Where words fail

Recent posts have reflected on silence, language, words, and storytelling. Now this:

"Where words fail, music speaks.” - Hans Christian Andersen

"When you really listen to music, you begin to hear the beautiful way it
constellates and textures the silence, how it brings out the hidden
mystery of silence. The gentle membrane where sound meets silence
becomes deftly audible." - John O'Donahue (Anam Cara)

“She knew this music--knew it down to the very core of her being--but
she had never heard it before. Unfamiliar, it had still always been
there inside her, waiting to be woken. It grew from the core of mystery
that gives a secret its special delight, religion its awe. It demanded
to be accepted by simple faith, not dissected or questioned, and at the
same time, it begged to be doubted and probed.” 
- Charles de Lint (The Little Country)

"We do not create
music; we only create the conditions so that she can appear." - Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache

"The music of a people offers a unique entry into their unconscious life. The tenor of what haunts and delights them becomes audible there. The cry of a people is in their music. The mystery of music is its uncanny ability to coax harmony out of contradiction and chaos. Often the beauty of great music is a beauty born from the rasp of chaos. The confidence of creativity knows that deep conflict often yields the most interesting harmony and order. In the Irish tradition, we have sean-nós singing. This is a style of unaccompanied singing in the Irish language that has a primal tonality and a very beautiful rhythm. The resonance and style of sean-nós seems to mirror the landscape and sensibility of the people. There is a repetoire of these songs and they are sung over and over."  - John O'Donahue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

"The rivers are still singing in Sami, so we have not given up. Nor has the land." - Sami yoik singer and activist Sofia Jannok (from her TED Talk, "Our Rights to Earth and Freedom")

"In the presence of great music we have no alternative but to live nobly." - Sean O'Faolain

“If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing." - J.M Barrie ( Peter Pan )

Art above: "When Apples Were Golden" by John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937), "Musica" by Kate Elizabeth Bunce (1856-1927), Playing the Lute by Otto Karl Kirberg (1850-1926), "The Wind's Tale" by Edmund Dulac (1882-1953), "A Fairy Song" by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939).