Pardon the slower blog day. I just spent the last 4 hours hard at work to finish my press kit, soon to be available on the Resume & Bio as a PDF.
It is actually kinda fun to slog around for the right pitches for this sort of document. Like composition, but in a different way. I'll be sure let y'all know when it is uploaded. I am pretty good about that, aren't I?
I don't think I mentioned this yet....I have been in collaboration with a Chicago filmmaker for music for his masters' thesis film, called Somersault. Under strong consideration are two pieces I previously composed, as well as a brand new piece that was recorded in Minneapolis a week ago. That new piece is a duet for violin and marimba. It is pretty quiet, and timed as a film score to various cues in the film, but I think it might just work as a stand-alone piece of music of its own. I will see. If so, it will be posted over at Momentary I, right quick daddy-o.
This was the first time I ever composed a piece that was timed to a film. In the film, the little boy sees a hummingbird, and the music begins. As a neighborhood boy chases him through the forest, the music is composed to match the curves and turns they take. Every appearance of the hummingbird brings certain notes from the violin. And when the little boy, now tied to a tree by the other kid, falls asleep with his head on the tree trunk, the music ends. It all might end up on the cutting room floor, of course, which is just the nature of the film medium!
I mentioned that I might post it to this site. Of course the main consideration is whether the music stands and sounds without the need for the visual cues. Music, in order to be real music, ought not to need much by way of external narrative. A piece of music should provide the listeners a full experience, absorbed in aural motion, in and of itself. Of course everything is sound, and anything can be beautiful. But you shouldn't need to be a scholar about the programmatic intention of the composer or the programmatic original context for the composition in order to be able to appreciate music. Music should speak to you, more or less by itself. As a complete composition, it either sounds good and full, or it doesn't. You feel it in your bones, or you don't. There is a transparency, or there is, ahem, a muddlecy.
People have personal and unique responses to music, and there is nothing cut and dried about aesthetic experience, subjectively. But one thing is for sure - our values shift with music (and all art). What once was regarded as inconsequential can become, forty years later, fundamental. You just never know how music is going to be received by others. And in my experience, the composer is the last to know. So let 'er rip, try to compose what you hear, and repeat. Part of it all is just to accept the repeat of it all.
As of 11.19.04, I resigned as Co-director of the Integral Art Center of Integral University. It was a difficult decision, but one that made for I believe the best of all involved. I spent almost a year and a half in this position, and I was happy to volunteer my voice towards the organizational efforts. It was quite a ride, but like all good things, it came to an end.
The good news is that my independent scholarship (which my work always was) continues, in the form of posted PDF files to this website (always a home of integral art), as well as my forthcoming books on integral art, artist practice, and music. And the doubly good news is that I have more time for music composition, my real estate investing, and my personal life in general. I know that Hannah won't mind that I come to bed on time more often. Speaking of which...
In a couple hours is my composition lesson with Allaudin. The nature of our lessons is that I compose a short piece (the parameters given by him), fax it to him, and then during the lesson he plays through it and offers comments and changes. Lots of both of those - and I would not have it any other way. Sure, it can be difficult to have something you consider as a baby openly corrected and reorchestrated.
But Allaudin does so with a lot of love and plenty of humility (not to mention musical wisdom). Basically, I do not have to listen to his suggestions, or hold back from the artful toss of his revision into the circular file. Haven't done that yet, but I reserve the right, and he freely offers it.
The man has ears - really good ones. So far all of his tweaks have been like glimpses into possibilities I knew not there. As I have slaved away at the week's assignment, in my ignorance I haven't seen all that the sonic territory suggests is possible. Instead I have rushed to a new idea, or left a really good one undeveloped.
That is the power of any good art education - to make you more aware of the possibilities available to you. Or to paraphrase English philosopher R.G. Collingwood, the purpose of music education is to help the student watch him or herself compose. And so far, due to the guidance of Allaudin, I am much better able to watch myself compose. And here, too, is where meditation comes into play. Not as a direct means towards better composition (it doesn't work that way), but as an indirect tool towards the ability for greater awareness.
But with anything, practice practice practice. So off I go.
How hot does Millennium Park look in this picture!
As you look at it, notice the Frank Gehry bandshell in the background. Then notice the enormous mirrored jelly bean under which the photographer stood. And then notice whatever you notice.
(from the Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 24, 2004, photo by Richard A. Chapman)
That is the 'consecutive games played' streak by NFL quarterback Brett Favre, as of this evening's game. As someone who played football for nine years (including eight as a quarterback, through middle school, high school, and college), all I have to say is holy crap.
That is what Hannah and I did the first thing this morning. We took a two-hour walk around the Logan Square/Ravenswood neighbs. Ostensibly, we had to drop by the post office to mail silly and trivial things like the mortgage payment. But we kept on goin' and goin'!
We actually have made it part of our daily practice to take a morning walk. While it inevitably falls on me to be the bad cop and get the woman out of bed and thus end her beauty sleep, we both agree about 30 seconds into the walk that we are glad we get outta bed and got a'movin'. Plus, it is good for me to be a bad cop everyonce in a while, cuz I am so bad at bein' bad.
Skill number one seems to be to be able to deflect the initial resistance. "Can't we hit the snoooooze bar just one more time?" That is the first test. At this point, I am but a B- student. But with lots of upside. I wouldn't fail me, yet.
And man how the metabolism loves the morning walk! As well as the lower intestines. The thing about it is that in addition to doin' wonders for our body-minds, we really get a chance to plan our day, talk about real estate (we are both endlessly fascinated and eager to build our Chicago empire), and get into the swing of the day. And a really wonderful by-product is that we feel closer as a couple, and have lots of intimate silly moments together. Lots of adventures and ordinary energy wrapped into our micro-moments.
I am very happy to see that Coolmel posted about Napoleon Hill's classic achiever book, Think and Grow Rich. This was one of the books I studied in my Music Business course at Queens College. The book is a tad hokey (lovably so), but contains many many gems about the psychology of success. I think it costs about $6 at Borders, so you really can't go wrong. Highly recommended.
My own model for integral artwork can be boiled down to just this:
1) artist consciousness 2) the art object (its parts and whole) 3) viewer/cultural worldviews and responses
These three areas each are rich in stories, past and present, that offer insight and methodologies for the artist to consider and practice as he or she creates artwork of any kind or medium. As both Frank Zappa and Ken Wilber have said, art is anything with a frame around it. My model for integral artwork is the study of the various frames of art, as well as what drives those frames and how the frames are viewed and received by others.
And as I recently said in a private correspondance with Victoria Lansford, the focus I believe is on number 2 and number 3. Or as I wrote: "To explore the dynamics between art objects and viewer worldviews and responses is, I believe, a key dynamic on the artwork side of things, and the work many of our artists will do over the coming decades."
Or in other words, what are the levels of appreciation and recognition available for artists to fold into their work? What kind of hooks can your artwork have?
To all of my readers - ole standbys, occassional dropbys, and random flybys - much love to you all on this season of thanks. My thanks to all of you for your readership and love. And may all sentient beings express love through our actions, gestures, and silent recognition of what is. Love sees love, expansive.
The incomparable Camile Paglia was, actually, one of the first bloggers (and maybe even the first). Her columns on Salon.com in the mid to late nineties prefigured the worldcentric and information-equipped prose of today's best bloggers. Her book, Sexual Personae, is a masterpiece of passionate critical analysis of Western art. And her forceful and direct written voice is one of my own primary inspirations and models, as I tap away at my keyboard to create my blog entries, essays, papers, and books. Many bows to her courage and ongoing clarity.
In the coming months, I will be unearthing much of Paglia's work in light of Ken Wilber's integral theory. As I have stated elsewhere, I believe that if there is anyone who can match the passion and intellectual heft of Wilber, it is Paglia. I renew my call for a dialogue between the two, because the sparks that would fly just might burn down the remaining institutions of extreme postmodern theory. Specific to the art world, Paglia argues for a return to primary sources, a return to education based upon art history, and all in all, a reinvigorated art education system that moves beyond the dead-end of nihilistic postmodernism (i.e., pluralism taken as the end stage of human worldviews).
Along that line, I want to shout out a passage from a Paglia column from March, 2000. Her words speak for themselves. She discusses the place of various North American thinkers in the larger Western tradition, specifically Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler and Norman O. Brown.
My argument is that the North American intellectuals, typified by McLuhan, Fiedler and Brown, achieved a new fusion of ideas -- a sensory pragmatism or engagement with concrete experience, rooted in the body, and at the same time a visionary celebration of artistic metaspace -- that is, the fictive realm of art, fantasy and belief projected by great poetry and prefiguring our own cyberspace.
North American philosophers from the late 19th century on turned away from the metaphysical preoccupations and dour worldview of European thinkers. The pragmatism of William James was based on his early study of anatomy and physiology. James' portrait of consciousness as an active agent anticipated McLuhan's identification of modern media as "extensions" of the senses. John Dewey's theories were also grounded in the senses, and his focus on educational reform prefigured McLuhan's attentiveness to how the young process information in our media-saturated age. Dewey's faith in democracy paralleled McLuhan's opposition to Marxism, flowing from his recognition of how capitalism, in creating mass media, enhanced individualism and promoted social mobility.
The primacy of the body in the North American intellectual tradition is one of our great distinctions. McLuhan's classification of different eras as "acoustic" or "visual" and his emphasis on the "haptic," the sense of touch, meshes beautifully with the American arts. Exploration of the body inspired the revolutionary choreography of Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham; the Stanislavskian "Method" of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio; the organic pulses and respirations of the Black Mountain school of poetry; and the percussive rhythms of our glorious popular music from ragtime to rock 'n' roll.
My good friend Andrew Carlson (he of TCBands.com, which hosts this website) has a new CD out. It is with his current rock band, Alphatonic. The band is out of Minneapolis, and carries on the 6-yr tradition laid down by The Heed - full-tilt groove rock with an aftertaste. Check these cats out. At the band website, you can listen to samples. Very hot.
That is the working title of the feature-length documentary for which I am the executive producer. Our subject is W.A. Mathieu, my teacher and friend. The film, directed by Hannah, is in the early stages of production. We did the first round of filming back in August. In the next month or so, the three minute trailer will be done, edited by Ben Rogerson. We hope it knocks your socks off. I will keep you all updated, because this project is near and dear to our hearts.
And soon, a five-minute performance by Allaudin will be available for you all to watch, on this website. Hell yeah! Allaudin is a composer of the highest order, yet at the same time is completely non-threatening as a person, and in fact is utterly hysterical, expansive, and warm. Much of what I see as a practical model for an integral composer is signalled in some way by this man and his music. I can't wait to share this video with you all!
The stable of contemporary art critics that the National Review Online has is among the best. Here is a top-notch article, by Kenneth Tanner, about the new U2 album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. He explores the album, and the band, along spiritual, psychological, interpersonal, and of course formal musical lines - all in fresh and very well-written ways. The kosmic quote:
I'm bound for some Paul McGuinness-inspired purgatory for using the words "Christian record" in the same sentence with "U2," but I think the band is big enough (and mature enough) now not to worry overmuch about people getting the wrong impression (who would mistake these guys for Bible thumpers?). The band was right to resist the label — no doubt it would have limited their audience and their art at earlier stages — but it seems time to simply live with the contradictions and let the chips fall where they may.
Indeed. Where they may. Read the whole thing. Tanner's piece is great.
If for no other reason (when in fact there are countless) Frank Zappa deserves acclaim for "Peaches En Regalia", a popular composition of high-order that has not lost even a sliver of its brilliance since its inception. An iconoclast, who through his sincere committment to the study of music composition, earned the right to be an iconoclast, Zappa crafted a unique voice that, I believe, is still quite ahead of its time. His music is like that of an apple tree, with fruits so delectable, you pick them early, when in fact the real taste is to come in the apples that still grow, not ready to be plucked for several seasons.
Here are his five instructions for music composition. Call it the Zappa Recipe:
1. Declare your intention to create a "composition".
2. Start a piece at some time.
3. Cause something to happen over a period of time (it doesn't matter what happens in your "time hole" - we have critics to tell us whether it's any good ornot, so we won't worry about that part).
4. End the piece at some time (or keep it going, telling the audience it is a "work in progress").
5. Get a part-time job so you can continue to do stuff like this.
(emphasis original, and hat-tip to Creators on Creating, Barron, Montuori, Barron, eds. 1997. New York: Tarcher.)
Wise words. Does the Zappa Recipe work for you, as you serve your music?
That is the story for me at the moment -- skin of various kinds, shapes, and associations has been shed, or is in the process of doing so. It is funny - in college, I quit the fraternity I was in (a football frat, no less) in very brief fashion. It was not quite like that one day I woke up and - poof! - time to quit. But it wasn't far off. Friends kept suggesting that I quit, but I rather stubbornly insisted otherwise, because I believed very much that the frat was the right place for me. Pretty much no one told me to stay.
As bad, though, as it became (in terms of a place to live and the type of person I had to sit next to at lunch every day), I nonetheless took away from the frat several close friends, and an enhanced perspective. We all sort of bolted together, and became sort of the outcasts. Ah, the horizons of a narrow perspective. To this day, my stay in the frat was an experience with some positives (life-long friends, as well as knowledge of how NOT to live one's life), plenty of negatives, and the assurance that I would never have to look back, because the right decision was made at the right time.
A true shed of skin. And the vulnerable spots are soon toughed and protected again. And so that is sort of how it is right now, in a certain way at least.
My friend Ben Rogerson took this picture in August, at a church in Oak Park, IL, after the session to record the Who Am I Motet was finished. Ben also was the sound engineer, and for that good work earned the name 'Dr. Sound'. This composition is the first track on my upcoming record, I Am Sound, available soon.
From the left, Christine Kelner (soprano), Doug Kelner (tenor), me, and Bill Chin (bass). I was extremely fortunate to work with these top-notch singers. Christine and Doug are married, and both work with Bill on various professional gigs around town. Christine was a huge help with coordination. And it was Bill who secured the church for our evening session. You can read more about this project here.
By the way, the slightly-off photo quality has everything to do with my scanner in my home office, and nothing to do with the quality of the actual photo. Ben himself is a hot photographer. He would kill me if I represented his work this way, without caveat. Off to hide...
Beauty. That unmistakable 'It' quality. That thang that we feel in the first moments of our favorite music. What is it, and where is it? After philosopher O.K.Bouwsma:
Is beauty like the redness of an apple? Or like the burp of the cider?
It is in the perfect tree upon which the apple grew? Or the apple tree planter's followed-through-upon intentions?
Is the in the culture that values this breed of apple? Or in the ancestors who prepared the fertile land?
What is the beauty of music like, and where can that beauty be found? Is the beauty in and around everything in and around the apple?
All of us can be a slave to our own ambitions. All of us can operate blinkered by practical reality. All of us can have grand intentions that try to change the world. All of us can let our heads get ahead of our bodies, and our spirit.
The most important thing about the work we do is the results of our work. If that sounds too goal-oriented, just know that I mean a fairly wide definition of the word 'results'. 'Results' means the concrete ways that our intentions enter the world, and are received by others. A result can be helping someone when they are down. A result can mean teaching another person. A result means how we feel about our work after it is done. A result is also how others feel about our work. Of course the tangible 'thing' is also a result.
All of this is to contrast with a thought-system that suggests that the process is most important. Thus the way something happens is more important than the result of that process. If we can be happy about the process, the course by which the trajectory of our work operates, then we can release from the end result, because we did it the 'right way', in the 'right process'.
Both process and results are important. But results are more important. A process that doesn't achieve notable results in the world is a process that should be changed, even if the people involved like the process and are proud of it. We operate in the world to accomplish things -- personal success, changed attitudes, a more equitable power structure, increased knowledge, more friends, a happy family, a sense of well being. These are results.
The most important aspect of our being in the world is results. Otherwise, what are we doing? And why are we doing it?
What can I say --- I think this is just the natural by-product of my work as a scholar. I always look for the good quote, the perfect phrase, the expansive paragraph that, in a sense, makes my point for me. Or it at least offers an informed place to make my own point in my own words. The beauty of scholarship is that everyone has the same access to the world's art literature, at least in principle. Thus scholarship is inherantly egalitarian, and perfectly congruent with the nature of knowledge quests from the begin-point in historical time.
Anyway, here is a delightful little passage from my very first composition book, The Study of Counterpoint, by J.J. Fux. In truth, this is most Western composers' first composition book, since the time of Mozart. It is written as a dialogue between 'Josephus', the student, and 'Aloysius', the teacher. It follows a narrative structure of sorts, and Fux draws these characters with a certain degree of nuance. They are both interesting, and they feel human - more than one would expect to find in a composition treatise about counterpoint. A helluva lot more. At the end, Aloysius encourage his student to perserve through the initial phases of his composition study. As an old man, tired and too weak to continue, he nonetheless offers:
...the mountain of the muses is to be reached only by a very precipitous path. There is no craft - however modest it may be - to which the novice does not have to serve an apprenticeship of at least three years. What should I say then about music, which not only surpasses the simpler crafts and arts in ingenuity, difficulty, and richness, but, in fact, cannot be rivaled by any of the liberal arts? The benefits of your efforts may bring you; the hope of success; the facility in writing which you will gradually acquire; and finally, the firm confidence that what you are writing is well written, may encourage you.
Thus the sweat work of compositional elbow grease becomes the Muse work to establish a personal compositional voice. Technical practice allows the voice of spirit to speak to itself, in strong, confident tones, and in a coherant and transparent language that allows communication between our deepest energies to emerge.
Efforts to train an individual didactically to have a more sophisticated level of understanding are destined to fail. One can perhaps induce the parrotting of a response representative of a higher level; but such a response will prove fragile once the particular circumstances of the training have been removed. If one wants to enhance an individual's understanding, the most likely route is to involve her deeply over a significant period of time with the symbolic realm [or 'kind of art' - md] in question, to encourage her to interact regularly with individuals who are somewhat (rather than greatly) more sophisticated than she is, and to give her ample opportunity to reflect on her own emerging understanding of the domain. While (so stated) this sounds like a pedagogical recipe, it in fact more closely approximates the developmental course through which a connoisseur actually passes in the course of her training.
Emphasis mine. I have said it before: Howard Gardner - another midwife of a more integral art. Substantial aspects of Integral Art stands on the shoulders of this man's seminal work.
The world's art literature provides the material for the Integral Stories of Art -- for Artist Consciousness, Artwork Production, Art Interpretation, for Art Institutions. Rubber Meets Road offers three practical inquiries, one for each of the first three Stories, to offer tools to make the leap from raw cognition of the art world's truths to an informed application of the truths for personal, social, and cultural growth and development, as creative people in the world. The intended audience are creative people who do not put their head in the sand.
Inquiries, as a means to apply Integral theory, are fundamentally important. Knowledge begins with a good question. The Integral model coordinates a vast amount of information, data, insights, truths, and knowledge. Inquiries can help to delineate the options from which creative people can make Integrally-informed choices. And these tools can help us modulate through the information age in a manner than allows our grace and elegance to remain in shine, and intact.
Rubber Meets Road is a five-page breezer that talks about three fundamental inquiries for Integral Art. I aim to offer tools to link cognitive knowledge with experiential knowledge. But see for yourself. It is available for free over at Writings. Enjoy!
For what appears to be many adult artists, cognitive develoment far outpaces symbolic development, because there are only so many symbols and raw signifier materials to go around. In music, there are only 12 notes to a western octave. Gotta use those 12 notes, those 12 raw signifiers. Further abstracted combinations and signifieds emerge in the artist's consciousness and awareness with further psycological and spiritual development (in lines such as cognitive, spatial, emotional, etc.). Like tea in water, further psycho-spiritual development seeps into the symbolic work, and makes artworks more nuanced, rich, and subtle. A finite amount of raw signifiers (such as the 12 notes) gets assembled in remarkably complex and cool ways.
For example, Allaudin has me in constant study of some really nuanced and ambiguous pitches that are between the piano keys. But to evoke them, I still have to use the piano keys. Cognitively I know the nuanced and discreet pitches, and untempered energies in general, are there (he describes them at length in Harmonic Experience), but to create an effective symbol that evokes them for others is very tricky. In fact, after the relatively quick download of the cognitive material, the actual symbol-construction comprises nearly all of the trick. Ya hit the woodshed, armed with lots of blank paper, lots of erasers, and a garbage can. Sometimes, you hit pay dirt. Art production, at its core, has to do with the manipulation and construction of objects into a symbol.
And when it comes down to art production, the psychological aspects, such as cognitive and spiritual development, alone have the function of big-effin-deal. Or Miles Davis' so what. My advice for the cognitive and spiritual wonks out there: The realization of Nonduality in and of itself is great path to pursue. But for art production, now that is different. Enlightenment doesn't make one's art any more effective, per se. In a sense, my point is: So what about nonduality! -- if you can't effectively evoke it through a symbol system, then big-effin-deal about nonduality. If there is some idea about nonduality that you want to express in art, then it is back to the drawing board.
(To be clear: cognitive is important, but partial. Spiritual/Deep Self development is obviously important as well, but also partial. My model incorporates both of these, in accordance with Wilber's Integral Psychology. I simply suggest that one not put all of one's eggs in this two baskets. So, I muse here just to make a point - wonkery of any kind has its limits easy to see. In the manifest world, consciousness and cognition as a subject for personal study for artists have limits, and are part of an Integral Artist practice. Stress part.)
In the case of Integral Art Production, this is where the danger lies with regard to an over-emphasis on integral consciousness, alone and by itself. In my view, we ought not to overstress the development of consciousness because for art, there is more to it than only consciousness. Some art schools are all about the development of artist consciousness -- the 'being' of artistry -- and these schools and pedogical approaches have merit, but can veer dangerously close to a waste of money. These schools take a partial aspect of artisty (ontological artist consciousness) and make it the entire story. Even with the new horizons that a deeper, wider, more inclusive consiousness opens, you still have to not only walk the paths, but evoke the paths for others through art. The evocation takes skill - skills in the manipulation of objects and materials.
What is a difference between me and Rumi? Rumi can't evoke the didymic comma on piano, and I can't write turn-poetry. Rumi, me, you, and everyone share a deep commonality when it comes to nondual consciousness. But my poetry compared to Rumi's is technically far inferior. At the kosmic level, alll is consciousness. But art is not really made at the kosmic level. It is made on earth, in a studio, in an imperfect and flawed process to shape raw materials.
So okay .... Consciousness smonsciousness -- and i'm only half kidding. Enlightenment doesn't make you a better poet, a better painter, a better dancer. It can help, but there are basic technical/object-oriented skills needed in any art. It comes to this, with art production: Great, you know about Tibetan Buddhism, and have taken up that practice - that is admirable. But if you wanna be an artist (and you can!) where is your symbol? Where is the actual art? How can we hone those objects?
This is why I believe that the Integral Art Production aspect of the more general Integral Art starts with art objects, and adds integral consciousness and integral viewer response (worldviews, states, and more). There are holarchical spectrums for all three. There are methodologies for all three. And the development of Integral Art Production in this mannner, epistemologically, allows it to align with the history of art around the world in a more seamless fashion.
Why? Because the history of art production is object-oriented. What separates the field of art from other fields of human endeavor are the creative artifacts/objects produced by artists and cultures. If we don't make this crucial distinction, then everything is just consciousness and that is not a very interesting discussion to have for many people. Art Production is the stuff of hours in the woodshed, and sweat in creative workspaces and studios. This is where artists learn how to make artworks. Practical, earthy, and object oriented discussions thrill many artists, myself included. This is where the elbow grease, the sour suffering, and the joys of creation lay. This is what gets us off!
The kicker: In order to create a relatively seamless Integral Art Production, the cosmogeny of art ought to align with the phyllogeny of art, which ought to align with the ontogeny of art, which ought to align with the microgeny of art. Want to know what that all means? Stay tuned.
Hey phat cats, I put up a new version of the plainchant, I Consider Everything, over at Momentary I. In the course of a vocal practice today, I thought 'hmmm, there is my recorder - why don't I record this plainchant, 4 phun?'. Inner voice said, sure, why not?
From Paul Berliner's seminal book, The Soul of Mbira:
Within the social circles of Shona musicians, then, critical evaluation of their colleagues by individual musicians reflects a sensitivity to many aspects of the art of mbira music, from general considerations implying a standard of musicianship to more personal ones. As young performers develop their skill they adopt the standards of musicianship from their teachers or indirectly from emulation of other advanced musicians. Eventually, as they become mature players, they too make personal judgments concerning the music, and these ultimately lead to the crystallization of their own unique styles of performance.
Is this really any different than for music from other cultures? Or for art production in any medium?
This is how musical/artistic standards of production develop - primarily through those held by the wider community of peers, leaders, and teachers. Those before us, those around us - we develop meaning and we develop our conceptions of 'good music' in a culture of like-minded people. Thus, the questions for people who feel that their music/art is not being appreciated:: Am I honest with my intentions? Am I able with my skill? Am I coherant with my products? Am I engaged with a group people who have similiar intentions?
And, have I met a teacher who can guide/support/challenge me? Do I want to?
In The Music of Life (Omega Publications), he writes:
The way in which man can find his own place is to tune his instrument to the keynote of the chord to which he belongs. Sound is the force which groups all things from atoms to worlds. The chording vibration sounds in the innermost being of man and can only be heard in silence. When we go into the inner chamber and shut the door to every sound that comes from the life without, then will the voice of God speak to our soul and we will know the keynote of our life.
If contemporary music education, in our music schools and conservatories, has rightly stressed technique, tradition, and music theory (logical/mathematical), then what it has tragically deemphasized is a heuristic into the nature of sound. This kind of inquiry, though obviously of a highly subjective and phenomenological nature, can nonetheless be fostered by our music teachers, in the manner in which 'what is sound?' kind of questions are at least brought to the fore for student contemplation. Teachers can inspire students to investigate on their own the very nature of aural animation.
Sound is not a bunch of jigsawed notes on a page, nor is it born necessarily of scale and arpeggio mastery. Sound and Music are in essence what binds and builds us. Both represent our being. There is Sound in everything we do, and Music in our elegance. To think differently about this: What is the Sound of your own quiet? And what can be the Music of this moment?
***
Off to paint parts of the the house - it is a race between the dry-time of exterior enamel and the temperature drop of the autumnal Chicago air. Looks like I have to get a new gutter for the front of the house.
A new aural slice over at Momentary I. Check it, if you got a spare 1 min 55 sec (plus S & H).
And by the way.....one thousand billion thank yous to all of you who read my site. October was the busiest month ever, with over 650 unique visitors and over 1000 visits. There are going to be some new features I roll out in the coming weeks and months. So stay tuned.
Deep and wide bows to all of you! Keep the emails flowing in - I love to hear from you all - and know that I couldn't do any of this without you. Let's keep this on a harmonic roll.
From his The craft of musical composition, Book I: Theory:
Although the creative process in its highest stages may always remain hidden from human comprehension, as may the mysterious souce of artistic work in general, yet the dividing point between conscious and unconscious work can be raised to an extraordinary degree.
Think about how true that rings in our common sense. Is it not true that the more we learn, the more we realize we do not know? Does not every new answer bring many new questions? And can any of really explain from where our inspiration truly emerges? And as we learn more of what we might think is the shape of our music, as we compose, is not our music still shapeless, and our conception of it only a temporal footing within a bottomless chasm? Hindemith continues:
If this were not true, everyone in whom this point lies at a very low level could assert that he is creating the greatest works of art.... Is not an immense mastery of the medium needed to translate into tones what the heart dictates? Can the inner vision of the music that the composer has glimpsed make itself at all clear to another if the resistance of the tones and the refractoriness of tonal progressions is continually coming between the impulse and its expression in sound?
As many in the world live amidst the pluralist worldview, we want to honor the creativity of everyone, from babies and young children all the way up to our elderly. As far as it goes -- that everyone has a creative impulse that we can honor as part of basic humanity -- this is a wonderful impulse to have towards our fellow beings. In this sense, creativity is available to all beings, no matter what stages of intelligence, capacity, mastery, or cognition. It is truly a miracle when a person of any age makes (or talks, or evokes) something creative, that other people can recognize and absorb. This is a very profound thing.
Simultaneously, we can also honor the standards that other before us have set, especially in the classic arts (music, poetry, sculpture, dance, painting, theatre, ornament). This is simply how we nod to tradition, and allow ourselves to be challenged and supported by those masters on whose shoulders we stand, no matter what. The world's best artists evoke and even depict a worldview that spreads to all of humanity over time. In Bach, and even 200 years before his music, we see the seeds of pluralism, sewn in polyphonic interplay of voices and melodies. In Bartok and Stravinsky, we see the seeds of integral holism, sewn in the comprehensive trans-tonality. As our best artists share their work, our own intuitive cognition emerges in ways that only faintly rung before. In the world's best art, we can see an image of who we can become, as individuals in cultures, and as beings of body-mind-spirit.
So in this sense, we ignore the standards of artistic development truly at our own peril. To insist on mastery in the arts is simply to withhold our highest accolades from the many in favor of recognition to the works of the few who truly deserve such acclaim. So what I suggest is not that we ignore or fail to recognize, as a miracle, the beauty of anyone and everyone's art, no matter what the quality. Rather, I suggest that we hold multiple perspectives. Celebrate and foster creativity in all people, because creativity is an innate force in life that all should be able to touch, and receive recognition and love from others in the art created. And also hold fast to the standards that our artists long gone have created, because in doing so, our company is that of the pioneers who seek to give more conscious shape nnto the dividing point between the conscious and unconscious.
To further forge and push this dividing line has ramifications for all of humanity -- it spreads love and compassion, rights and responsibilities, freedom and obligation -- which is what all those living today benefit from. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and it is our duty to stand ourselves as tall as we can, so that that come after us can stand taller, and spread more love and compassion in ways we cannot even imagine right now. For the spirit that drove our past masters is what drives us, and is the same spirit that will drive all in the future. It is Creativity, it is Spirit, it is Resonance, and it is Kosmic Essence.
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