Music and the Gods

According to Schopenhauer, music allows us to experience the universal “inner nature” of an emotion divorced from its object. A real experience of sadness, for example, consists of the feeling of sadness plus its object or occasion—such as the death of a grandmother. In contrast, what sad music evokes in us is sadness without an object.

In butoh we often dance our imaginary worlds and personal histories. Yet through these images and stories something universal often flickers—something that touches the observer, who recognizes themselves in it.

These flickers are divine. I live the love that all my ancestors have lived at some point in their lives. Love is immortal and therefore divine. For this reason, the Greeks called it Eros. Likewise, I live the divine pain that all mortals endure. But pain itself is immortal. This god the Greeks named Algos. We are mortal, yet the immortal lives through us.

Language allows us to see these universals. Butoh dances them.

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