The surface of the world hums and throbs with songs. A stoned neighbor’s 70’s-radio playlist. A restaurant kitchen’s thrashy closing jams. A mother’s lullaby and a father’s lullaby. An opera singer’s audition. Dungeon industrial tracks. The call to prayer. The tipsy empire of karaoke. A nervous adolescent’s talent-show premiere. A crackling crooner from a digitized 78, uploaded. A paved-urban-playground song. A smores-smudged camp sing-along. A sneering, snappy set opener at the club. A busker’s folksified pop cover. Ecstatic humming and wailing in a village ritual. The junior college musical production. Dharma-chanting in the zendo. Ironic anti-songs at the new music conference. A jug band at a pick-up gig on their last song before the break. Vary by everything humanly possible, multiply by billions, and that’s what’s going on right now.
And right here: I want to clear a space for a song. I want it to be the only song. To let it stand between silence and silence, referring to no other, flowing into or out of no other. Let this be a devotional for the deep song-cult: find a song that can stand still, hanging against the starry dark like this cold glorious full moon, and from within this song you may hear everything move.