Cover the Earth With Music

I picked up this free magazine in the vestibule of St. Mark’s Books because I was curious about it, “Arthur”. There is an interview with Yoko Ono about “her access points into the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s”. The article was semi-interesting. The best part was when she was talking about how “there are 2 industries in the world. One is the peace industry and the other is the war industry. The war industry people are very much together. They are so united they don’t even have to talk to each other. They know they want to kill and make money. But the peace industry people are such idealists and perfectionists. We’re arguing ourselves to death. ‘The way you’re doing it is not right.’ If we can become more gentle and generous to each other, if we can love each other we can get together and we’ll be a good force. And our force has to be just as strong as the war industry people or more. And when I say ‘force,’ it has to be viable as well because the economy is controlling the world. Of course the war industry is much more viable than the peace industry. But people are opening up to appreciating art or music. And that’s going to do it. I’m doing that and I’m sure you are too. We’re trying to cover the Earth with music. And the power of music will heal the Earth. And we should concentrate on that rather than saying ‘What are we going to do with that guy?’ We don’t want to know about that.”

While I’m not 100% sure covering the world with music is the answer, I love this sentiment and I think there is a lot of truth to her take on the war industry and the peace industry. I’d rather just be and since I love music, I can simply do that. Everything is so much better when I’m completely music focused. Since I stopped paying attention to the war stuff, things are much better for me. I now understand the concept ‘what you resist persists, grows stronger, and dominates your life” from Ariel and Shya Kane. I think the peace industry is really the “resist war industry” and is just unknowingly helping keep it around and in our focus more.

Somewhere else in the interview she talks about attending a Japanese school called Judaku. She said she had an assignment to listen to all the sounds in the city that day and transpose it into musical notes. I often hear music in strange places, like rain, the bus, etc. during jazzfest or when I'm going to a particulary large amount of shows during a period. It's been happening a lot lately. So, I think the Earth is already covered with music we just need to learn how to listen better.