Dictation from God

Dictation from God

In the early days of FM broadcast in Malaysia, there were only six hours of broadcast everyday, divided into two sessions. The morning session was between 9.00am to noon. The popular 1-hour slot "Pilihan Khas" at night--featuring requests from listeners--starts at 9.00pm.

I did not own an FM radio until I was 13 years old-- even the one I had was mono, not stereo. Today all radio broadcasts are in FM of course, and we are spoilt for choice. We can even have them streamed to our desktops via the Internet.

But one recalls back on those old days with fondness: The broadcast then had no commercials and there were 2 hours of classical music everyday: Muzik Klasik from ten to eleven in the morning and one hour of Konsert Klasik starting eleven at night. To me those were the golden days of radio.

Not sure if our local radio stations still broadcast classical music today but it was from listening to FM Stereo, Radio Malaysia, that I acquired a taste for it. I still have cassette recordings that I made of those one-hour Musik Klasik and Konsert Klasik sessions: Eine Klein Nachmusik by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony no 7 by Ludvig Van Beethoven, are among those I can remember.

When I was older, I started collecting classical music, initially audio cassettes and later CDs. I have a fondness for piano sonatas and have the complete collection of all the piano sonatas Mozart and Beethoven ever wrote.

A lof of people love Mozart. Even unborn babies are being fed Mozart by their mothers, believing that it will aid their development. Albert Einstein played the violin and he was very fond of Mozart too. If I remember correctly, it was he who commented that Mozart's music is like a part of nature: it has always been there, ever-present in the atmosphere, like the air we breathe; Mozart merely wrote it down.

In the Oscar-winning movie Amadeus directed by Milos Forman, Mozart's contemporary and rival Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham), was stunned into despair and disbelieve on first setting eyes on the manuscripts of Mozart's compositions. He was amazed at how effortless the creative process was to Mozart--it was as if Mozart was taking dictation from God.

Both Einstein's and Salieri's observations hit at the heart of the creative process. Nature is in essence creative. The growth of plants, the synthesis of protein, the flow of rivers to sea, the orbit of planets around stars--all natural processes possess a certain harmony and rhythm in their unfoldment. Primal forces are at work, driving the evolution of Nature. This is the Divine Impulse; the Voice of God, if you will.

The true artist is in total communion with Nature. Some, like Mozart, are born with a natural ability to tune in to the natural rhythms of these forces. To create a work of art is to tap into these primal forces and to transpose their patterns into whatever medium that the artist chooses to work with.

We know a particular piece of work has artistic value because we experience resonance: We recognize the primal forces that the artist is trying to express and we want to dive and swim within their currents. Every fibre in our body craves for such resonance. We revel and dance in its glory.

The rhythms of poetry and music, the interplay of characters in human dramas, the swirl and dash of colours in an Expressionist painting, the juxtaposing of images in music videos are all attempts--no matter how imperfect--to mimic and trace the tension and release of these archetypal forces.

Classical music is one of the purest example of such a quest. And I did not know, when I was a young boy tuning my FM radio to Muzik Klasik on those balmy mornings before attending afternoon school, that I was listening to God's dictation.