Musings on Time
At my last concert a few weeks ago in Queens, New York, toward the end of the show, I shared more in depth about some of the musings I've recently been having about time and how music ties into it. I again spoke about one of my favorite words— Kairos. This happens to be the name of my very first full-length album I released. I've always been filled with wonder when it comes to the connection between music and time. Many of us see music as sound— which it is— and in its simplest sense, you could say that the medium of music is basically time. In this same way, the medium of painting would be seen as space. As an artist paints on a canvas, they place the blues next to a mixture of orange and brown and continue on. But as a musician, I don't deal with space; instead dealing with time, with one note following another much as one moment of silence follows another moment of silence. In this way, I like to think that I've been given a great responsibility as a musician to try to say "Listen here. Pay attention to the time... to the sounds and the silences. Truly experience the abundance of time."
When I released my debut album, I wrote a short paragraph inside that read: "Kairos is a Greek word meaning the opportune moment. In my life, precise timing has always played itself out beyond what I planned or desired. This album is the expression of my education through the divine present, the Kairos. Each song is a lesson learned at the right moment. The pursuit of my vocation in music was a supreme moment, an appointed time of obedience for a divine purpose..."
Many know the difference between Chronos time— chronological time, stopwatch time, Google calendar time, time to wake up, time to grub, time to go— on the one hand and Kairos time on the other, which is not time thought of quantitatively, but rather qualitatively— we had a great time, it is a sad time, the time had come to move on, this is an uncertain time. Again, I've always felt a kind of urgency and duty as a musician and artist, to get the listener to pay attention to the quality of time, to the KAIROS-ness of time. When rehearsing with a band for an upcoming concert, I would remind the musicians to keep time. In this sense, I was reminding them to keep to the meter of music. But I think the beauty of music is that what it does to each of us in its own unique way, is to remind us to keep time in another way— keep it, truly keep in touch with it, keep your hands on it. Keep in touch with the sadness of your very own time... with the joy of time... with the beauty, the emptiness, and the wholeness of time. Furthermore, music is also telling us through the lens of time, to truly listen... to the sounds around you... to the music of your own life. Listen to the raindrops hitting the leaves in the trees. Listen to the coffee filling the mug. Listen to the cooing of your sleeping baby. There is something very profound and touching about this music of your life.
Music and the arts frame our lives for us so that we will experience it. I see music as a privilege and duty as an artist to frame my own life and this has— in such a beautiful way— allowed me to more fully see and experience my own life and purpose, especially as it relates to others. And I continue to hope that others will take the time to pay attention to the music of their own lives.