translation.” And as any musician knows, music is the art of deciding exactly how to ruin the silence. Still, I was bound to do my best to provide a worthwhile soundscape for these silent retreatants to enjoy. I thought long and hard about the set list. I plotted every tempo flow, key change, and lyric theme. I kept it simple. I kept it clean. I kept it quiet, and I leaned on songs that had a restful glow at the center – nothing too fancy or busy. I played my most soulful and reflective originals, and a lot of great covers with the same broad, expansive, contemplative vibe.

            After my first song they applauded. O.K. good, so they were allowed to clap. That helped – a welcome dose of reciprocity. Then by the third song, something began to open up, like a rose blooming, revealing a hidden beauty and blush. They were leaning into me and I into them. We were holding each other up. To some extent that happens at every show, well, the good ones anyway. But this was different. This was more urgent, hungrier, more penetrating. It’s as if with their power of speech gone, their sense of hearing expanded. I’ve never felt the presence of an audience more deeply. I’ve never felt more heard. They hung on every note, every word. Both of us, on either side of the guitar, were daring vulnerability, and with vulnerability comes intimacy.

            In some ways, this concert at the silent retreat was the natural culmination of the trajectory my musical career had taken for years. I’d played in loud rock and roll bands in college, my Les Paul like a lit fuse in my hands, the din of amps and drums ringing in my ears for days, (and robbing me of a good chunk of my hearing in middle age). Later, folk duos dominated, the tone of unadorned acoustic guitars proving richer and more enthralling than a rack of effects pedals through an amp on eleven. Eventually, I left all that behind to focus on solo performance. Something about emptying out the sound and leaving more space called to me. I’ve noticed that about my songwriting too – my songs keep getting shorter and simpler. Every time I remove an element, the impact increases. Less really is more.

            So when I entered into partnership with The Chopra Center, I jumped at the chance to bring my guitar and perform. It wasn’t even my idea. I pitched myself as a lecturer, a teacher of Asian philosophy, and a meditation facilitator. But I guess they checked out my website and found out about my other life. I was surprised when they asked. And of course I said yes. It made perfect sense.

            On each day of the silent retreat one of the five senses was featured. The first day was sound – that’s where I fit in. The next day was visual – they were painting. The day after that was touch – they were crafting personal altars. And so on. I thought it was brilliant. And I was thrilled to be a small part of it.

            The composer Claude Debussy said that “Music is the silence between the notes.” The best musicians understand that they are always doing two things: playing music, and playing silence. Without the gaps between the notes, music would just be one long, horrible wail. As jazz master Miles Davis put it, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” I’ve often noticed this as I’ve collaborated with countless musicians through the years, some truly great, and others still learning. One of the quickest tells of who has experience and who doesn’t is how silent they are. The player who’s always noodling during rehearsal, or who over-plays every song, filling every gap with noise, is the beginner who mistakenly believes that musicianship is synonymous with flash and flurry. The seasoned pro, on the other hand, is as silent as a mouse during rehearsal, and during the song, they disappear into the pocket so deeply that you don’t know where they end and the music begins. A poor musician plays their instrument. A great musician plays the song.

            The same rule applies in public speaking, whether you’re a politician, a preacher, or a professor – all various forms of story teller. And as master storyteller Ira Glass, host of Public Radio’s “This American Life” puts it, “In radio you have two tools. Sound and silence.” The best speakers understand this. If you never stop and take a beat, and instead pummel your audience with a never ending slurry of words, numbness sets in. Your speech, no matter how eloquent, loses its power. If you take a pause, on the other hand, and fill the room with sudden silence, the gravitational field shifts. Everyone in the room looks up and locks eyes with you. What you say next is offered up on a silver platter and savored.

In the right measure, silence and sound work beautifully together. Sound conveys from without while silence draws up from within the treasures of our own insights and awareness that otherwise lay dormant, submerged, and hidden. Sound gives us the gifts of others. Silence gives us the gift of ourselves.

Welcome to the Show

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” – William Shakespeare

We stand in line, pay a pretty penny, and cram into sweltering rooms.  We sit on uncomfortable chairs or stand for hours – all for that moment, that moment of transcendence when the performer on stage digs deep and rips away the dull façade that hides from us the explosive vitality of our own lives. The veil falls away and for an instant we see into the heart of the mystery.

Then we file out into the night, drive home, and drift off to sleep still humming the chorus, feeling the beat of our hearts, drifting through the shimmers of insight and elation that broke through our indifference like shafts of light through a forest canopy. We love show business, even with all its absurdity, arrogance, bombast, and schmaltz. There’s something about it. Musicians, actors, directors, designers, producers, engineers, when they’re good, are as good as gods who create a world, draw you in, and set the crown upon your head. In the best art, we are all king or queen for a day, flush with power, ripe with wisdom, overflowing with love. We get it. The world, with all its possibilities, is ours.

Sometimes it even happens in front of the TV. I was five years old in February, 1964 when the Beatles first played on the Ed Sullivan Show. I was dumbfounded. How could four lads with guitars and drums drive hordes of strangers into ecstasy? What strange magic was this?

Is there a connection, a relation, between stagecraft and so-called ordinary life? Is there something about the artistry of performance that holds a mirror up to the various roles we play in our own lives?

As I grew up I began to notice a discrepancy. I noticed it first in others. Then I discovered it in myself. We are one person in private, and another in public. In the solitude of our inner lives we roam freely down the canyons of consciousness following thought-streams wherever they lead. We stare into space because that’s where we’re going, and it’s smart to keep your eyes on the road. But when other people are around you have to pay attention. They might say something. They might shift in their seat in some meaningful way. Was that a sigh or was that a sigh? There are a hundred non-verbal cues to process, not to mention the vagaries of vibe. It’s exhausting. Maybe that’s just my introversion talking. But to some extent, this is true for all of us, introvert and extrovert alike. When we’re together there’s a certain amount of play acting involved. No longer autonomous, you consciously and unconsciously mirror the speech and behavior of others. The monologue’s over. It’s time for dialogue.

I don’t mean to say that we’re all a bunch of phonies. This observation isn’t born in despair. Good things arise in relationship. We absolutely need it. It’s just that initially anyway, dialogue calls for a little mimicry and play acting.

We play many roles in our lives – the good son, the loving daughter, the ardent bride, the faithful husband, the nurturing mother, the stalwart father, the trusted colleague, the insightful mentor, and loyal friend. When we get it right, we lose ourselves in those roles and use them as opportunities to be of service to the good, for it is through the aggregate actions of our individual lives that the collective good is realized. The danger, of course, is identifying too completely with any of those masks and dehumanizing ourselves by become merely actors, cogs in a machine devoid of sensitivity, empathy, and compassion. The goal of the hero in any hero’s tale is to sacrifice their comfort in service of others, and thereby fully realize their previously submerged authentic selves. It’s ironic. We become who we really are by playing a part, for it is only in the field of action that our inauthenticity is burned away. And it is through our selfless service that the world is healed.

That is why we are drawn so powerfully toward art, especially the art of performance. As we vicariously live through the character, the song, or the agonizing dilemma, we feel the truth of the depiction in the depths of our own soul. If our imagination is keen enough, and if we surrender our disbelief and fall under the spell, it is as if we live through the events on the stage ourselves – so clear is the mirror great art holds up to our own lives. Great performance gives us to ourselves in a way we are incapable of achieving in solitude. It happens in the space between the performer and the audience. We’re just built that way.

I played a solo show at Java Joe’s in San Diego a few weeks ago. It was a hot Saturday night and the room was full. After Chad Taggart played a wonderful opening set, I buttoned up my vest, put on my guitar, and stepped up to the mike.

It is an exhilarating feeling, looking out at an audience, that pregnant pause, the silence before the first downbeat, the void and formlessness before the creation, that moment when anything’s possible, the love and trust inherent in the deal you’ve made with the audience – you take time out of your busy lives, buy a ticket with your hard-earned money, bring all of your aliveness and passion and trouble into the room and take a seat, and I’ll stand and face you alone, and with my hands draw music from this guitar and with my voice sing stories and poems that hold a mirror up to your sorrow, your joy, your defeat, and your triumph. We will trust the power of music and song to reach deep into us and heal wounds we didn’t even know we had. And on a lucky night, when all the pieces come together, we experience something together that’s bigger than any one of us. A communion, a gathering of animals around a watering hole, a tribal band around an ancient fire beneath a field of stars we haven’t even named yet.

In that moment I was the troubadour, the bard, the oracle, the jester, the priest, and the fool. I played the bread and sang the wine of the Eucharist. I opened myself up for scrutiny. By the shear boldness of performance we are all emboldened. We watch performers very closely because we want to know, if I open myself up to scrutiny, if I come out of hiding, if I let the world see the truth about who and what I am, will they see me, will they know me, will they love me? This longing to be known in our authenticity drives so much of the relationship between performers and audiences. That’s why we leave shows, the good ones, feeling more alive, more courageous, and more willing to revel in our humanity. We forgive ourselves our transgressions and limitations, we love our broken places, and we know in our bones that we walk through a world full of good but wounded people just like us, and that we are safe among them, and as we learn to love them we learn to love ourselves.

          I’m packing up for another show. My guitar is safely stowed; my gig bag is full of gear.  Got the venue address in my phone and a Google map queued up. Soon I’ll set up my stuff in a room I’ve never been to before and step up to the microphone. I’ll look out at the audience, a room full of strangers, and I’ll see in their faces my own face, my own questions, my own joys and sorrows. They will embolden me. And I’ll step up to the mike and I will say, “Welcome to the show.”

All the World's a Stage

A stage is a strange vantage point from which to see the world – all of those faces looking up at you, waiting for the magic to begin, and hoping you’re the one who can deliver it. In all the thousands of times I’ve been on stage as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, band leader, side man or speaker it never ceases to amaze me just how weird it is, how audacious, how presumptuous, to step out in front of a crowd and claim the right to everyone’s attention, and how volatile the situation really is – you could crash and burn or rise up in transcendence. You just never know. In live performance there are no second takes, no do-overs and no mercy. What you see is what you get. Your blunder will live forever on YouTube. In so many ways, that hour on stage is not all that different from the other 23 hours of the day. In fact, the lessons learned on stage apply with equal force to our so-called normal, everyday lives, because Shakespeare was right – all the world’s a stage.

Be here now. When you take the stage you must leave behind your divided mind and show up as a single point of clarity and simplicity. So too in life, our effectiveness suffers when we show up as a convoluted swarm of tangled thoughts. Dissipated and drained, our energy wanes just when we need it most. And for what? All our busy-mind machinations produce nothing. Only when we arrive fully in the present moment do we have a real shot at getting it right.

Fall in love with what is. Your best performance, and your best life, can only arise in the consciousness of acceptance. Struggling against a bunch of little things that don’t align with your arbitrary preferences only saps your strength and dilutes your essence. Resistance to what is kicks up a lot of dust, like a mule dragging its hooves on a dusty trail it doesn’t want to go down, making it hard to see and even harder to breathe. Instead, renounce resentment and fall in love with the messy perfection of this moment, a unique alignment of disparate elements that have never before and will never again occur in this specific fashion. Buddhist philosophy calls it tathata, the ordinary miracle of every moment. Why would you want to miss that?

Trust your team. Assuming you’ve attracted the right people and chosen well, stop trying to run everything and let the strength of those around you carry you. Allow the unexpected power and creativity of the good people around to you find solutions, build bridges, and show you the way. When you stop meddling and interfering, people feel free to be their best. Everyone has a job to do and a role to play. Let them.

Let yourself be lifted. When you are here now, in love with what is and graced by the brilliance of your team, feel yourself lifted. Let the ground slip away and float on a wave of beauty. Feel fully the freedom that can only exist when you let slip the pedestrian concerns of more fearful souls. This light, this grace, this sublime clarity – this is what you have prepared so arduously for. Don’t forget to experience it.

Smile. You work hard when you’re on stage. You are fastidiously processing a million things at once. Your memory is working overtime – lyrics, lines, notes, timing, phrases, cues. In the middle of singing the third verse you’re thinking should I plug the CD after this song or later in the set? In the midst of all this heavy lifting, don’t forget to smile. This is supposed to be fun, remember? Bringing a sense of play and a sense of joy to your work, no matter what your job is, opens channels within and without you – channels through which the love you and your audience have for each other can flow. Slow down and let the joy of the work sink in. It’ll be over soon enough and after the show you’ll be just another schmuck stuck in traffic. Enjoy this while you can. When you smile, you empower others to feel their own joy.

Feel it, don’t think it. No matter what you’re doing on stage, make sure your heart leads the way. Once the preparations are done, it is essential that you stop thinking and start feeling. What your audience wants most is to feel something, and they’re looking to you for leadership. So too in your daily work leave room for inexplicable kindness and impractical compassion. Institutional and bureaucratic structures are designed to serve humanity, not the other way around. When the machinery of intellect fails, use the Force Luke.

Prepare thoroughly. Do your homework. Know your tools. Practice all your moves and build a brilliant skill set. Art is not just inspiration. Before the creative frenzy begins, make sure you’ve thought through all the probable steps. There can be no inspiration without preparation. Chefs measure out all their ingredients and gather their tools before a single spoon hits the pan. What if we brought this same attention to detail to our everyday lives? Instead of flailing around and wondering why we feel so uninspired, draw up some plans. Like they say, fail to plan? Plan to fail.

Let go completely. On the other side of the planning process, when the house lights go down and the curtain comes up, abandon all your fastidiousness. Let loose the dogs of war. Time to revel in your abandon. Get a little crazy. Forget about who you are and what you’re supposed to do. Surrender to a childlike sense of play. Step off the path and see what you find. In any endeavor there comes a time to let go completely and trust the process and the preparation and the good people around you and the audience, especially the audience, because they will rise to meet you in that sacred place where all of the lines blur. So to in our everyday lives when we let spirit guide us we feel our fear slipping away and in its place arises a boldness, a willingness, a powerful creativity not entirely of our own making, and on this wave of grace we are carried to a place we could not have found or even recognized on our own. We come together around stages in bars, in nightclubs, in theaters, in concert halls, and also in classrooms, in churches, in seminars and sports arenas to let our alienation and loneliness fade away in the bright light of our collective reverie.

Play the role you have been given. In art and in life we must play the role that best suits our strengths and abilities – it does us no good, nor anyone else, if we attempt to tackle a task ill suited to our temperament or talent. Start, and end, with the truth of who you are. Careful, honest and generous self-assessment combined with a courageous willingness to experiment and fail will lead you through a sometimes painful but utterly necessary series of trials and errors until you finally find the yellow brick road that leads you home to your authentic self and your rightful place in the sun. Your true purpose and greatest joy lay within you. You don’t have to be a professional performer. You don’t need a spotlight or a three-camera shoot with a director shouting, “Action!” You can begin right where you are. Because all the world’s a stage.