New patterns of life are bringing new ways of keeping inner experience nourished, and even enriched. I mentioned travelling in the car as my new place to listen to baroque and early music. Some of the music is an acquired taste I might never acquire. But then I remember I didn't like Yoghurt, loathed olives, didn't fancy smoked salmon, and would have thought stilton cheese was a good cheese gone bad. Now they are each of them staple food, and looked forward to treats. Music has been a bit like that for me too. I now listen with great pleasure to music I first thought boring because it didn't taste familiar on a very limited sound palate.
Now I'm writing this in College at 7.37 a.m. Listening to Vivaldi's Gloria. The fire alarm test has just gone for twenty seconds and shattered the intricate architecture of sound I was exploring. Sound – whether the fire alarm or chamber orchestra, is dependent on context. If a fire has broken out somewhere I want to be scared out of my seat, and a chamber orchestra can't do that; and if my soul needs the balm of music that opens up visions of glory and vistas of sound then I can do without the stress accelerator pedal being floored by a pitched for panic screaming fire alarm.
But back to new practices of inner sustaining. In the College and in my study (not an office - too many books contradict that – the ratio of filing cabinets to bookcases is for me the defining geography – and it's 1 to 5), I have started having half an hour of music, reading and thinking about the day with a sense that life is for joy, peace and purpose, as well as for concentration, work and obligation. I suppose such a half hour is a subversion of any work ethic that needs to have a measurable end product. Not sure how you can ever measure the impact on heart, life, mind, relationships, and overall view of the world and our place in it, that a great piece of music or fine writing can have. So I allow the music time, space, movement in and through those places of mind and heart that will soon be filled with other stuff. The other stuff is legitimate enough, in fact that's too grudging – not just legitimate but necessary stuff, obligations rightly placed, expectations fairly faced, work requiring to be done well, a vocation to fulfil. But before then – sabbath moment s for the soul. And anyway – you never know when the fire alarm will shatter the conversation between flute, oboe, strings and human voices.
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