Interview:

The mystical/spiritual enchantment of music can envelop the soul with a coma-like malaise, overpowering the prevalent mood of the moment so completely as to give us the sum total of our lives. We experience the full force of integrated longings for love, security, and social significance. These needs are so compelling we remember them in a time and place that never was, and so they “sleep” in the words and melody of a song remembered only by blameless expectations.

As “cap tu red” emotions, these feelings are so enshrined in subtle disappointments of anticipated fulfillment they can virtually obliterate the immediate continuity of life. It is a spell, it is escape, it is renewal of stranded dreams, and sometimes it’s a denial of a disintegrating future we the collective feel powerless to amend; tomorrow is now.

On the whole this phenomenon is therapeutic. The songs that commemorate enduring expectations can rejuvenate the human spirit for romance, idealism, the beginning of relationships, careers, youth — the whole spectrum of future events and expectant fulfillment. An aspect of healing and released anxiety is associated, one that could be said to have properties significant for the treatment of ills common to an eclectic society.

The recapture of youthful idealism softens the heart for tolerance. Introspection allows us to reflect on life’s resolutions; the time it takes to appreciate the full design of lessons learned and bridges burned. While it’s true contemporary culture demands immediate gratification while divorcing itself from values obtained by the patience required for living life one day at a time, music can revive the immediacy of hope — perpetually conceive it — so that the joy of its discovery is relived again and again.

The timeless vitality of this mystical rejuvenation remarries the present with the past, thus music endures as a “living” reward for faith in the future. Each time we hear a song that “lives” in what we are experiencing today, we are more of ourselves, more of who we were, and more of who we will be. There is, however, a dark side…

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC

There is no human activity more intriguing to angels than our making of music. An explanation of why this is so can be found in scripture, the implications of which dare us to challenge all that we know of mankind’s never ending need to express the duplicity of his soul.

Angels inhabit the Kingdom of Heaven, and are counted among the heavenly host. Numbered by the Word of God as are grains of sand, they glorify His name with celestial singing that is incomprehensible to earthbound sensibilities. If it can be so explained, the music of Heaven is layers upon layers of interwoven harmonic resplendence, for all who are in Heaven sing an unending song, giving praise to He who “made the earth, whose hands stretched out the heavens, and all their host has He commanded.” [Isaiah 45:12]

Lucifer was one of three archangels (Michael and Gabriel being the other two), and no cherub or seraph was allowed closer proximity to the throne of God than these. As Heaven’s choir director, it was Lucifer’s responsibility to lead the angelic host in worship. Created with instruments of music fashioned into his being: “The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou was created…” [Ezekiel 28:13]. He not only conducted the orchestra, he WAS the orchestra.

And he was very wise and extremely beautiful: “Every precious stone was thy covering, the Sardis, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.” Then in the midst of Heaven’s order and harmony, “When the morning stars [angels] sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” [Job 38:7], Lucifer sees his own beauty and brilliance and declares, “I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars [angels] of God;… I will be like the most High.” [Isaiah 14:13-14].

When Lucifer was cast to the earth “as lightning fall from heaven” with a third of the heavenly host (who by their free will chose to worship him as god), he brought his talent for music with him. It follows that a contamination of sorts has infected the music on earth, for we have songs that glorify Satanic deception, rebellion, and the occult, driven into the mind and soul by instruments and amplifiers pushed to torturous sound levels; and thousands have given themselves in worship to “the god of this age”.

UNDER THE OMEN STAR

The New Age movement was initiated by Sixties legends as they gloried in the counter culture’s rite of passage; willful contempt for God’s authority. But they never said as much. The vitality and naïveté of Fifties music yielded to the given that rock was growing up, and the tenets of secular humanism, though couched in feel good rhyme and rhythm, were cloaked in the subtle persuasion of duty to ego.

Those of the ilk, such as John Lennon, Donovan, Cat Stevens etc., thought themselves to be enlightened, the word most wrong for what it means. The kingdom of darkness is for those who go one before the other as if led by their own light. The conceit that we’ve arrived at the next frontier of evolutionary consciousness originated in the culture of Sixties idolatry, and began as oneness with the power of ourselves.

I was guilty of this, and take now a moment to apologize for my portion of its emergence. Those of us blessed with a blue thumb are to the manor born; having planted that which prospered under the omen star, we negotiated blame in our rhyme and were proud to be blameless in our songs. Occultism marches to a drum beaten by a cloven hoof. It pretends to wear a sandal stained with blood from a crown of thorns, and the beat goes on. While it’s true that contemporary rock continues to express the obstinate relevance of its seniority, technology is contaminating the market place with artificial sentiment; cloned rhythms, and a redundant library of contrived chants with puerile themes. So much of what is heard obscures the magical power of music by degenerating its “quality of heart”, but the real danger in the unspecified diversity of cause and effect, is the exploitation of hopelessness.

By way of nihilism and technological evolution, our feelings for the human condition have no value. Now bereft of inspiration by vulgar phrases and obscenity, the richness of compliant, emotional continuity so vital to the health of our nation, is vanishing. I don’t mean to suggest we can turn back the clock, or that the mystical enchantment of music is reserved for, or limited to, a particular era — or that we should expect to hear gangster rap as hummed or whistled by the mailman. But we need to be reminded of simpler times… of melodies whistled, and songs cherished. The point is, we need music that reaches into our worth as intelligent beings, to remind us that we’re more than just dancing bones and a haircut.

This would be incidental to reality were it not for the fact that mainstream American music glorifies sex, drugs, and Satanism. Each generation hears the feudalism of its own voice. All other voices are impotent. Punk reflected the banishment of futility with its discordant noise, mindless tempos, and grinding ferocity. The fashion was body chains, black leather, and dark, masculine eyeshadow; the after the bomb look. With no trace of melodies that linger, the next generation will have no heart for the memory of its youth, but it may be too well-remembered, in a future world of obliterated reminders. We need to be reminded not to rejoice in the death of our dreams, that music lives through and for the nurturing of triumphant hope.

We need to be reminded that we are spiritual beings housed in a physical body, and that our pilgrimage for one lifetime is created specifically to optimize reunification with a loving Creator who died for us — that we may inherit eternal life.

All of it was spoken when the Word of life was heard.
All of it was said and done before it did occur…
All of it by perfect love for time to save the lost:
He formed stars and then the world…
For a moment on the cross.

Excerpt taken from Sean Bonniwell’s autobiography “Beyond The Garage” (2000) available from Christian Vision. © 2000 Sean Bonniwell/Christian Vision. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

“Music can revive the immediacy of hope — perpetually conceive it — so that the joy of its discovery is relived again and again.”
– Sean Bonniwell, guitarist and singer-songwriter in The Music Machine