The music.  It's begging, pleading, screaming, enticing us to feel better...to escape the cage of our worried minds which are filled with cries of loneliness, sick with too much information, swimming in fear and self-doubt.  The sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, ideas...all surrounding us at all moments...we lack nothing but the ability to perceive and receive.

Could anyone have imagined?  After we have torn down all the old walls...censorship, social pressures, national borders, taboos, traditions...we would find that one insurmountable wall remains: the invisible wall that surrounds each of us.  This isn't a wall that filters the garbage emanating from us, but filters all that comes toward is.  It is lack of perception...small-mindedness...failure to see and to hear.  It is the sound of the voices in our heads drowning out a world rich with sounds, colors, ideas, pleasures, and sensation.

We have achieved a world in which anything is possible but nothing really happens.  What is real exists only in our isolated minds...which is to say it doesn't exist at all.  Because, in reality, nothing can be real if we cannot allow ourselves to forget ourselves...to be tickled by that which comes from another!  Everybody is talking but nobody's listening.  It is the last wall standing...the great bottleneck.

And why?  Because we all want attention.  We want to receive the gift, not give it!  We reach out to the world selfishly, with such a loud and obnoxious tone like "LOOK AT ME!!!!"  And in so doing, we forget that we all want the same thing.

So the language of attention-seeking needs to become the language of perception.  We need to reach out to others in a way that satisfies their needs...to write songs and books not about how great I am, but about what you feel...to walk down the street not hoping somebody smiles at me, but to smile at another...to say that which we all feel but have never said.

It is also important to realize that to be perceived is not necessarily to be heard, noticed, understood.  To feel perceived is also to hear a song that speaks to you, to read a novel that says what you've always felt, to see a painting which reminds you of your childhood, a beautiful woman who reminds you of your dreams, a smile which reminds you we're all the same.  Perception is two-way and cannot be any other way. 

So listen to people, get some new music, read a new novel or poet or philosopher, go to that obscure art exhibit, find stuff that speaks to you and soak it up in silence.  But don't waste your time with the language of attention-seeking (mainstream music, TV, preachers, and ideologues).  You will only remain frustrated and alone.

How can you be perceived if nobody is listening?  How can you expect perception if you aren't listening?