In the previous post we saw how Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption explains to his fellow prisoners how listening to Mozart brought him freedom while he was in solitary confinement.
Music and hope for the human condition
The idea of music and hope going together is not new: praise and worship in Judeo-Christian faith has the purpose of lifting the spirit, making one forget about earthly troubles and dire situations. David, before he became king, played the lyre and sang to King Saul when he was troubled by an evil spirit and this gave the king peace. Isaiah 61:3 talks about putting on “a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Despair is the antithesis of hope, therefore singing songs of praise brings about hope.
Praise-singing is of course a religious activity, but a part of the human experience is the fact that any music can affect mood by either lifting us up out of our despair (who can honestly say that the last movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D doesn’t lift the spirit after the fairly sombre preceding movement?) or by showing us that we are not alone in our situation – blues music and, lately, certain heavy rock/metal achieve this as well. As Andy Dufresne puts it, “Here [in prison – real or metaphorical] is where it [music in its truest form] makes the most sense” – transporting us to a place of hope or helping us realise that we are not alone.
We find this reaching beyond the material world, beyond this prison of the soul, in the song “Spirits in the material world” by The Police. The song is about the disillusionment with human political institutions: “There is no political solution/To our troubled evolution/Have no faith in constitution/There is no bloody revolution” speaks of human history littered with broken ideals and promises, revolutions that have only brought new tyrants (and, by implication, new institutions) to power. The song reminds us that we are the spiritual occupants of the physical realm – “ghosts in the machine”.
Music, in its truest form, helps us make sense of the world and gives us hope in our human condition. Music in its most banal form, however, imprisons us even further in materialism: listen to a lot of contemporary pop and rap, and you will hear lyrics glorifying sexual and hedonistic excess, the partying lifestyle, in-your-face materialism and self-obsession, disrespect for women and fellow humans or promising sweet syrupy Hollywood style love which is totally out of synch with reality. Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption had to contend with “The Sisters”, a gang in the prison whose sole purpose was to dominate fellow inmates through sodomy. Anyone aligning themselves with them would gain political power in the prison, yet Andy chose to fight them even though Boggs, the leader, had made overtures towards him at the start ("We could all use some friends"). Andy could have given in after they had beaten him up and sodomised him, yet he chose to resist to the bitter end. These men are institutionalised and relish their institutionalisation; this is their kingdom.
In the same way, we can say that the aforementioned banal pop and rap is music that tries to make people believe that this material reality is what it’s all about, keeping us institutionalised and controlled, obsessed with the immediate and keeping our eyes off the eternal. Yet we see artists resisting the lure of fame and artistic compromise, living on the fringes of stardom, showing Andy Dufresne-like integrity through giving us beautiful music that gives hope to the soul. Listen to Imogen Heap's "2-1" - the cello on it is a moving experience. Are the lyrics Christian? That depends on how you want to read them. Is Imogen Heap Christian? I very much doubt it. But if God could use a donkey to speak to a prophet (Balaam), then surely he can use a secular musician like Heap to transport us to a place of freedom for the soul?
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