A new slice for you to hear, over at Momentary I. From the description:
This is another of my short pieces for Mbira. I composed it after a short silent meditation for the occassion of Hannah's film Bliss Followed as a candidate for the film soundtrack. She chose an alternate mbira piece that fit the mood better. I do want to note that I do not claim to play the mbira in any way that is traditional to the Shona culture of Zimbabwe (who have taken this instrument to the heights of pure spirit). But I have found this instrument can give life to sounds I hear in a way that no other can.
Quite extraordinary what a gourd, some metal strips, and some well-placed sound-holes can do, as pushed by (and as) consciousness. Enjoy!
Just in case any of you are curious, I want to explain why several of my papers (on Writings), no longer have an active link for a download. Don't get me wrong--I love when you read my works, and I love to hear your comments upon my work!
For the papers in question--An Integral Art Manifesto, The Big Three of Integral Art, The Integral Stories of Art, and IOS for Artists in Real Time--the reason is that each of these will be available, in fully revised form, approved by the Integral University Review Board, to read as part of the Knowledge Base of the Integral Art Center. This is a wonderful development, and I am thankful for the opporunity given by I-I and IU.
Several of these papers have been released as early drafts, for example on Frank Visser's website and the IS of Art discussion board. Add to those the versions I have made public on this site, and in some case, there are 3-4 versions of the same paper out there. In general, I think this is fine, because there are many ways to present and frame knowledge, and people react and respond to those different frames. This is a learning community, not a grammar school. The topic at hand--Integral Art--is to say the least, a deep and flexible meshwork, able to be considered in multiple manners.
But since these particular papers are near the end of each's trajectory of research and development, I think the bell has rung, and it is time for me to irrigate the final forms of these papers as each will be found as the 'official version'.
So hold tight, for the final release of these papers in just around the bend! And what this means is many things, not the least of which is that the final pushes can be made, finally, for my books-in-progress, as well as my ongoing music compositions.
I very much hope that the papers are received in the manner I send them, which is simply an effort to help artists along their paths. All of your feedback and responses thus far (and keep them comin') have been so helpful on my end. Thank you all. To write and reflect what I perceive is the least I can do in returhn.
And the ride is just at its initial ebb...many more dips, bends, and jumps to come. Whoo-eee!
I brought the iPod along for the trip. Oh yeah, and the EURO-USA electricity converter. It worked in about, oh, half of the hotels we stayed. It was enough, though, because that durn iPod has juice to burn, souls.
I spent a good day and a half before we left in a scramble to fill the box with my favorite harmonic rhythms. My study (which is supervised by the kalachakra mandala Hannah gave me for my recent birthday) is still filled with CDs left to transfer. But I (along with Hannah) did get about 70 of them onto the pod. I almost view this iPods transfer as a test: what music will make it to the pod, and what will be left off?
I talked with my brother, Christopher, the other day, who just got a pod of his own (and just had a birthday!), and he pointed out that a big value of the pod is that you no longer have to worry about the skipped CDs. How true! And of course, no longer must we worry about the broken cassette tapes, nor the scratched LPs.
Sure, there is a sound sacrafice, even from the already-flawed CD medium to the iPod. And as my buddy Andy Carlson pointed out, the emergence of the iPod coincides with new technology to realize music in very hi-fidelity ways that is easier and cheaper than ever. To purchase good speakers, good mics, good consoles, good equipment in general, doesn't require the arm or other random appendage. So just when we can have it, we no longer want it. Yes, the sound quality of the pod is clearly worse than CDs, but few care. See live music if you want the real stuff, in the flesh, tickled by subtle, jarred by the causal, and feel it in your bones. As Dave Matthews said of live performance, you can't download that.
So what do we want, that iPods serve? What need does it scratch? I'd say that it is simply the flexibility to listen to music (of your choice!) at nearly any opportunity or moment. And of course rather immediate access to as many sounds that have been documented--and all mediated only by a device that is lighter than a walkman, with fewer buttons than a telephone, and smaller than a Jamaican spliff.
We sometimes take our iPod to our buddy Ben Rogerson's house, and plug it in directly to his stereo. Wha-la! The soundtrack for Matthew and Hannah, comin' atcha! Feel it!
Anyway, here's my playlist for Matthew and Hannah in Italy 2004:
(group, album, notes)
Sequentia -- Canticles of Ecstasy -- plainchants from Hildegard, who would be 906 this year
Various -- The Bali Sessions -- a collection of Balinese gamelan music field-recorded by Mickey Hart
Barenburg, Douglass, and Meyer -- Live at Strawberry -- a live bootleg of this seminal progressive bluegrass trio, from 1994
The Brand New Heavies -- Heavy Rhyme Experience -- hot hip-hop, all live musicians, no machines
Christopher Dallman -- Race the Light -- my bro's first major studio record
The Darkness -- Permission to Land -- rock that makes you wail for joy
Dave Matthews -- Some Devil -- the culmination of Dave's work up to this point
John Digweed -- In Syndey -- i'm still in reconciliation with what electronica means for music, but this is hot stuff
Elvis Presley -- Elvis at Sun -- with his first trio, authentic c&w
Hamza el Din -- A Wish -- a clarion call for the future of music
The Hilliard Ensemble -- Sacred and Secular Music from Five Centuries -- early music from the european vocal tradition, which somehow is still overlooked by contemporary music fans
James P. Johnson -- The Original James P. Johnson -- one of the founders of jazz, on stride piano performances
Jane's Addiction -- Ritual de lo Habitual -- can never leave this one behind
Leadbelly -- Where Did You Sleep Last Night? -- feel it
Oxford Camerata -- Willaert -- music from this 16th C Italian vocal composer
Pandit Pran Nath -- Ragas for Morning and Evening -- singer who taught many composers in the West (incl Allaudin) about Hindustani vocal practice
Paul Oakenfold -- Global Undergroud -- why does this music transport me so?
Phish -- Farmhouse -- their best studio record
Ramnad Krishnan -- Vidwan Music of South India / Songs of the Carnatic Tradition -- this cat does ragas on friggin' drums
Ravel -- String Quartet -- one of my top 5 string quartets
Robert Johnson -- Complete Works -- another desert island artifact
Sasha -- Global Underground -- again, why is this so damn infectious?
Scuola Cantorum -- Works of Palestrina -- i think Palestrina bears an integral historiography, but who doesn't?
Shona Tribes -- Mbira Music -- smashes any music chauvinism that might be held by eurocentric composers
Supreme Beings of Leisure -- self-titled -- let's just relax and chill, ok?
Thelonious Monk -- self-titled -- one of my top 5 american composers ('american' means both continents, sister)
Thievery Corporation -- The Richest Man in Babylon -- this was recommended by our hair stylist, Peter, in St. Paul--you rock!
Trey Anastasio -- self-titled -- i hope he keeps up the push until the day
U2 -- All That You Can't Leave Behind -- still a sucker for Bono and the Edge
Yoruba Drums -- From West Benin -- still don't understand this music, thankfully
Zuco 103 -- Tales of High Fever -- no joke
So there you go -- the music that popped whilst in our tour 2004 of the land of God, Sex, Art, Pesto, and Vino. Can you feel it!
A bit jet-lagged, and with plenty of blisters on both feet, but Hannah and I returned from Italy, and it was just great. All told, five cities--Rome, Assisi, Venice, Cinque Terra, and Florence. Of course, Cinque Terra is not really a city, but a region of five very small towns along the coast of the Legurian Sea, and part of what is known as the Italian Riviera.
So yes, so many sights, walks, people, kinds of wine, morning espressos, pieces of art, and long dinners. We each did the entire trip with a small backpack, though we did have to buy a 5-Euro bag in Roma to lug our books, gifts, and stacks of postcards back with us. For you wine fans out there, we happened upon a 1998 Fattoria del Cerro Vino Nobile Montepulciano that opened up a whole new world for us. We brought two bottles home, and found a couple more in a Chicago wine-shop just this afternoon. It was that good.
And oh the art! So much to talk about, not the least of which is the newly-restored David at the Accademia in Florence. Controversy aside, the finished product (finished only this month, lucky for us) is a killer. Never before have I been so taken by a sculpture. Amongst my reactions were, I wonder what it must have been like for Michelanglo to fashion this gem, moment to moment in his studio?
David, while likely the most famous sculpture in the world, nonetheless delivers, for me, a symphonic emptiness. The breath is gone, as are everyday thoughts, but what is there is a slow unfoldment of Music, in 360 degrees.
There are many ways to look at David, of course, that in consideration and contemplation invite a rich and multi-layered appreciation of its beauty. I have a paper on this artwork, from an Integral perspective, that is in outline form, so look for that in the coming days and weeks.
And of course look for more Italy thoughts to percolate through my fingers and into the Daily Goose. Each of the cities could be the subject of a month's worth of blog posts.
But for now, the word for the day, again: Montepulciano.
Yes, a cliche, but so true! Hannah and I have been in Italy for 1 week, with 4 more days to go. So far, a brief night in Roma, before an early train to Assisi. Oh my San Francesco! So beautiful, we completely fell in love. Then to Venice for 36 hours. Very cool to bum around the streets, to get lost, and to see some wonderful art (especially the early Christian 'primitivo' art). Now we are in the Cinque Terra, in the wonderful Vernazza, for the next 36 hours. Oh the sun of the Italian Riveria! Then to the mother of the Renassaince, Florence, for 2 days. Then to Rome for a night, then home!
While not the slogan for much of our experience, in Assisi, it definitely was: il silenzio é l'infinito. Silence is infinite.
When I talk about Integral Art Production (as opposed to Integral Artist Practice, Integral Art Interpretation, and Integral Art Institutions, all of which are inclusive aspects of 'art'), I refer to an AQAL-born lens that illumines, as a beginning, the Four Quadrants of art production. These quadrants, inspired by Wilber's overview of Integral Semiotics, aim to take a comprehensive stock of the elements, components, perspectives, and methodologies that make up and inform the act of art creation.
Each aspect is a long story in and of itself, but in a sentence, I would say that Integral Art Production incorporates the spectrum of consciousness by the artist, the spectrum of formal methodologies to create material artifacts, and the spectrums of worldviews and audience responses.
With that said, something interesting happens when you start to think along these decidedly aperspectival lines. You start to realize that Creativity (capital C) knows no medium of art. Creativity knows no level of tactile development. Creativity knows no material form. Creativity knows no specific discipline of formal production. Creativity, far from being interdiscplinary, is in fact transdisciplinary. Creativity, in its deepest sense, shines through from the Void any time in one's life, from the moment of birth to the moment of passing. Creativity is the Moment of our lives.
In one sense, the simple being of life is Creative enough. One can rest in the spacious witness of all of manifest and unmanifest Creativity, as far as one can cognize both. One can always learn about more things, and more perspectives of those things. But the simple appreciation of the Ground Value of things, as emanations from Source which brings forth every thing manifest, is a radically quiet place, and completely beautiful.
In fact what art can do is not make us cognizant of something tangible, but aid us to re-cognize our Source, our Self, our Original Face, before we were born in the manifest world. Those short but unmistakable glimpses of just that recognition is part of why people came back and back again to their favorite artworks.
But back to the Integral production of art...
Creativity, while radically unmanifest in its most resonant and deep sense, of course informs and shapes our physical and mental behaviors as we produce artwork. I produce music compositions. You may produce visual art. Your friend might produce sculptures. All in all, the general stance that takes all of this into account is to say that artists make something. That something is informed by vision, psychological factors and blocks, traumas, glimpses of fine orders, and a whole host of conscious and unconscious rivers. But we all, as artists in the most inclusive sense possible make something.
What other general statements can I make about all artists? What additionally, if anything, unites all artists in a fundamental sense?
An examination of the history of art schools in the West (from Medieval through Renaissance, Baroque, and more contemporary examples) shows that the schools have been arranged in markedly diverse manners. To take the classification of various art disciplines as example, in the 17th century, the following scheme (or taxonomy) for the arts was proposed:
Eloquence Poetry Music Architecture Painting Sculpture Optics Mechanics
Subsequently, schemes grouped the disciplines in different ways, and in turn added/subtracted disciplines from the list. One list was 'arts whose purpose is pleasure' and that included music, poetry, painting, sculpture, gesture/dance; the complementary list was 'arts whose purpose is both pleasure and use' which included eloquence and architecture.
Zoom to the 20th century, and we find art schools with a list of disciplines that reflects pluralism:
And on and on and on. Body art, graphic design and animation, comics, and many more could fill this list. And we haven't even gotten into the art of hair...
The design and nature of an Integral Art School would certainly want to include as many aspects of material creation and disciplines in principle. After all, there is no reason beyond adherance to myth that some disciplines of art are inherantly better than others. Artists don't work that way, and if anything might move even quicker to those disciplines deemed taboo or inferior. "What? You think this is a lower form of art? Well, take a look at this!"
I suggest we take as a given the diversity of material and manifest mediums of art. It would simply be noninclusive to have it any other way. I personally love to see hybridity in artwork, in ways I had never dreamt or imagined. Artists make combinations that all of society and the world can witness and contemplate, love and hate, embrace and run repellant. This is the way of art as it is introduced to culture. That which societies repressed, ignored, or were simply oblivious to 100 years ago is loved, celebrated, and promoted today.
So if we take diversity of media as a given, beyond undue debate, then where does that leave us?
At least we are still faced with the dynamic where Creativity, or Inspiration, flows resonant through artists. Even as traditional mediums mix, bend, alter, and go hybrid (and sometimes organically pure), the fundamental dynamic undeniably occurs in some capacity, along our deepest strings. Creativity informs our actions as artists. Creativity pushes our body-minds towards the new and novel. And our body-minds interpreet and respond to the conscious and unconscious 'inner necessities' and 'inner needs' in ways that if someone on the outside watches, would indeed obserive actual behaviors, and actual actions.
So I ask: What are the fundamental actions and behaviors of artists, no matter what the chosen medium or mediums? What are our root movements?
I offer this list, which likely will change over time (what doesn't?) yet nonetheless I suggest bears a contemplation if you are so inclined.
Yes, artists (like all humans generally speaking) have these sensual capacities. Artists tend to have access to all five senses. Okay, you might think, that is true, but so what?
I'll tell you what the so what might be: if you look at each of these senses, you will see that at least one dominant medium of art has grown around it. See for yourself:
Doesn't touch form the root of sculpture and architecture? Doesn't hearing form the root of music? Doesn't sight form the root of painting? Doesn't taste form the root of cooking? And doesn't speaking form the root of poetry?
Aren't these at least slightly astonishing? Could it signal something deep at the manifest emergence of all Creativity? And could these dynamics form not only the basis for Integral Art, but indeed a school for Integral Art?
Could these intrinsic aspects in fact lie root to every form of art?
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