Music and Connection- Emotions & Energy

The Li Ji (book of Rites), edited by Confucius, says:

'Music is intimately connected with the essential relations between beings.' "

Well, we've talked before about the truth in the blues, but what about the music itself?  Is it merely a vehicle for the fact, like a new app?   The question's a setup, and my answer is, of course, "no." The connection through music brings a whole new gestalt and dimension of its own to the proceedings.  It opens the door and invites the people to engage parts of themselves that may not have come into play in their work life before. When a company hires in a new person, I'm pretty sure that they assume that they are hiring the whole person, the best of their experience, creativity, education, skills, etc.  But our culture itself determines to a great extent what is brought to the game.  The real knowledge and experience that you are hiring have already defined certain boundaries and assumptions about what comes to the game and how it plays out.  These definitions are needed, but I hypothesize that in this process some of the very best stuff that people have to bring does not ever get to the table, and organizations of the future will have a different landscape that invites more of the whole person to participate.

As our understanding of organizations shifts out of the mechanical model into a more organic holographic awareness, the dimensions of success are changing.  The mechanical model emphasizes the parts, and each part’s success is noted in planning for the success of the whole.  In the holographic systems view, interfaces and interactions throughout the organization are an exciting feature.  That is where the results happen, where synergies are realized, where insight becomes product/service and goes to market quickly.  The music fits in because it is its new dimension.  You can read the lyrics to a song and get the meaning and truth of it, but when you hear it, you experience it, and your perception is taken to a much more fertile field of awareness like going from the Flatland of 2-dimensional space into the fullness of 3 dimensions.

You are transported, and the music makes an emotional connection as well as a mental one.  Sometimes how to use the 3rd-dimensional insight is readily apparen—a new product idea, a re-org that makes sense to help people work together better.  But it seems mostly to be mystifying; we feel good, we have an interesting perspective and some poetry about our situation, but so what?

 Part of the "so what" is in the connections that the music brings to light.  From the power of 2 to a force of three; or, for example, in a 5 -Node model, from 25 to 125. 

 A whole new landscape or universe, more complicated, but also with a lot more potential for interesting links that will produce different outcomes.  Some of the links could help me celebration, community, spiritual, philosophical; they could be around freedom, ethics, choices amid scarcity, co-responsibility and protection, value, creativity, informal learning, emotion, and on... 

"All cultures of the world have used music as a way of communication, in a ritual or for entertainment. There is not one culture without music or sound. Music is the appreciation of sound and all sound is potentially music.”

 —Paul Kwiecinski