Old Man

Is, then, He who has created the heavens and the earth not able to create [anew] the like of those [who have died]? Yea, indeed - for He alone is the all-knowing Crea­tor:

His Being alone is such that when He wills a thing to be, He but says unto it, “Be” — and it is.

Limitless, then, in His glory is He in whose hand rests the mighty dominion over all things; and unto Him you all will be brought back!

(Q: 36:81-83)

The verses of the Quran are not merely sentences which transmit thoughts, but are in way beings, powers or talismans. The soul of a Muslim is as it were woven of sacred formulas; in these he works, in these he rests, in these he lives and in these he dies.
--Frithjof Schuon.

It was a grey and overcast day, no different from any other, perhaps. At the cemetery I was struck by how solemn some of the words were: heavy, opaque almost. It was as if they had taken on the inner spirit of the earth itself. What one always marvels at, what never ceases to take one aback in surprise, is how ancient these rituals are -and just how they root us to a timeless deep...they are like anchors that always restore a primordial equilibrium, tearing us away from the historical drama of the self. There is a great comfort in recalling that words must be spoken in a particular way, that highly stylised ritual actions afford a type of freedom that can hardly be imagined in our modern times.

Back home Ubo recited Surah Yasin and his body rocked to and fro as he did; again, one is made aware of how old such recitation methods are and it is only when one listens to a surah do the words come alive; then, and only then, does one feel the inner rhythms of the text, get a dim sense of how different strands of meaning are miraculously woven into the verses. The written word, in comparison, always appears linear, or two dimensional and hardly ever takes flight. The human voice-precisely because it is human-is always more grounded but in hearing the chant one doesn't think of the person. The human voice has become merely a medium and though each may have his unique style this is greatly overshadowed by the presence of the universal. A light may still burn but is nothing in the presence of the sun...

Was listening to Ginsberg the other day and thought to myself: what a fantastic performer. (I have nothing to say on his poetry). When he talked he invariably seemed false, full of himself, but when he sang it was as if he was so much more at ease and the gap between him and the poem narrowed to the thinnest of margins...

We in the west have deliberately turned our back on nature and forged a man-made compromise. Western music has a vibrancy to it , which feeds directly off the tension (between natural and artificial ) in the tuning. ..Western music is fast because it is not in tune. ...it is not in tune with nature, it is incapable of finding a calm, neutral state, so to avoid the discomfort of this situation it keeps moving relentlessly on -it is generating movement because it cannot be at peace with itself.
--Howard Goodall.

For the soul of the Arab is monotonous-but not in a sense of poverty of imagination; he has plenty of that; but his instinct does not go, like that of Western man after width, three-dimensional space and simultaneity of many shades of emotion. Through Arabian music speaks a desire to carry, each time , a single emotional experience to the utmost end of its reach. To this pure monotony, this almost sensual desire to see desire intensified in a continuous, ascending line that Arabian character owes its strengths and its faults. Its faults: for the world want to be experienced , emotionally, in space as well; And its strength: for the faith in the possibility of an endless linear ascent of emotional knowledge can in the sphere of the mind lead nowhere but to God.
--M. Asad, Road to Mecca