If you follow the news, it’s clear that the ongoing crises of the world are many: climate change, rising authoritarianism, the fragility of democratic systems, economic inequality, gun violence, racism, misogyny, WAR…a depressing and wide-ranging list. It was 47ºC somewhere in Portugal recently (116ºF+)—did I mention climate change??
A phrase that often pops up when people speak of their experience with these problems is “I never imagined it could happen here”. Never imagined the flood, the shooting, the act of terrorism, the discrimination…could happen HERE or NOW. Even when it is happening or has happened to others—elsewhere by a hundred miles or a hundred years—repeatedly.
Perhaps this is one reason why progress moves so slowly. We all need a lot more imagination! I am not exactly thinking of John Lennon’s idealization of a peaceful world “living as one” in his hit song from 1971. I am thinking of the power of our human minds (frankly, what else do we have going for us?) to imagine THINGS-WE-ARE-NOT-ACTUALLY-EXPERIENCING.
It is not JUST that without the power of imagination the entire human race might become sad Bartelbys pushing papers, sad as that would be. It is not JUST that we would lose art and music and literature and dance and theatre and…well, the splendor of human creativity—although those losses would be plenty.
It’s that unless we use our imagination, we can’t imagine the results of our inaction: our world at 3ºC warmer—animals dying, people migrating or dying, floods, drought, fires. We can’t imagine ourselves (we lucky folks living in free democracies) living under a dictatorship—being watched, constrained, and subject to arbitrary laws. We can’t (or choose not to) imagine ourselves impoverished, our children murdered at school, our rights taken away, our skin color being factored into every decision we make and every judgment made about us, or our country invaded and bombed. Without our imagination, we think these things just happen … to others.
And without imagination, the urgency to act is dulled, possibly to nothing.
But…what does this have to do with music?
Musicians live by their imagination. We try to get into the mindset and heart-set of the composer. We try to imagine the historical context—where would the music have been played? Who would have comprised the audience? How it might have been sounded on the instruments of that time?—and to the audience in that time or place? We imagine the life of the composer, the life of each phrase, and find some point of contact with ourselves. We try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. We connect.
We may get it all wrong, but the striving for empathy is what counts. If only everyone used their imagination a little more, like a musician, perhaps these crises would feel more urgent, and we would be compelled to action.
Next time you read the news, read it like a musician reads a score.
