Music experience like Mongolian mustard

I was sitting in a darkened auditorium listening to a concert by two virtuosos, a violinist and a pianist. As it began with a Bach arioso, I could feel myself beginning to relax, to let go, to settle back and let the music flow over and through me.

As the concert progressed through a Prokofiev sonata, I sat in awe of the amazing talent, skill and dedication it took — first, for the composers to write this music and, second, of the musicians who were performing it.

Then, instead of time going by as usual, it sort of stood still and I could feel myself going through a metamorphosis — a word I’ve never identified with personally. It was a feeling that sort of started in the pit of my stomach and worked its way up, pushing out all the irritations, disappointments, frustrations and fears and replacing them with the joy of experiencing sheer beauty and pleasure.

It was like when a snake sheds its old skin, leaving it behind on a chain link fence, in an ivy bed, on a roadside.

I realized that the fact that all three of my sports teams were losers that week was unimportant — that on the big 1 to 10 scale of things that really matter, it didn’t even rate a 1. I let it go.

The perpetual state of outrage that media hype, deliberate misinformation and downright lies on political issues was keeping me in, exacerbated by non-stop evidence of continuing corporate greed, began to subside. Let it go, I told myself, at least until tomorrow.

Massenet displaced all the nagging worries about aches, peculiar pains and symptoms brought on by TV commercials. I let them go.

A nocturne knocked out the sort of minor irritations that fret us — a rude woman, a cell phone going off — twice — at a funeral. I let them go.

By the time the finale, the “Carmen Fantasy,” was magnificently delivered, the powerful surge of well-being, of happiness, had progressed from my stomach up through the top of my head. It was a sensation something like the time I unsuspectingly took a big bite of Mongolian horseradish mustard at the Space Pavilion in Seattle and felt to see if there was a hole in the top of my head where it exited.

I was telling my son about it later. “Was it an out-of-body experience?” he teased, laughing.

“No, no!” I said. “It was an in-the-body” experience.”

He told me about the Sanskrit word, “chakras” — the seven basic energy centers in the body that carry us on our journey toward greater awareness and aliveness. I Googled chakras and decided my sensation might be a combination of the second one, located in part in the abdomen and bringing, among other qualities, fluidity, grace and depth of feeling, and the third one, located in the solar plexus, bringing energy, effectiveness, spontaneity and non-dominating power.

Whether Sanskrit or some Okie word best describes the unique feeling that comes from hearing superb music by superb performers, I’d like to experience it again. I liked the afterglow that made me feel like a really nice person and that everyone else around were really nice persons too.

I know a lot more Okie than Sanskrit. I just haven’t found the right word yet.

Mary McClure lives in Lawton and writes a weekly column for The Lawton Constitution.