Can Classical Music Help Fight the Noise Industrial Complex?
I am lodging a protest, and its called ‘The Beauty of Music’
Music will not save the world. But it can save us.
And we make the world with our minds and our actions. Music will not save the world. But it will remind us that there is grace within us, no matter how much the world screams at it to go away.
What music ignites in our hearts can remind us that we are individuals in this world; the time we spend with music might remind us that we are the masters of our souls and actions. And sometimes, our souls demand beauty.
And here is a fact: Beauty is contagious, just like hate.
Beauty is as common as water. Please drink it every now and then.
Music is a vehicle of this beauty, one of the most easily accessible.
The late, great troubadour Phil Ochs wrote these words: “In such ugly times the only true protest is beauty.” He was, I believe, not claiming beauty could change the mind of a fascist or a socialist or redirect an angry gun or an angry voice. Mr. Ochs was saying, I think, that beauty was an extraordinary alternative, always at our fingertips, to the hatred, anger, partisanship and violence that is all around us.
So: I am lodging a protest. It is called beauty.
This is not a protest against the left, the right or those who stand on the sidelines. It is a protest against ourselves. We are saying: For four minutes, eight minutes, maybe twelve, I am going to bypass the thrill of anger for the balm of beauty. And the beauty virtually always at our fingertips is music: Centuries of starry grace and the thrum and thump of the delicate and fierce heart.
Music will not save the world. But this is something it can do: music can return your mind and your heart to its’ home, the castle keep of free choice, where you can say, “I am stopping now to listen to the beauty humankind is capable of. Let me go to this place, even for just a little while.” Think for a moment, of how we have all become cogs in the Noise Industrial Complex. This noise is a constant.
And never forget: Every aspect of the distraction you are subjected to and that you willfully participate in depends on you not stepping away, even for a moment. It is fed by your continual, spiraling attention. Vast amounts of money is made, enormous agendas promoted, by keeping you so addicted to noise, keeping you so utterly attached to not hearing your own thoughts (and, ultimately, not having your own thoughts).
We have learned to mistake this addiction for identity. The Noise Industrial Complex will not grant you one day, or one hour, or even eight minutes of civility. This is not in their interests. So you must take it. Create it. Gift yourself a reminder of why the world needs to be saved, why we humans are as capable of grace as we are of horror.
We still have control of our own minds, at least for the time being. The Borg is not here, not yet. Please note this: Your mind is entirely your domain. And you can choose to bring it to a place of grace, peace, and civility via music. You can use your mind this way. You don’t have to tell anyone. Give a few moments of music a chance. It will not solve your problems, but it might become a new addiction, a new compulsion: The acquisition of grace. And grace acquired once often becomes an epidemic, an infection you cannot shake. And grace is the gateway to empathy, and empathy is the antidote to hatred.
Consider spending eight minutes with something beautiful. Consider eight minutes where you do not have an uncivil thought.
I am by no means saying your thought is wrong, or right. Truly, I’m not. These words are without any political agenda. I am just suggesting you release the grasp that the Noise Industrial Complex has on us long enough to experience the depth and power of grace. Music is such an easy and available way to bring grace into your day.
You will be stunned by what allowing just a few moments of beauty, without distraction, into your life will do.
Imagine that these moments of grace are the dreams of angels, entering our loud, scattered, and scared lives. Will you give the angels time to dream? These angels, finally allowed to touch us because we have dimmed the noise, remind us that regardless of the furious and frenzied nature of our biases and the peculiar, almost sexual power of hate, we were born animals of need, incapable of survival without kindness and empathy.
Without self-reflection, without moments to hear ourselves think for ourselves, without moments to engage in nothing but the absorption of beauty, we are just elements awaiting the Borg. I am asking that you use music as a device to stop the constant flash grenades of so-called modern life long enough so that you can not only hear yourself but also hear how beauty might change your perspective.
To stop the noise for (just) a moment, some of us used to smoke a cigarette, or take a drink. When the noise would stop, we could actually think or take in the undeniable magic of the world, the miracle of creation, and the unlikely and precious blessing of a human form where we could appreciate these things. Music is an accessible, effective way to stop the world, to achieve what that Marlboro or that Dewars used to do.
You can pray for peace, but it is far more impactful to pray for peace within yourself and hope this one drop of grace colors the oceans of the world. You can hope that this example, these moments when you made the small effort to set aside the noise, compulsion and addiction of hatred, may help others recognize that hate is a contagion, it is not a right.
There is already good news in your day: It is called music.
There is already a bright spot in your day: It is the small handful of minutes, a fraction of your fractured life, that you will spend doing nothing but sitting in the sphere of beauty.
I have made a playlist to accompany this article. It features classical music, (though that can mean a lot of different things, and I won’t go into that now, because that’s not the point of this article). I generally — though certainly not exclusively — find that classical music best helps me to achieve the state of grace I have written about today.
Perhaps that’s because classical music compels you to listen without telling you what to think, without telegraphing a story. It leaves room for your story. The lyrics of a pop song tells you, often brilliantly, what to think or feel; but classical music provides space for your own emotions and experiences to be stimulated, recalled, even discovered. (Largely) instrumental classical music allows for a far greater range of evocative spirits within the listener; we can relate what we are hearing to eight thousand points of memory and reference, without words telling us what to feel.
And although classical music supplies the satisfaction, joy and luxury of pop music, the instant gratification is not built in; virtually any and every classical piece unfurls, unfolds, unwinds, even the shortest ones move through dimensions, expressions, even implied generations. Classical music demands we spend some time with it, it disposes of instant satisfaction in exchange for a kaleidoscope, a map, an ancestral tree of experience.
Some of you will say, certainly with justification, that this is all nonsense, that music is not enough.
Of course it isn’t.
But I know this: A future without empathy and compassion is a future that is not worth living. And pausing for beauty, for music, for a gap in the noise, is the first step towards opening the heart.
The noise in the world is increasingly harder to stop. The Noise Industrial Complex, the agendas and the bank accounts of so many people, depend on us believing that it can’t be stopped, that the fury of constant distraction is inevitable. This is the Borg talking, not the magical, blessed occupiers of our rare human body.
And if you believe, like so many of us, that the future is an “if,” not a when?
Then let us go with beauty, not uncivility.
- Mitchell Cohen Sets the Story Straight - October 21, 2026
- Girlschool Release 1981 Reading Set - October 5, 2026
- Bob Dylan Live 2026 - August 1, 2026
You May Also Like
-
May 12, 2021 -
March 25, 2021 -
August 2, 2018