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Music for the Near-Death Experience
On the Way…R.I.P. Hayman
A warm resonance surrounded my perception. I felt released into a higher realm that beckoned with an encompassing sense of calm space. A luminous bath of soft light drew me toward a profound and reassuring presence. I could sense a great distance and hear faint sounds beckoning far off in space. The aural experience was more a presence than apparent sounds, an acoustic space stretching out into infinity, a feeling only comparable to the resonance felt in a quiet cathedral or atop a high mountain.
In this vastness, my "self" was no longer there. I had no physicality, not even a mental separation from the surrounding sensation of great beauty and transcendent love.
I felt dispersed into the cosmos, and reunited with a wondrous and joyful spirit. The "peace that passeth all understanding" was there.
I felt there must be something I could give back from my experience. As a musician and spiritual humanist, I share sound as sacrament. Righteousness is being a good listener. I savored my own NDE and studied others' accounts. It is often written about and has been filmed as a special effect but it has never before been recreated for a live audience. I imagined a radiant and soothing ambience in a public space for contemplation. The NDE is a sensate experience that can give people a taste of what we may all face, a glimpse of the unknown that we must all know someday.
I share my experience in a sound and light installation On the Way...., a contemplative environment in a "chapel" space open to the public without charge. The audience would approach a low entrance, stooping under a screen into a room of at least 25 ft square with a high ceiling prepared with audio and lighting equipment. Reclining seats and cushions on platforms for lying down would be designed for audience comfort. An open space would allow individual passage and attention. The installation would run continuously as participants would come and go at their own pace.
The music of On the Way... is intended to meld with visual elements in the live social environment. The soundscape is a arrhythmic continuum of a subtle texture. By extended listening in the installation, one hears into the submerged layers and can sense an auditory expanse and cast the mind toward infinity. The master recording is for 4 channel playback with 2 sub audio woofers for a lifting sensation. This recording should be heard in a quiet space with full response at a moderate volume. The visual component is a warm flowing light that covers an overhead screen and fills the peripheral view of an audience. The pervasive glow is soft hued and beckoning as it simulates the NDE "tunnel of light". It is realized with theatrical light effects designed to the space using reflective balls, mirrors and shifting beams. A considerable volume of dispersed light is required to surround and bathe the audience. Both sound and light have been designed as broad approaching fields to release hearing and sight from dramatic attention. Shifting repeated patterns are subdued at the threshold of perception, not noticed over time as the mind drifts in thought to a gently mesmerized state. The senses are in continuous stimulus that may effect a certain deaf and blindness. From this suspension can come forth internal perceptions and imagery, as dreams can be prompted by extraneous sounds. Participants who relax into a meditative state may well see and hear more than is actually presented with images from their own fount of imagination.
On the Way... is a simulation of a wondrous place to which I hope to return in due time. I do not represent a specific scientific or spiritual explanation for the near death experience but simply present the phenomenon for the contemplation of an audience.
of an audience. Our mortality is a universal condition that we all must consider. It is a duty to ourselves, our selves being a shared state. Sit back and in this resonance, may you hear a resonance of our own. the phenomenon for the contemplation of an audience.
May 22, 1994
R.I.P. Hayman composes and performs music with voice, instruments, electronics, and effects for concert, theater, dance, media events, film, and video. Born 1951 in New Mexico, Hayman studied at Columbia University and with John Cage, Ravi Shankar, Chou Wen-chung, Petr Kotik, and Philip Corner. His works have been presented in venues and academies across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He has many broadcast credits and his writings have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Ear magazine ot which he was a founding and senior editor. Asian sojourns have led to a parallel career as a sinologist and consultant in Chinese cultural affairs. About On the Way.,., artist Sari Dienes, then on her deathbed, said "It gives me great comfort." Also, when visiting Hayman's studio in 1991, composer John Cage said: "It is very beautiful what I am hearing now."
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