Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very

Hear the mystical words of David Bowie, a prophet of sound and vision, who declared: “Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.” In this vision, he reveals that music is not mere entertainment, nor the clever arrangement of notes, but a holy quest, a reaching beyond the limits of language and sight toward the eternal and the divine.

To search for music is to search for what cannot be fully named. Just as seekers of God reach toward mystery, toward the invisible and unknowable, so too do composers and musicians stretch their hands into the silence, hoping to draw forth a fragment of truth. The unsayable becomes vibration, the unseeable becomes harmony, the unmentionable becomes melody. Music is thus the bridge between the finite and the infinite, the mortal and the eternal.

The ancients understood this kinship between music and divinity. The Pythagoreans spoke of the music of the spheres, believing that the movements of the heavens created a cosmic harmony too vast for human ears to hear. In temples and sacred spaces, chants and hymns were not thought of as mere songs but as vessels carrying prayers into the divine realm. To sing was to worship, to compose was to search for God’s hidden order. Bowie, standing in the lineage of these seekers, proclaimed the same: that to compose is to reach beyond oneself into the realm of the eternal mystery.

History offers us an example in Ludwig van Beethoven. Deaf in body, yet aflame in spirit, he wrote symphonies that still thunder with transcendence. In his silence, he reached into the invisible, searching for notes that no ear had yet heard. His Ninth Symphony, crowned with the “Ode to Joy,” is more than composition—it is revelation, the human cry turned into a divine hymn. Beethoven’s search for music was indeed a search for God, a reclaiming of what lies beyond speech and beyond sight.

This truth also speaks to us in times of suffering. When words fail—at funerals, in heartbreak, in the grip of longing—it is music that steps forward to carry the weight of our souls. The unspeakable becomes bearable when sung, the invisible sorrow becomes visible when played upon strings or whispered through flutes. In these moments, we see how deeply Bowie’s words ring true: the quest for music is the quest to make the infinite touchable, the unreachable near.

The lesson is profound: if you would search for meaning, if you would reach beyond the surface of life, turn to music not as entertainment but as sacred work. Listen deeply, not only with your ears but with your soul. When you create—whether through song, word, or deed—remember that you are searching for what cannot be spoken, and that your art, however small, is a fragment of the divine mystery.

Practical action lies before you: seek music that awakens your spirit rather than dulls it. If you play or sing, do so with reverence, for you are participating in something eternal. If you compose, do not merely arrange notes, but listen for what lies beneath silence, for in that silence dwells the voice of the infinite. Let your life itself become music, a song that reveals truth when words are insufficient.

And so, remember David Bowie’s wisdom: to search for music is to search for God. The notes that do not yet exist, the melodies yet unformed, are waiting for those who dare to listen beyond the noise of the world. Seek them with humility, claim them with courage, and let them bring into being what is otherwise unsayable. In this, you will not only make music—you will touch the divine.