Today music has become an empty word.  Luther said that all music that did
not praise God belonged to the devil.  Music in other words had to be more
than wallpaper, a sedative, or opiate.  Even for those amongst us today
for whom God is dead, this has significance.  We have forgotten today that
to be truly worthy of being called music, music must appeal to something
utterly fundamental to our essential most Being.  To those amongst us,
who have felt the power of music to do just that are damned to seemingly
forever struggle with the soulless triteness of so much that is passed off
as 'music' - a struggle every bit as real to us as it was to Luther.  And
so we talk of musical education, and dream of 'commercial viability' when
above all else we have lost the ability to communicate that inner vision
which draws us back to drink again at the fountain of musical inspiration.
Frequently one reads post or letters to music magazines in which some soul
somehow stumbles upon the world of 'classical/art' music, and where the
shock of the discovery was so great it was like discovering a secret
universe to which they had hitherto been deaf.  The question then is how
one is to awake that inner eye to a new world, so that one may 'hear' this
music anew - to hear it in the manner the deaf Beethoven 'heard' it.  Drink
my friend it will rejuvenate thee.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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