It Is So, If You Think It Is

“Così è, se vi pare!”

[It is so, if you think it is!]

- Luigi Pirandello

Okay, it is a stretch to call Luigi Pirandello a Transcendentalist. I don't have any documentation that Pirandello, the Italian playwright who wrote It Is So, If You Think It Is, back in 1917, had read a word of Emerson or Thoreau.

But last week, an interesting thought crossed my mind while I was listening to the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 -  my favorite recording with Arthur Rubinstein. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the thought came into my mind, "This piece of music is a religion." And then Pirandello's words popped into my mind next. Yes, there is no reason why one piece of music can't be a religion to me. It can, if I think it can.

Now, some people might want to take a poke at that statement - or at me - for making a statement like that. Can one piece of music really have the same importance in my life as one of the world's great religions? Can one piece of music possess everything that those religions possess - the traditions, emotions and capacity to change my life? It can, if I think it can. Or maybe, if it has already proven its ability to do so.

You see, this piece of music and I go back a very long way. During one of the most difficult periods of my life, after the death of one of my parents, I listened to it every day in my car as I was driving to clean out the old family house where I had grown up. Every day in my car, I listened to that Brahms. It is a transcendent piece of music - deeply troubling and reassuring at the same time. At times it sounded as deeply shaken as I was, and at other times, it seemed to sending me a message of great love.

So it's not like I just woke up one day and decided that this piece of music had earned the place of a religion in my life. I've been working on this piece of music for a very long time.

As Emerson wrote, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." That's another way of saying it is so, if you think it is.

Of course, you can find a religion within the walls of a church. That's one way. But Emerson and Thoreau were telling us that we are also empowered to find it anywhere.

Comments

[Ina Matijevic]

Barry,

I have just discovered Your blog!!!

Well, this will be my every day's station.
How come I didn' t see it before...maybe You should link it on Trump blog and with Your posts.

This is a real jewel!!!!
I have to come here today to say to You this....

Great:-)

Ina

[shara]

was sorting through a host of bookmarks and came to this, forgotten for awhile but glad to have found it again. a piece of music as religion, yes. a difficult day for me today. this helps. thank you.

[pauline]

Interesting the way ideas link people in the ways they do... I'd just left a version of this thought (it is so if you think it is) on a friend's blog, she linked here, and I find myself reading your thoughts on my thoughts. Who knew?