Gotta send the love and wishes to Stuart, Marci, and Ara. The rooftop structure of their house has given way to the plethora of recent raindrops in Colorado. No doubt they can find equinimity in the face of, well, the sky from their living room, but it still ain't easy bein' breezy.
But there is music everywhere. We have all fallen into the place where everything is music. Feel it, yes! Feel it in your bones, in your gut. Feel it as you sing it, and as the vibrations shoot through your throat and mouth, feel it some more. Sing with all of your chakras in motion. Feel it, find the place of pure feeling, and be the music, in any direction it wants to flow. Let the aural light radiate in all directions, as pure strings in discreet vibration. As you hum, be that hum. And may the hum be you.
What kind of music architecture can reflect 2nd-tier values and consciousness? This is the central focus of much of my work. I think aspects of several of Stravinsky symphonies exhibit music syntax (system/structure) at the most embracing and complex. They are poly-tonal, poly-metric, poly-rhythmic, poly-textural, poly-structural, yet have a coherence at most every turn.
Petrushka is an example, and happens to be one of my favorite pieces of music. I fell in love with this piece when Hannah worked on a shadow puppet show called The Nose (the Gogal work) while we lived in Boston. Excerpts of Petrushka supported the surrealist puppet drama.
Jean Gesber, in his The Ever-Present Origin, uses the term 'a-tonal' as equivalent to 'trans-tonal'. A good deal of so-called 'atonal music' is most certainly not trans-tonal. Though possibly pre-tonal. 'Atonal' is equivalent with Gebser's 'aperspectival'. He defines atonality as a 'supercession of tonality'. There is a juxtaposition of several keys. This can bring about a sense of ambiguity, but also a sense of coherence that is not bound by a single tonal center, or even a sequence of modulating tonal centers.
In any event, John Coltrane called Stravinsky a 'universal musician'. Not bad.
Importantly, it is not the formal composition that is 2nd tier, because '2nd tier' is a term for living consciousness/sentience. As a manifest, non-sentient structure, what a composition at a corresponding level can do is reflect, house, and amplify 2nd tier values. It is a matter of architecture. Of channeling. Of irrigation.
To call a music architecture '2nd tier' would be to confuse the house for the people who live in the house.
Music can still flow at its most simple structural level. Some of my favorite music is a single melody, single tonal center, nothing else. Neil Young, w/ guitar, loves those one-note phrases. So did Aborigines with their didgeridoos. And Tibetan monks' intonations. And Christian nuns' plainchant.
I play a mean one-note trumpet, let me tell you. Me, two notes on the piano, repeated for hours --> people cry.
wrote this about what a theory of musical form would be like:
A theory of form would have to aim, first and foremost, at showing the significance of all artist forms -- the fact that they try to endow the artistic products (whose shape is conditioned by a material extrinsic to ourselves) with an external and internal constitution permitting us to recognize it as something that corresponds to the qualities of our intellect.
This is in direct accord with my model for Integral Music (based upon Wilber's Integral Semiotics). The first step, perhaps the most fundamental, is to honor and recognize the gifts of ALL forms (archictectures, system/structures) of music, from the most simple to the most complex. One has to honor the spectrum, for at every point, Soul and Spirit can unite in sound.
In practice, this means that one has to know intimately most if not all major traditions of music, and all major architectures. Music from India, Iran, Indonesia, China, Russia, Bulgaria, Zimbabwae, Ghana, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, the USA -- ALL in past and present forms, as best we know.
To me, these words from Mathieu's wonderful, The Listening Book, suggest the future of an Integral Music:
...certain cultures specialize in the development of certain aspects of music. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe had counter-point covered. Africa has cross-rhythms down. India is the one for melodic line. But no one owns the highest part, the soul connection. That belongs to everyone equally.
And it is my feeling that the terminology and concepts of each of those aspects of music (rhythm, tone, counter-point) are best found in those traditions that specialized in each. So African traditions are likely to best speak the theory of cross-rhythm, or beat; Indian traditions best able to speak the theory of melody, or tone; and European traditions best able to speak the theory of counter-point, or voice-leading. To this, one could add acoustics theory, subtle/discreet energy theory, and Ken Wilber's AQAL theory of everything.
My model for Integral Music aims to bring together each of these theories into a wider, more embracing theory. By coordination the concepts and terms of each tradition, with Wilber's model for Integral Semiotics as the basic framework, we can begin to develop an Integral theory of music, and Integrally-informed practice of that theory. Plainly put, we can make music that reflects an authentic world-consciousness. Through an Integral sound, the music of the East, West, North, and South can come together on the leading edge of music. We can compose an Integral avant-garde music.
When it comes to implementing the conceptual aspects of the Integral, AQAL model, of primary importance and great benefit is the concept of modules. From a personal correspondence with my I-I friend and colleague Forest Jackson and a paper of his currently in-progress comes this general definition:
'Module' to refer to the different sections of an ITP [or just 'Integral Practice' -- ed]. A module is any aspect or element of the AQAL model and thus a practitioner that can be engaged through any number of practices [or exercises, procedures, games, forms of inquiry, scripts, asanas, steps, and so on -- ed].
Thus, you can have, for example, an interpersonal module, a body module, a spirit module, or an LL module. This means that any quadrant, level, line, state, type can become a module, and modules are exchangeable with one another, and have interchangeable practices within them. Within each module can be one or more practices that address or exercise that particular dimension of one's being. Hence, our version of an ITP is a 'modular Integral Practice.' It is flexible and customizable to fit the unique constellation of any given practitioner's natural proclivities, talents, gifts, and shortcomings.
For the Integral Artistry Intensive this past May, Willow, John, and I choose and constructed a 1) Self module, 2) Performance module, 3) Interpersonal module, 4) Business-For-Artists module, 5) Critique module, 6) Theory module, and 7) Group Reflection module. We had a very good group of artists, who were all willing to suspend disbelief, offer trust and creative risk to others, and listen attentively to their own voices and those of others. Willow, John, and I contoured the features of each module according to the stated needs and ambitions of the participating students.
As a final general point, the connection between the Integral model and the choices of appropriate modules is the issue of AQAL coverage. Taken as a whole, facilitators can use the Integral map as a guide. The map suggests the basic terrain that can be covered. The more terrain that is covered, the more integral a faciliated event can be. To pose the question of, for example, what kind of practice can I choose to exercises the Upper Left quadrant of the participants, given the context, group makeup, and environment available?
Thus, as is the case with the kinds of injunctions one chooses to practice with discipline in one's artistry, the aim for comprehensive enrichment by means of the Integral model depends in large part on the questions one asks, and the choices one makes. And the Integral model provides a relatively stable ground to comprehensively poses those resonant questions, and make informed choices and distinctions that are appropriate for the kind of experience you, as a teacher, aim to faciliate.
Hannah and I were up in the Twin Cities over the weekend. We saw lots of friends (hey Arielah, Mark, Matt, Amanda, Anna, Christa, Kele, Amos, Pesch, Timmy, Emily, Clare). I recorded some new music at Andrew Carlson's recording studio, called Dogtown Studios. We showed Hannah's film, Bliss Followed to everyone. And in general, we soaked in one of our homes away from home.
And as I came back from errands in The Loop today, Hannah had in her hand her birthday present for me. It is a Buddhist mandala/thankga painting. Specifically, it is a hand-painted Kalachakra, set with the silk brocade around it. Just beautiful. I hung it in my study just above my computer (from where I type right now). I look up and contemplate Kosmic order.
Here is a similar Kalachakra mandala (though slightly different than the one Hannah gave me).
As the walls between the world's musical cultures continue to render more and more transparent, one of the issues of immediate importance is the nature of the language between musicians and music from around the world. What will that language sound like? What are the concepts and understanding that a worldcentric music language will evoke? What will a relatively common tongue sound like?
I've added more meat to my ongoing essay on Integral Music, called The Embrace of Sound.
Here is the cover for my forthcoming record I Am Sound. This is another fantastic original work by Jeff Lohrius. Here is his website. I am happy to say that he is a member of the Integral University Art Domain development team. His work is thrilling, to say the least.
The record, by the way, will be released early this fall. I am in the finishing touches phase of composing, and I look forward to sharing it with you all.
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