Meditation of the Week: Cedric Moecklin

By AYAAN AKHTAR and ALYASHA ZHANG

Q: What was the main focus of your meditation and what inspired it?

A: The meditation mostly had two focuses, but the unifying theme [between them] was the power that taking a step back from something or getting some distance on something allows you to sort of see it more clearly to get a better perspective. That theme came out from my experience as an immigrant from Switzerland in the US and being a little bit separate from American culture. I feel like I’m able to see both of those more clearly than someone who has lived in only one country for their whole life. On a smaller scale, I lived with a host family during a year abroad in Spain, and I was able to see how my host family did things and how that was different from my family.

Q: How did you organize your ideas while playing around with those metaphors, such as the mountains, the guitar, etcetera?

A: I really like the idea of being higher up and being away from something as a metaphor for being able to see it better. I tried to tie that into other parts of the meditation as well. When I was talking about my friend Alex who claimed that he didn't have a culture and it kind of stuck with me as an example of something that only someone who really hasn't seen their own culture clearly could say. Then I was like, ‘well, I could tie that to how he lives in New Hampshire and there are no mountains around here on the sea coast, right?’ It sort of presented itself as I went along that these images could keep coming back. I think that the concepts came first and the images came later. I saw the images fit really well, and I just kind of put them where they fit. 

Q: How do you think your experience as both a guitarist and just a musician influenced your writing? 

A: I would say music definitely is a way that I learn or through which I experienced the world. The creative expression of music can also convey some of the images of the mountains actually. It's an image that is simple, but it conveys a lot of the meaning of my med, it carries the meditation pretty hard, I'd say. I think music, like the meditation, has the power to convey very personal things. Even though I'm probably the only one who has access to the full meaning of all of that, I like the idea that the images I talked about and the music I played connected to people and gave them their own version of the feeling that I get when I listen to it. 

Q: What do you want your audience to take away from the meditation?

A: I would like them to think about their lives and think about how they interact with the world, what things they take for granted, what things they should appreciate more, and what things they might want to change in their lives. Just realize that you can be blind. You need to realize that and then recognize when you haven't been seeing something clearly and then grow from there.

Q: Do you have any advice for your audience, especially younger students in writing and meditation?

A: I think taking the time to slow down and look back as well as look forward. Because I feel like at Exeter while we do spend a lot of time looking forward, we spend a lot of time on the grind. But I think looking back at some point is crucial, the more honestly you can look back and the more honestly you can express your past and make other people understand the power of your experiences, the more impactful your meditation will be. I think telling people this is how I've changed can inspire that change in others. I think one of the goals of meditation is to help other people learn the same lessons that you did and make their path a little bit easier and inspire them to look inwards on themselves too. 

Q: Any shoutouts to really anyone who helped with the process or who made an impact on the meditation itself?

A: I definitely shout out to my parents because I know I talked a lot about them in there, they were a very important part of my life. Shout out to my friend Mason. Going to Switzerland with him was definitely one of the best things I've ever done. Shout out to Ms. Flynn, my English teacher. She was the one who inspired me to do the two stories approach. That structure was something I needed for the meditation and she inspired that.