Yepiphany....!

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I know, epiphanies are not supposed to be casually ignored and that you're supposed to do something with them like transform your life or cash them in, but who has time to wander beyond these sudden intuitive realizations, when you can just as well dismiss them.

For the most part, if I am lucky enough to have one, I tend to forget about them and move on, hoping that they'll find their rightful place, somewheres in the cerebral layer cake, to seamlessly labor on my behalf and the community of ideas I call "Me". It is hoped that whatever fabulous idea I might have had managed to snap right in, so that someday, I'll be able to have the motherload of all divine realization and take up my rightful place in the food chain; move up the water column, so to speak, to feast on sardines, not that krill and algae, I've been having.

Anyway, when I was in college, bathed in clouds of Maryjane, cassette tapes, cream of wheat and salami, I had an epiphany about music, which over the years I have dutifully put to the test of time and space.

Here it is, in a nutshell. If it seems mundane or drug induced, please don't blame be, just the THC. As I was saying it suddenly occurred to me that besides lengthy delays, which must invariably precede any self respecting epiphany, and which I am forced to reproduce here; to do the eye opening process justice, you cannot truly understand music until you have traveled to its country of origin and gazed upon its landscapes and geography.

I cannot recall the number of times I traveled somewhere while listening to the local music when all of a sudden it all made total sense to me by simply opening my eyes wide and eyeballing the topography.

One such example of many a musical epiphany was traditional Chinese music. After traveling to China for the first time in the mid eighties it suddenly became beautiful, melodius and sweet. My brain somehow combined what it was witnessing with the music and suddenly comprehended a music, which had heretofore, been inaccessible to my ears. A picture is worth a thousand notes.