Nick DeHoust: Thinking About Music and Mythopoesis

I’ve taken many classes now that include some form of journal or discussion board; I think I’ve found a way to talk about music in all of them. This one will be no different. Music, for me, is the coolest thing ever. Straight up, nothing beats it. I listen to everything, I play several instruments, I produce, mix, and master my own music, I live with four other talented musicians and producers, I am currently involved in many projects with many different artists, I have studied music academically, I have helped organize shows, I have played shows, I have attended major festivals and tiny coffee shop gigs, and I am constantly learning more and more about what it means to truly participate in and appreciate music. I prefer to live my life musically. In a sense, then, musicality is the dimension in which I am always already active (at least, I like to think it is). Everything I do either follows me into this dimension, or it is not something I have really done. Turning now to mythopoesis, I want to explore some of the ways music can be mythopoetic. Obviously, some (most, perhaps) music is designed to resemble myth. I, however, want to focus on instrumental music because I think it introduces an interesting element to the truth-revealing of mythopoesis. Instrumental music uniquely opens a world in which truth seems new and somehow truer. This world is not articulated with words, though. Rather, it is evoked. I love describing music as evocative because I find it hard to get much deeper than that. I also feel no desire to pursue a greater depth. I suppose I like to let the music do its thing, so to speak. I just want to be as near to it as I can be when it does, and I find that misplaced inquisitiveness obscures my relation to the music. When I listen to instrumental music, I am suddenly transported into a new world. This world is evoked in me by forces I do — not nor do I really want to — understand, and I find it situated between me and the outside world. I listen to one song, and the world is red. Another song renders the world a battleground or a calm serenity. One way that’s fun to think about it is as if your experience becomes the lense of the music video camera, in a sense. The world becomes differently true through an evocative and mysterious event of mythopoesis. Who’s to say the world isn’t red?


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