For the past four months I’ve been blessed to live a short walk away from a rushing clear blue glacial river, and I have one week of residence left at this miraculous place. Today I walked down to the river to sing to it, of my gratitude, my awe and my sadness for leaving it so soon. When I got down to the river, its pounding waters permeating the air, I heard a bird song. And I realized that someone was already singing to the river. This little grey bird, standing on a rock, surrounded by turbulent waters. Somehow, its sweet little song was clear and audible over the roar of the river. I sat on a different rock about 10 feet away, and began to sing.
My teacher Silvia Nakkach, who studied ragas with Ali Akbar Khan for many years, would tell us that it is necessary to sing for at least 21 minutes to get the full benefits of singing. To be fully “in” the music… to be fully inside the song… you cannot just take a little dip in the water. To fully submerge in the magic of singing, at least 21 minutes is required. Well, while I’ve had some pretty powerful experiences that were under 20 minutes, I have to say that most of the time I’ve found this tenet to be true.
I was reminded of it very clearly today, sitting on a rock singing to the river along with this little bird. No, wait…birds. Ah, of course, a song of relationship, a song of longing for one-another! A second bird came and perched on a nearby rock that was also surrounded by the cool, rolling waters, and sang back. The song changed, and they called to each other for a little while, and then were silent. Why call to each other over such a loud roar, why stand at the precarious edge of a rock surrounded by water? As if to say, I can hear you, even amongst the roar of the wildest rapids… I can find you, and your song, even amidst static, confusion, and danger. If we can find each other here, we can find each other anywhere.
Longing. Devotion is born from longing. We come with emotions, desires, yearnings for more connection, for happiness, for love. The birds sing to each other, calling for something that has not yet come to be, but which they are drawn to with their entire being. As humans, we long to feel connection with the divine. And sometimes, often, our song is a call.
And this brings us back to immersing ourselves in the waters, versus taking a dip. The difference between shallowness, and depth, is how long we are willing to sing in longing of the divine. And our willingness to sing to something, for something, for as long as it takes to feel it, to know it, is where that longing turns into devotion. Awareness of what we are longing for may fade, as we enter deeper and deeper into the music that comes through us and from us and reverberates in us. Suddenly the song is propelled by something other than our thoughts or desires to sing it, and we are Inside the Music. And the devotion is the devotion to see it through, to let it be as long as it wants to be. And behind it all we are saying, “Our love will not stop. Love will never stop. I will love you, rivers, trees, earth and sky, forever. My gratitude is endless.”
So here I am, singing in devotion to a River. A river that never stops, never ceases in its path to the ocean. The river that continues to flow no matter what stands in its way. And while I am singing in gratitude to the river, with tinges still of longing and sadness that I must leave it soon, I start to feel the strength of the river enter into my song. And now, it is a song about endless devotion. About the never-ending spiral of life from rain to snow to glacier to stream to river to bigger river to ocean to Rain. And the power of the river is the song, in that moment, and I am now Inside the Song.
I think I first experienced this lengthening of longing into devotion for the first time singing bhajans and ragas …the circular songs of devotion that invite the voice and the heart to speak to each other. One time, I got to witness a couple experiencing it for the first time, smiling, beaming with the blissful new experience of being Inside the Music. These miracles of music happen again and again, if we let ourselves relax into them.
Yet, at times the very miraculousness of it all does something just the opposite; it convinces my brain that it is improbable for such a sweet miracle to happen again. We are not taught, after all, that miracles can happen every day. And so I often find myself fighting the fear that magic will leave, and that perhaps I will never get to experience being Inside the Music again. What if a pinnacle experience is just that, a pinnacle, from which we can only go down?!
And yet…it is this splendidly human fear that in fact births something special. Longing. Longing to soar above the pinnacle, to climb another pinnacle, to be bathed in the sweet sensations of sound effortlessly flowing from me and connecting with the world and the sound of others and…… There we are. The birds, singing on the rock. Calling for each other.
Isn’t that a miracle in itself? That the fear of not being able to experience something wonderful again, creates a longing, and that this longing has a sound, a call. It is our door, our entry point to the mystery. Then all we have to do is devote ourselves to staying in that place for a while, for twenty-one minutes, or more. For as long as we need to. For as long as those feelings need us to stay.
My love, my love, I will sing to you for as long as I can, until you hear me above the roar of the river. Can you feel me, over there on the far bank, preening your feathers with this song?
Sound waves touch the world around us, and they actually never disappear. They just get longer, and longer, to the point where we cannot hear them anymore. But they do not die. To me, there is no more direct way to carry praise and love than in song. And as the gentle sound waves caress the world around me I am also bathed in the radiance of my own devotion, traveling, as the sound waves lengthen out, through time and space.
There are times when I feel shy to approach the power of nature and offer my tokens of gratitude, afraid that my gift will not be enough. Sometimes, I think, “What can a little song do, when I still live a lifestyle that supports the pollution of rivers, oceans, air and land? Does this river really care for any offerings from me, riddled with hypocrisies?” It is like I stand trembling before nature’s majesty, forgetting that I am worth something, that I have something to give. Until I open my mouth and…. Sing. Next time I feel shy to give, I will remember these two little birds, their high pitched calls ringing like chimes over the roar of the river.
Perhaps the song I sing is not just for the river, but for me. As I sing I become more open, my bones and blood pulsing with the vivaciousness of the world around me, inextricably connected. And when I embody this connection I walk stronger, wiser, clear like the waters, ready to respond with grace to a world that lives in dichotomy and disconnection from the divine. Perhaps it is not just that my voice becomes clearer, but that it becomes more connected to the voice of all of the beings that we seldom hear with our ears. And when I say this I am not saying, “I speak for the trees. I speak for the animals.” This I cannot presume. But maybe, maybe, my inner ear can hear their song a little better, when I open to the divine. And to open to the divine, I open my mouth and Sing.
