Music Response

One of my writing assignments for college was to listen to this 8 minute song called Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt. While listening to this song, I was instructed to do absolutely nothing and after write about how the song made me think about my place in the world. This is one of my favorite short essays I have ever written so I wanted to share it on here as well. If you would like to listen to the song before or while you read, I highly recommend it (Youtube Link).

While listening to Spiegel im Spiegel, I found it hard to not do anything for the full 8 minutes. Even though I was thoroughly enjoying the song and was relaxed by it, I could not sit still. This song sounded like sparkles to me and is truly incredible. But, I still found it so hard to refrain from my other day to day activities while enjoying the music. In today's world we are led to believe that we are not being productive when we just sit and think. Especially in New York, everyone is always moving and moving quickly. Our brains jump from one activity to the next without skipping a beat. For me this exercise truly tested my ability to simply sit with myself and just listen while letting my thoughts flow freely.

While listening, I had many thoughts about our place in the world. We are so small not only in size compared to the Earth but in life on this Earth as well. Yet we have managed to hurt our ecosystem so much in the little time we have called this planet home. The only time we started to realize how much we were impacting our home was when it started to affect us. This thought made me very sad, how could we have such little care and awareness of the living creatures surrounding us. Even though we have inhabited this earth for such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of the universe, we have probably negatively impacted it the most. 

I think most of this stems from greed. As a species we are constantly looking for more: more clothes, more wealth and just more stuff. Most of it we don’t even need. I have found myself practicing this as well, while I am much more conscious of my buying habits as an adult, when I was in middle/high school I purchased so many items that I did not need. $50+ Shein orders almost every month with my $13 an hour grocery store job. Only because I always wanted that new item and the serotonin I got from opening that package. In my later highschool years, I discovered thrifting, moving away from online purchases but still overconsuming. This is the main problem I believe we have in our society. 

We feel the need to consume so much, not only items but content as well. I believe this is part of the reason I found this task very difficult. We are trained to always be doing something, always striving for better, usually meaning more stuff. But more does not mean better, overconsumption is a problem we all face and we all need to be more aware of it. I am still learning as well. Everyday, I have to ask myself ‘is it a want or a need?’ I believe it is so important for us to be asking ourselves this question to avoid the inherent overconsumption that we all partake in. 

Even though this is pretty sad thinking to have during a beautiful melody, this song also gave me hope. Hope that it is not too late and even though we might not be able to ever reverse the detrimental effects we have had on the Earth, we can learn from our mistakes and work together to become better people and better to our home and the other living things that call it home as well. 

Another song that makes me feel sad but hopeful is “Save me” by Noah Kahan. In this song he repeats the line “why do you try to save me?”. This is an intriguing line to me because no matter how much you may hurt someone, if they are able to see past the hurt into the good in you, they will ‘try to save you’. I have been like this my whole life. When I love someone or something I find it difficult to let go no matter what. It is one of my favorite qualities in myself but also one I used to try so badly to change. Maybe that is how the world views humans? We have hurt our planet so much and honestly we might continue until millions are dead. We choose to fight with each other instead of working together and loving one another. It is incredibly sad but, I do believe that we can change if we communicate and choose love over hate. No matter how much we hurt our planet, it will always take care of us, giving us a home, giving us food, giving us water, giving us shelter, even though, in my opinion, we do not deserve it. 

Now I know that this got pretty dark, but it is so important to be able to sit with ourselves and think about our place in this infinite universe. If you would like to share your thoughts please do ! I would love to hear what you guys discovered as well by simply sitting and listening.

Thank you for Reading

-AJ

2/4/25