Tonight I was treated to a rare respite of the "dinner music that I have compassionately become accustomed to.
Living in a polyamorous household, full of (at times) five adults and four children, one gets used to having to exercise compassion. As an example, one member of our household is heavily into techno, a form of auditory expression that I resent having to call "music." She feels that it is her right to punch up her favorite Internet Techno station both during the preparation of and the consumption of dinner. I allow her to do this because...uh...that's just what you *do* when there are other, more admirable, qualities about the person whose bad taste you are subjecting yourself to. :-) Tonight the worlds of techno-love and compassion collided and coexisted peacefully. The fave Techno station interrupted its broadcast of bland, completely-devoid-of-creativity reuse of Other People's Music and played some original music. In particular, Jean- Michel Jarre's classic "Oxygene." My roommate went fuckin WILD when she heard it. Turns out that JMJ was her "gateway drug" to the world of electronica. As she danced around the room -- that's why she likes techno; she can't help but dance when the music carries her away -- she explained that JMJ was one of the first artists she ever heard who "opened her up" to new musical and spiritual horizons. She was in hog heaven, dancing around our kitchen to beat all. Almost embarrassingly, so was I. At the same time she was gettin' off on JMJ and dancing to his music, I was meditating to it. "Oxygene" was one of the first tracks that I meditated to with Rama (who used to like playing music to meditate to in his group meetings). While the music would "take" her to realms of disco and sensory madness, the *same* music was, across the nation, "taking" me to heights of spiritual exper- ience that I'd never before encountered. Different strokes for different folks. Different paths, same destination. Cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8dqzTl0vUI
