Bluegrass Music and Alan Watts

"We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best.

Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."

-Alan Watts


No, this blog isn't about meditation, and don't worry, I'm not about to start wearing yoga pants to shows, but I must admit this quote has resonated with me very strongly for the last year or so. It was around a year ago that Pete joined Dead Horses, and since then I've experienced us going down a road as musicians and individuals that's much more acquainted with what Alan Watts was talking about when he compared meditation to music and dancing.

And it's exciting! It's not uncommon for us to play two or three or more shows a week, and never do we play the songs exactly the same way. What I experience when we play music is an exchange of energy between each other and among the people and energy in the room. That's why I'm full of so much gratitude for the people who come out to our shows.

As a musician it can be easy to focus on playing well and proficiently- not messing up the rhythm, not hitting a wrong note, not breaking a string... playing a perfect solo, hitting the harmony just right... And there certainly is a sort of integrity and art to playing well, but I find the times that "the sum is greater than the parts" are usually the times that we all forget just where we are and what we are doing- the beginning and the end no longer matter; there is no longer a perfect solo or a perfect pitch or a perfect rhythm, there is no longer a "self" but rather one part, one organism acting cohesively...unified in the vibrations in the room... and that organism, that collective is everyone and everything present.