Kropotkin and music

As is my habit, I am listening to music as I write…
right now the station is on “modern classical music”
if there was one constant to my day, it would be music…
I listen while I read and while I write and when I do dishes…
the music helps me focus… but it is one part of my two sides…
I have, as everyone does, an irrational side and I have a rational,
logical side… so while my thoughts might rational, logical, reasonable,
my music is reaching my irrational, illogical side…In other words
I am reaching both sides of my possibilities… the irrational and
the rational…and that is because of the music I constantly listen to…

and that music is mostly New age, classical, light jazz… I especially listen
to a lot, a lot of solo piano… George Winston for example and Ludovico Einaudi…
as I struggle to understand the world, the music, the music allows me to explore
the feelings that surrounds me…when I listen to beautiful music, my soul is
touched and moved and stirred into emotions, I didn’t know I had…
but this thing, the soul, what is it? I believe I best tap into my soul
when I listen to music…is this thing we call soul, is it what we feel
when we listen to beautiful music? that stirring we feel, is that my soul
reacting to the music? I don’t know…and I may never know…
for part of our current Modern failure lies within the fact that we know
more about the other side of the moon then we do about our human soul…

to follow Socrates in “knowing thyself” we must include some understanding
of what it means to have a soul… do animals have souls? right in the beginning
of philosophy, Aristotle asks that question…this thing we call a soul…
we can feel it, but we cannot describe what it is, or how it works,
or what it means to have a soul… in my exploration of history
and certain aspects of history, I am often lead to wonder if some people
are lacking in souls… if they can allow or pursue such things as the Holocaust…
or to be a mass murderer… I cannot imagine myself killing anyone, little less
more the one…I could not have that killing on my soul… even if, I don’t
know what my soul looks like…the weight of actions such as killing or even such
“minor” actions as lying, weigh heavily on my soul…is the soul, consciousness?
I can’t say…I can say that certain actions leave their mark on my soul even
if I can’t identify or locate that soul…

is the soul a metaphysical thing? metaphysical: something beyond the,
outside of the physical…I don’t know what the soul is nor can I tell you
what it means but I can feel the soul as I listen to music… as I listen to
music I can only tell you that the soul surely exist as much as my heart
exists…and it is through music does my soul feel the strongest and most
alive…

Kropotkin