When Music Introduces the Soul

Some people you meet first through their music. You hear the sound before the story, the frequency before the name. And by the time you finally speak, it feels like you already know something essential about them. Something language can’t quite name.

That’s how I met Lou.

The Portal Opens

He was playing the saz at a Sema ceremony we held, one that, in many ways, he initiated. It was his invitation, his container, his space. I had heard him before, also during a Sema, but we never really spent time together outside of that. This time, I was listening on a different level. Maybe because the whole night felt held by something deeper. A clarity. A quiet intensity. Something sacred.

The moment he strummed the saz, it was as if a portal opened. His voice was not a performance. It was a guide, a current, a remembering. I didn’t need to understand Turkish to understand the music. It bypassed thought. His voice sang of something I already knew but hadn’t heard in a while. It was Truth as Sound.

I became emotional. There was no way around it. The only path was through: surrendering to what was stirred up and letting it rise, express, and pass. I wasn’t alone in this. The whole room was breathing with him.

Under the Quiet Sky

Later that night, around 1 AM, we stood outside under the quiet sky. I asked Lou, “What is it like for you, playing during Sema?” He paused, looked directly at me, and said, “Give me some time. Can I answer you later?”

Someone else asked how he got into music, and that’s when he began to share. He spoke about growing up in Turkey, leaving home, traveling the world with just his saz, and shedding parts of himself along the way. He talked about what it means to be constantly at the edge of his Being, where Truth is not something you seek but something you are.

“I am Truth,” he said. Not as a concept, but as a lived experience.

And in that moment, I realized he had answered my question after all.

There was a Presence about him. Bright, grounded, confident, intimate. Though seven of us stood in a circle listening, I kept wondering, “Is everyone else seeing what I’m seeing right now?” Because it felt like there was just the two of us. And in that Presence, I saw myself more clearly. My humanness. My choice to be here. My aliveness.

Something about Lou mirrored reality back to me in a way that was impossible to ignore.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I wanted to be near him, to listen more, to understand how he sees the world.

The Pattern of Recognition

This wasn’t the first time music introduced me to someone’s soul. I’ve felt this before in a cabin in upstate New York, hearing my now friend Achraf play for the first time. The same quiet awe. The same sense of being seen.

There’s something about these encounters that I live for. What is it?

Maybe it’s the way they wake me up. Not in a flashy or dramatic way, but in the quiet thunder of Presence. Maybe it’s because these moments are a mirror, reflecting back to me the joy of being alive, the permission to explore, to play, to be. A reminder that I’m Here.

The Meeting

Some people you meet first through their music. And some music is really a meeting: with the soul behind the sound, and the soul inside yourself.

I think about Lou now, days later, and I still feel that pull. Not because I want something from him, but because encounters like this remind me what’s possible. They wake up a part of me that sometimes gets sleepy in the everyday. They make me remember that connection doesn’t always require history or explanation, sometimes it just requires listening.

Maybe that’s what I live for in these moments. The reminder that we’re all walking around carrying frequencies that can unlock something essential in each other. That recognition can happen in an instant, and when it does, it changes something. Not everything. But something.

The music finds you when you need it most. And sometimes, the music is a person.