The Music of Arvo Pärt

 I heard a recent interview of Depak Chopra, who has been very much influenced by Indian philosophy. What is death?, he was asked. Creativity, he replied. This very positive assessment is possible when one identifies with the All and forgets oneself as an individual. I recall what Neil deGrasse Tyson, a well-known astrophysicist  and materialist, said about the passage to that  'bourn from which no traveler returns'. Tyson, the very opposite of a mystic, said that death reminds him of the importance of not putting important things off. "I've got all the time in the world...," a young Tyson might well have said to himself. "No you don't," Death replied, hourglass in hand.  Tyson had the wisdom to listen. 

The knowledge that one will not live forever--or even be there for tomorrow--has always been a driver of creativity. This is especially true of works written by those whose third eye isn't blind.  How do we transcend the inevitable? I'm not sure, but I am sure that many great humans inevitably try to do just that.

Arvo Pärt is a deeply religious modern composer. Would he have been able to compose profound music if Death hadn't periodically whispered in his ear, 'Dust thou art and unto dust shall thou return'? Death can be a great motivator; that is the subject of the following poem.

The Music of Arvo Pärt

The beauty of smoothness removed;

a leaf with holes and scars.

Pick it up, look through and see

gnawed bark's scarifications--

Winds split spotted branches;

imperfection survives.

Let obsessions go or grow

like lichen, very slow,

very slow. Let moss and decay

have their way, without which

there would be no Arvo Pärt.

Living surfaces always have flaws:

a rose without the slightest blotch

would be too quixotic to last, even

for a second. What is transcendence?

Pupils; leaves with holes and scars.       

                               Thomas Dorsett

First published in Loch Raven Review, Vol. 17, 2021