If music is a benevolent presence constantly and readily available to all, how are we constantly and readily available to music?

We need to be present to music. This implies, we have to be present to ourselves. So, how?  If we disagree with the possibility that music is a benevolent presence, we have to be present to disagree. So the question remains: how can be we be present? This leads to another question: who is present? And perhaps the best I can say is, that what is present is my attention. Where my attention is, is where I am.  And, to all intents and purposes, it is who I am. So, if my quality of attention varies, I become a different quality of person; even, perhaps, a different person completely. If whoever my attention once was, once decided to practice attention, then my practice will involve noticing where my attention goes.  

And I will notice:

i)          Where my attention goes;
ii)         My noticing of where my attention goes.

Have I become two people? The quick answer is, that as far as I can tell, obviously yes. The long answer is, at least two people, and sometimes no people at all. Sometimes I am a romantic person; sometimes I am a gregarious  person; sometimes I am a solitary person. Sometimes I am a sensuous creature, living only for cheescake and exotic French confectionaries, washed into my eager, waiting body by cappucinos laced with cinnamon. Sometimes I am an intellectual, pursuing the secrets of the universe by the arrogant presumption of my cerebration. Sometimes I am a nesting person, defending my home against all intrusion. Sometimes I am a revolutionary, prepared to force what’s good for the unready world upon it, whether it knows what’s good for it or not. These, and many relatives in a large family of disparate but related characters, play upon the stage of my life. These characters are related by one main, common factor to them all: my noticing of them. And whereas the characters in the forefront of the action upon this stage change as the drama of living unfolds, my noticing remains the same: it is noticing.

Perhaps, I am two:

i)          A noticer;
ii)         A family of strange pedigree.        

Am I able to divide my attention between my thinking, my feeling, and what I am doing?  What are the different kinds and qualities of my experiencing? Is my experiencing a reflection of my attention?

 My presence is where I am. Absence is where I am not.  A present moment is the measure of my presence in time, in which my attention is engaged. It is the “when” and the “how long” of who I am.

In playing a musical instrument there is a directness of response.  We have a reflection of who we are, also when and how we are. There is no argument, no clever justification or explanations for a bum note: we were not present. The music is a reflection of who we are, a true and unblemished reflection: a fine mirror.

Robert Fripp
Friday 4th. September, 1987
Red Lion House
Cranborne, Dorset, England