An Examen for Experiencing Music
It wasn’t until this year that I began to understand my love for music. I have always loved art in any form - popular or otherwise. I love books and television and photography and oil paintings. But I have loved music in a different way, and in a way that has often caused me to sideline it as an “inferior” love. I love music because the point is not to say the right thing, or the good thing, or the proper thing. The point of music is to say it like it is. Songwriter Sara Groves once wrote that “the best advice I ever received, the advice that has produced the most fruit in my work, was not to edit myself…to tell the truth - the whole, complex, messy, conflicted, unflattering truth.” As someone who tries to spend my life editing myself, trying to constantly move toward perfection of some kind, I often saw this rawness and emotional vulnerability in music to be a base art form. I thought of it as a guilty pleasure, even as I piled up playlists and checked Apple Music every Tuesday (and then Friday) for new albums and singles.
What I know now, though, is that music is a gift to me, and to all of us. For someone who is constantly in her own head, unable to label my emotions until weeks after the fact, music pulls me back down into myself. It pulls me in emotionally, physically, spiritually. As someone who loves words, it is often about the lyrics, but many times it’s not about the words at all - it’s the way the music swells, or the minor chord catches you off guard and forces you to drop your happy defenses, or how a key change manages to physically take you to a different reality. It’s the humanity of it, and how it forces you to own up to things you might not have wanted to feel or deal with, and, for me, it’s slowly become a spiritual exercise.
Because of this, and in honor of my goal this year to listen to at least 100 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, I have decided to create an examen for music - the kind of examen I, personally, need. Not a focus on thought or cerebral findings, but on the gut, the core of your being, the things we often forget to notice. So grab a pair of headphones, settle in, and then take a moment to sit with what you’re experiencing.
Name one emotion that you felt listening to this music. What was it that drew out that emotion? Lyrics? Melody? Rhythm? Bring this emotion to God, and ask him to enter into it and shine a deeper light on that emotion.
Did this song or album bring up any memories or nostalgia? Did it connect you to your past? Or did it feel new, bringing to light a different kind of experience emotionally, spiritually, or mentally? Was listening to this music a comfortable or uncomfortable experience? Bring the nostalgia, wonder, tension, or other experiences to God and ask that he would work beneath the surface of this experience within your heart, soul, and mind.
Did this music conjure up any dreams, pictures, or visions in your mind? Can you associate a color or color pallet with this music? If you had to pick a scent that might match this song, what would it be? Ground yourself in the physicality of what you are listening to and experiencing, and ask God if there might be anything imaginatively prophetic he might be speaking to you through this music.
Did this music conjure up any kind of compassion for others, or for the experience of the songwriter? How might this song lead you out of yourself and into love for someone else? Are there any social ills that the music identifies, or anything the music calls you to lament? Ask God to use this music to expand your ability to relate to and love others.
Are there lyrics you disagree with, or parts of the music that you think are unable to be incorporated into your faith? Ask God to reveal to you the places where his absence is felt in this song, and ask him to draw near to you, as well as to all who worked on creating this music.
Does anything feel left unsaid, or unfelt, after listening to this music? Ask God if there is anything he may want you to dig more deeply into.
My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. Psalm 57:7
Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:18b-20
Happy listening.