Emmanuel Godo: “Don’t prevent the music of your life from coming to fruition”

We are in the XVIIIe century. In the France of Marivaux and Fragonard. At the end of a long sweet and cheerful conversation, Mme Geoffrin addresses the Abbé de Saint-Pierre: “You were lovely today. » And the abbot replies: “I’m just an instrument, and you played it well. »

We are musical instruments waiting for only one thing: to make the melody of our lives heard, to tune in to that of others, to that of the world and to that, close to silence, which carries the world.

Listen to what your life has to tell you

Dissonance threatens us, discordance. And to live then means not to lose the the. Henri Michaux said: “Evil is the rhythm of others. » The road taken by men today is too often noisy and disharmonious. We need all possible vigilance so as not to be engulfed in the charivari. To preserve the score we have to play. There may come a time, to parody Céline, when you no longer have enough music within yourself to make your life dance. This is the moment of drying up, of the loss of inner listening. It’s hell.

To guard against this, Claudel gives us this advice: “Non impedias musicam. Does not prevent the music. » Don’t stop the music of your life from coming true. And for that, listen to what your life has to tell you: it knows more than you about the love it needs to grow in truth. And on the truth she needs to grow in love. Because the two go hand in hand, as Edith Stein insists: “Accept no truth that is unloved, and accept no love that is untruthful. »

Because we are souls. Instruments shaped by the greatest and truest of loves. Intended thereby for the greatest and truest of loves. If we seek it in good faith, we will find it, because it cannot be refused. Pascal reminds us: “Console yourself, you wouldn’t be looking for me if you hadn’t found me. »

On the left door of their little Fiat Topolino which was going to take them from Switzerland to Afghanistan in the summer of 1953, Nicolas Bouvier and his friend Thierry Vernet had, as a viaticum of trust, inscribed in Persian a quatrain by the great poet Hafiz: “Even if the shelter of your night is insecure / And your goal still distant / Know that there is no endless path / Do not be sad” (the Use of the world).

The hunger and thirst that are in us

If it happens that we no longer perceive our inner music, it suffices to open the Bible to hear it again. With the lyrics. Who are the faithful echo of the Word. Because it is not exhilaration that our soul needs, but truth. From this truth which delivers her from her sleep and from her dead. As the verses of Psalm 119 (118) suggest: “With all my heart I have sought you, / Do not let me wander from your commandments. / In my heart I keep your orders / so as not to sin against you. »

In the empty and false world in which we live, music is everywhere, invading all spaces. But it’s deceptive music, made of force-feeding and uprooting. It is not commensurate with the hunger and thirst that are in us.

We want the Eternal, and we are given to listen to the bellowing of the golden calf. Until nausea. A vast conjuration against the silence that we need to bring out the only worthwhile music: that of our soul, which is that of the Creator in his creature. The one who does not live from what is bought or sold, but from what is given and received by begging.

This music is in us, but does not belong to us. And, in our gratitude, in the evening, for having tried to be living stones, witnesses of the Word and of the music it reveals in us, we turn to the Most High: “Thank you, Lord, I am only an imperfect instrument, and you have played it well. »

Emmanuel Godo is a poet, essayist. Latest books published: the Passors of the Absolute (Artege) and my mother’s bible (Corlevour.)

Emmanuel Godo: “Don’t prevent the music of your life from coming to fruition”