I have been listening to Yo-Yo Ma the past couple of days. One of his songs is called Trad: Yanzi (Shallow Song). I love this piece because it is on the verge of the deep.
In the beginning of the song, the cello resonates and sinks deeply into my being. It stirs something mysterious within me. It stirs some unnameable thing. Then the flute floats me. The flute is like the surface of deep water. It teases, it ripples, and then comes the cello's dark waters. The notes draw me down into a soul place. A dark place.
One might think that this dark place is frightening, but it is just the opposite. The cello invites me into this place and I want to go there. I want to feel that deep place. I want to know that deep place. I want to experience that dark place. But the cello takes me there only teasingly. Just when I am about to be submerged into the notes and the deep and the dark, the cello rises to the surface and submits to the flute.
It creates in me a longing, a longing for deepness, the deepness and the darkness of the spirit, of my soul. It creates in me longing for the Divine Darkness, the Divine Deepness. My soul longs to be united with that Divineness.
So this Shallow Song reminds me that I am shallow, that my soul never quite reaches into the Deep Divine, that there is a deepness that defies me. And yet that is where my soul's deepest desires lie.
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