Good Vibrations

I had a few days off between Christmas and New Year’s, so I made it a point to get outside and enjoy the spectacular “winter” weather we were experiencing, to remind myself of one of the main reasons I moved to South Florida many years ago. I tuned into my Spotify account and, making a beautiful, sunny day even better, the first song it played was … the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.”

Life is good. 

I grew up in the early rock’n’roll era, and the Beach Boys (brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine), were my earliest musical influence. Brian was the heart and soul of the band, the chief song writer and creative force behind their signature sound and angelic harmonies. 

Brian Wilson was a genius – a tormented genius, diagnosed later in life with schizoaffective disorder and mild bipolar disorder. Years of drug abuse, beginning with marijuana and hashish and later amphetamines and cocaine, exacerbated his existing neuroses and took a heavy toll on him mentally, emotionally, physically and relationally. Still, he continued to write and produce some of the most beautiful, well known and best loved songs of the entire rock’n’roll era. Long after the Beach Boys had become basically a nostalgic oldies act, Brian continued creating incredible music. 

Synonymous with summertime, sunshine, beaches and good times, those songs are now so much a part of the soundtrack of our culture we forget how revolutionary they were at the time: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Good Vibrations,” “I Can Hear Music,” and, widely considered his masterpiece, “God Only Knows.” Even as his mind seemed to unravel he kept making incredibly beautiful music.

I Can Hear Music

Alone in his room, the studio or in the dark, complicated labyrinth of his brain, he seemed to hear sounds no one else could hear. Then he channeled them on to the music sheet, out to his band mates and studio musicians and ultimately down to vinyl. The harmonies he wrote and the Beach Boys sang are legendary, and set a template for pop music from that point on. 

His songs influenced and challenged John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and theirs influenced him in return. Sir Paul says that listening to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, widely acclaimed as one of the greatest and most influential albums in music history, had a major impact on his (Paul’s) increasingly melodic bass-playing style. It helped inspire his beautiful “Here, There and Everywhere” and the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Paul – a pretty fair song writer himself – called Wilson the greatest songwriter of all time. Popular music is what it is today largely because of the interaction between Wilson, McCartney and Lennon.

Bob Dylan once said of Brian, “My God, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian” [slightly paraphrased]. 

Love and Mercy

Heidi and I saw Brian in concert in January 2020 on his final “Love and Mercy” tour. He was a shell of his former self. His voice was shot and he didn’t talk much, leaving that for Al Jardine, the only other original member of the Beach Boys to appear with him. (Brothers Dennis and Carl both died years earlier, and Brian and cousin Mike Love had been estranged and embittered toward each other for decades.) Still ….

It was Brian Wilson, musical genius, living legend. Despite his obvious decline, the audience showed him tremendous love and respect for all he had done, all he had contributed to popular music over the past 60 years. 

Brian Wilson died June 11, 2025. He was 82 years old. I hope somehow he came to faith in Christ before he died, that he experienced at least a few final days of the love, mercy, and peace of God which surpasses all understanding that eluded him for so long. 

Music of the Spheres

Galileo Galilei, 16th-17th Century astronomer, physicist, engineer, and philosopher, said: “The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics.”

Music is very mathematical in nature. The ancient Greek philosophers, including Pythagoras and Plato, understood this. They observed how the speeds of the stars in their orbits, as measured by their distances apart, are in the same ratios as musical concordances. Based on this, they believed the stars themselves must give off sounds by their circular movement, and those sounds produce harmonious musical tones, though imperceptible by human ears.

Johannes Kepler, the “father of modern astronomy,” wrote: “‘The Music of the Spheres’ produces a form of music that, whilst inaudible to the physical ear, is nevertheless capable of being perceived by the soul.”

Shakespeare makes reference to the music of the spheres in The Merchant of Venice. There are echoes of this idea in JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, CS Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle (the last two volumes in The Chronicles of Narnia series), as well as his Space Trilogy. 

Many musicians have incorporated this theme into their work, from Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s 1918 orchestral Music of the Spheres to Coldplay’s 2021 album of the same name. (I can’t say much for Langgaard’s efforts, but Coldplay’s stuff is cosmic.) (Sorry. Not sorry.)

“Um, that’s all fascinating, Kent, but … is there a point in here somewhere?” I’m glad you asked.

Plato, Galileo, Kepler, Lewis, Tolkien, Brian Wilson and … the Apostle Paul

I said Brian Wilson seemed to hear sounds no one else could hear, creating music no one else could write. Maybe that music really is out there / up there, but only a very few, like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel – and Brian Wilson – can hear it. We’re fortunate they then make the effort to channel it out to the rest of us mere mortals. 

In 56 AD, the Apostle Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth, Greece:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.(1 Corinthians 2:12-16, emphasis added).

God Only Knows

Simply put, Christians have, or ought to have, the God-given ability to hear and understand things non-Christians can’t: not because they’re stupid (although …), but because God hasn’t given them that ability. It comes to those who have a living relationship with Jesus, whose minds have been enlivened and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, channeled primarily through reading God’s word and talking to him in prayer.

When we who profess Jesus as Lord do those things, we are on a different wavelength than the rest of the world. We see and hear things the world cannot perceive, things “God Only Knows.” It is our job, and our privilege, to channel this to an increasingly deaf and desperate world that needs not only to hear “the music of the spheres” but to get to know its Composer.

Kent

Photo by blocks on Unsplash

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