# Sense of Timelessness



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

The experience that I cherish music most for is the sense of timelessness that I can get from it. It doesn't happen always, or even often, but it's the most remarkable feeling. This particular sense of timelessness is one not just where I feel outside the confines of time, but where I can actually sense and experience in tiny amounts _all_ times in my life, past and future. When the experience stops, I'm always reminded of a section from Byron's _Manfred_ about the titular character feeling "reduced to clay." When it stops, I'm once again caged in my corporeal clayness.

My question is whether or not you get this feeling and, more importantly, whether or not you have cultivated other ways to capture it? I find it extremely therapeutic in all kinds of ways, but it only ever lasts so long as I am in that special moment with the music playing, which is obviously very transient. I want to feel it all the time, but I don't know how.


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## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

You should check out some Renaissance music. I guess it must be the way it's structured but it is remarkably effective in creating that illusion of time stopping as if you could live a lifetime within it. Nicolas Gombert or Pierre de la Rue are the sort of thing that's particularly effective in this regard.


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## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

I think smaller pieces, consentrated works with melody, can make a feeling of timelessness. At least it does that to me.. The small pears! Nielsen "the fog is lifting" is one example. Sinding, "Frülungsrauchen" is another. I agree also that early music, medieval or renessanse have that effect.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

Not expecting that you should respond as I do to this, Polednice, just wanted to give an example from the modern repertoire that does exactly _for me_ what you seem to be describing - every note, every section to me, is sheer timeless bliss.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Pärt: Fratres


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

NightHawk said:


> Not expecting that you should respond as I do to this, Polednice, just wanted to give an example from the modern repertoire that does exactly _for me_ what you seem to be describing - every note, every section to me, is sheer timeless bliss.


Tell me about that piece! I performed the 2nd flute/piccolo part actually this past semester, that movement is truly moving.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

The "music room" of @Polednice:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Several of the Russian pianists seem to have no sense of time; Schubert goes on forever.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Polednice said:


> My question is whether or not you get this feeling and, more importantly, whether or not you have cultivated other ways to capture it?


If you haven't, you should really listen to Tristan & Isolde. It is so uniquely effective at contracting and dilating sense of time that essays have been written about it. Also, it is 4 hours long. After the Liebestod however you may feel you have watched something lasting 4 days (and that's not a bad thing).

There are several illicit drugs which do this quite effectively. Like so effectively you can look at a clock and the number will simply seem absurd and meaningless. Unfortunately with illicit drugs the effects are rarely worth the side effects and risking the long-term consequences.


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## hespdelk (Mar 19, 2011)

The adagio from Bruckner's 8th symphony does this for me.. many others pieces as well, but that one particularly.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I see my request for NON-musical creations of this sense has gone straight over the heads of you obsessed people.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

In general, music can do either of 2 things: either ground me in reality, or make me lose touch with reality. Most Russian composers ground me in reality quite firmly, and allow me to feel rather realistic emotions. But there is the occasional work, ex. Prokofiev's Cinderella, Glazunov's 5th symphony, and actually many orchestral works by Tchaikovsky, which I feel I lose touch with reality very quickly. As in, I start having odd thoughts like "I don't belong here. I belong in a world where this is real life." Perhaps that counts as having a sense of timelessness, because the emotion transcends earthly reality in a way.

When I performed the Tchaikovsky 5th symphony at my college this past semester, I felt like crying at the end of it, not because it was so beautiful, although that was surely true, but because it was _over_. It was 40-something minutes, but it felt that it should have lasted forever. That piece has certainly became timeless for me, for even at the beginning of the semester, I actually didn't care for that symphony so much and had thought it kind of silly. Now it's very dear to me.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

What you are seeking the Jewish writers call olam. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, "Also, he has put eternity into man's heart . . ." T.S. Eliot calls it "the point, the still point." He covers it well in his Four Quartets, then saying,

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. 

You're looking for a more permanent state of olam, or maybe what we would call transcendence. I believe it is achievable while still remaining a rational, feeling human being; I've experienced it in a measure and am also seeking it more fully, and I'm encountering it within Christianity in a living experience beyond dogma and ritual.

This is a very personal and reticent admission, just as a way to share with you my experience, not as a sales pitch.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> In general, music can do either of 2 things: either ground me in reality, or make me lose touch with reality.


I had that happen last night. My wife and I lead a worship service for residents of a local rest home, her on piano, me on saxophone. I always feel a degree of transcendence when I play, but as we began Amazing Grace, a 91-year-old lady stood to her feet, arms outstretched, and something came over us all which was "in time and outside of time." I couldn't keep my eyes open; we all were, as Stefan George said, breathing "the air of a different world." I love it when that happens!

[Again, I'm sharing a personal experience; this is not a sales pitch.]


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I see my request for NON-musical creations of this sense has gone straight over the heads of you obsessed people.


Hmmm,...how 'bout you jump off a plane...from very high up...I'm sure that for at least a couple of seconds you'll feel many 'lessness' feelings...oh, don't forget a parachute.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Manxfeeder said:


> I had that happen last night. My wife and I lead a worship service for residents of a local rest home, her on piano, me on saxophone. I always feel a degree of transcendence when I play, but as we began Amazing Grace, a 91-year-old lady stood to her feet, arms outstretched, and something came over us all which was "in time and outside of time." I couldn't keep my eyes open; we all were, as Stefan George said, breathing "the air of a different world." I love it when that happens!
> 
> Thanks for the anecdote. Would that I had been there.
> 
> It has been my experience that both the music and the words of Amazing Grace have power.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I sometimes experience something that might be like this feeling, when I've listened to a piece enough times to have it playing in my head while I'm in the shower. I think that if you want to experience this feeling more, listen to more new(for you) music all the time and let yourself experience it in any way you can at first. Don't just stick to your same old pieces that comfort you, try new ones. Then you will find more power in your old ones as well. 

I've found that my imagination has really gotten ticking when my mind is open to listening to all sorts of new repertoire.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> What you are seeking the Jewish writers call olam. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, "Also, he has put eternity into man's heart . . ." T.S. Eliot calls it "the point, the still point." He covers it well in his Four Quartets, then saying,
> 
> For most of us, there is only the unattended
> Moment, the moment in and out of time,
> ...


Thanks for this insightful post. 

It reminds me that, when I was getting counselling for depression, I was taught a meditation technique called Mindfulness (stolen from Buddhists, I think). I'd always thought meditation to be a load of nonsense, but it really worked for me, and it did give me this timeless feeling for longer than music, but not permanently. Still, it's available more readily than music is. I need to keep trying it more often, I just forget I have it as a tool!


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn


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## kanonathena (Jun 25, 2010)




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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

GURNEMANZ: "Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit." 

That's Art, that's Music, that's truly living life as it should be lived.


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