Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex.

Host: The night pressed softly against the windows of a forgotten record shop at the edge of the city. Neon light from the street outside bled through the glass, trembling across rows of vinyls stacked like old souls waiting to be heard. A faint jazz tune floated from a dusty turntable, its notes curling through the air like invisible smoke.

Jack sat on the counter, his fingers drumming lightly against an empty coffee cup. His eyes, grey and cold, traced the movement of the spinning record. Jeeny stood by the shelves, running her hand over the spines of forgotten albums, her gaze distant but full of quiet fire.

The quote lingered between them like a chord unresolved:
“Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex. But its highest vibration for me is that point of taking us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at. It is a spiritual state of oneness.” — Terry Riley

Jeeny: “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? That idea — that music can take us somewhere beyond thought. Beyond flesh. It’s like... touching the infinite through sound.”

Jack: “Or maybe it’s just a trick of the brain, Jeeny. Frequencies, harmonics, dopamine. You play the right pattern, and your neurons light up. You call it spiritual; I call it biology.”

Host: The record hissed softly, a small storm of dust and time. The air between them shimmered — not with heat, but with something ancient, something that always came alive when people spoke of music.

Jeeny: “You really believe it’s only chemicals? When a melody makes you cry, when a symphony makes you feel both small and infinite — that’s not science, Jack. That’s the soul remembering itself.”

Jack: “The soul? Or the survival instinct dressing up in poetry? We evolved to recognize patterns — to bond, to calm infants, to synchronize movements in tribes. Music was a tool before it was an art.”

Jeeny: “Tools can build temples, too.”

Host: Her words struck through the room like a single note held too long — fragile yet unbreakable. Jack smirked, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him — the hint of someone who once did believe, long ago.

Jack: “So what, then? You think Bach was talking to God?”

Jeeny: “Maybe he was listening to Him.”

Jack: “And Beethoven? He went deaf.”

Jeeny: “And still heard more than most of us ever will.”

Host: A faint laugh escaped her — not mockery, but wonder. The record reached its final groove, the needle clicking softly as the music dissolved into silence.

Jack: “You romanticize everything, Jeeny. You want music to mean more than it does because you need something to believe in. Maybe you can’t stand the thought that it’s just vibrations in air.”

Jeeny: “And maybe you can’t stand the thought that it might not be.”

Host: The room seemed to pulse with their voices, as if even the walls were listening. A streetcar rumbled outside, the light flickering through the window, flashing their faces in rhythm — a visual metronome of tension.

Jeeny: “When I listen to Riley’s music — those endless, looping phrases — it feels like my body dissolves. Like I stop being me. Isn’t that what he meant by oneness? That point where the boundaries fade, and everything hums in harmony?”

Jack: “Or maybe that’s ego death — a nice word for neural overload. You get so hypnotized by repetition that your brain stops resisting. Same thing monks do when they chant for hours. It’s not mystical — it’s mechanical.”

Jeeny: “Then why does it feel sacred?”

Jack: “Because the human mind loves patterns that mirror its own chaos. Music organizes emotion, makes pain rhythmic, digestible. It doesn’t lift us to heaven, Jeeny — it just makes hell livable.”

Host: She took a deep breath, and the faintest tremor crossed her fingers. The way Jack spoke — with precision, with that cold certainty — both infuriated and fascinated her.

Jeeny: “Do you know what that sounds like? Someone who’s afraid to surrender. Music asks for surrender. It’s not about understanding — it’s about letting go. Riley understood that. He built cathedrals out of sound because he knew words could never reach that far.”

Jack: “Cathedrals collapse, too.”

Jeeny: “But their echoes remain.”

Host: The silence deepened, thick as honey. Outside, the rain began — slow at first, then steady, a percussion that seemed to join the argument itself. Jeeny walked to the old piano in the corner, its keys yellowed with age. She pressed one — a single note that shimmered like a drop of light.

Jeeny: “Tell me this, Jack. If music is just sound — if it’s just physics — then why does this one note feel like it’s speaking to me?”

Jack: “Because you want it to.”

Jeeny: “No. Because it is.”

Host: Jack rose, his shadow cutting through the faint light. He approached her, every footstep deliberate, the air between them charged with something electric.

Jack: “You’re hearing meaning where there’s only motion. That’s what humans do — we personify the universe so it doesn’t feel indifferent.”

Jeeny: “Maybe the universe isn’t indifferent, Jack. Maybe it sings — and we’re just learning how to listen.”

Host: The rain grew louder, a steady drumming that seemed almost in time with her words. Jack paused, looking down at her — her fingers still resting on the keys, trembling slightly. Something shifted in him then — a small fracture in his relentless logic.

Jack: “When I was a kid, my mother used to play Ravel. ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess.’ I didn’t understand it. But one night, after she died, I heard it on the radio... and it broke me. I couldn’t move. It was like she was still there, somehow — in that melody.”

Jeeny: “And you call that biology?”

Jack: “I call it memory. Not magic.”

Jeeny: “Memory is magic, Jack. It’s the soul’s echo.”

Host: For a moment, neither spoke. The turntable began again, this time spinning a record of Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. The sounds were liquid — bright, infinite loops folding into each other like waves of light.

Jeeny: “Listen. Do you hear it? The space between notes — that’s the doorway. The moment where everything stops being separate. That’s what he meant — the spiritual state of oneness.”

Jack: “You think a few loops of sound can make us one with the universe?”

Jeeny: “Not make us — remind us. We already are.”

Host: The music filled the room, its patterns overlapping like galaxies spinning in sync. Jack closed his eyes. For a fleeting second, his breathing slowed, and the sharpness of his features softened.

Jack: “It’s strange. It feels like... falling. But safe.”

Jeeny: “That’s it. That’s the vibration he spoke of.”

Host: The melody rose higher, dissolving thought itself, until there were no words, no arguments — only sound, pure and dissolving into silence. When the last note faded, the world seemed quieter than before, as if holding its breath.

Jack opened his eyes, meeting hers.

Jack: “Maybe music isn’t an illusion. Maybe it’s the closest thing to truth we can bear.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s why it hurts and heals at the same time.”

Host: The rain stopped. A single beam of streetlight cut through the window, touching the dust in the air like suspended stars. The turntable spun silently now, the needle resting at the end of its journey.

Jack and Jeeny sat together in that quiet — two figures framed in the faint glow of sound that no longer played but still echoed inside them.

And in that stillness, as Terry Riley once said, they touched that rare and fleeting place — the spiritual state of oneness.