A Balloon Reflecting the Moon

I practice meditation and I forgo sessions at my own risk.

Passing thoughts can seem to be invasive and disruptive during a meditation session. One learns that they needn’t be a problem. Passing thoughts can become part of the flow by letting them do just that—pass through. Rather than confront and combat the thought that intrudes one just looks at it with mild interest as the benign bit of nothingness that it is and then one watches it move on. It’s no more or less interesting than a balloon that floats through one’s field of vision and is then forgotten. Thirteenth century Zen master and poet Dogen described the situation beautifully and with characteristic brevity:

The moon reflected

In a mind clear

As still water

Even the waves, breaking,

Are reflecting its light.

(Translated by Steven Heine)

Liquid Architecture

“…an aspiration for me as a musician: to create an aural space, if you will, that is not only structurally and esthetically satisfying, but that also allows for the individual listener or player within it to have her own experience—an experience that perhaps leaves one feeling alone, but that brings one back to one’s Self, that affirms one’s deepest feelings and longings.”

Myra Melford in “Aural Architecture: The Confluence of Freedom”,

Chapter 8 of Arcana: Musicians On Music, edited by John Zorn, page 119

I open with this quote for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it aptly mirrors the experience and resulting motivation that I recently described in a blog entitled “The Lamb Played Piccolo.” (C.f. my blog on April 2, 2012.)

Secondly, her title references architecture. I’ve been thinking a lot about architecture-music connections of late. Consistent with my normal modus operandi the energy of my thinking attracted a source of further thought and inspiration. (Sort of the opposite of school where you are plied with sources that all too often don’t stimulate energized thinking.)

I’ve long had a fascination with architecture in a very practical sense. I love to be in built spaces. The ones that work best for me create a response very much like the music experience that Melford and I have described. The experience is most sublime when I am the only one in the structure. I very much enjoy walking through downtown indoor urban labyrinths on Sunday mornings when the only ones there are me and a few homeless folks seeking shelter. There’s nothing like rounding a corner and coming upon a fabricated canyon that stretches above and below me with snakes of stilled escalators reaching from one level to another. I could spend time analyzing and contemplating my response, and have done so, but it has virtually nothing to do with my appreciation.

It’s been said that architecture isn’t “about something.” A rich man may build a mausoleum in memory of his wife, but it isn’t “about” her. An overpass may be constructed to be graceful and to fit the landscape (wouldn’t that be nice?), and it can be fun to traverse a cleverly made one, but it’s not “about” a trip across town. The “meaning” is in the use.

There’s a wonderful old adage that gothic architecture is like frozen music. An inversion of that thought also makes sense to me—music is liquid architecture. The comparison leads to a reasonable question. Why are we constantly deluged with the insistence that music is about something? Someone might say “because music is emotional”. My proposition is that architecture is, too. But it doesn’t matter because emotion isn’t a meaning it’s a response.

Igor Stravinsky famously said, “Music is powerless to express anything at all,” and “My music is best understood by children and animals.” I like the implication that arises when these two quotes are brought together—while music can’t express anything it can be understood. It can be understood in the same way that a child “understands” a toy, or a dog “understands” a head stroke, or that I “understood” the Cathedral Basilica of Salvador in Bahia, Brazil or a mosque I entered in the city of Male in the Maldives or the center court of the old Marshall Fields in Chicago.

            It’s a virtual deal breaker when I hear someone say that their instrumental composition is “about this great breakfast my girlfriend made me,” or “about the faint smile on my father’s lips when we reconciled at his deathbed.” At that point I’m back in grade school trying to see sheep on a hillside.

            This has nothing to do, of course, with the effectiveness of sounds from “real life” used in music. It’s not contrary to the beauty of Don Vliet using the rhythm of windshield wipers to create a song, or Harry Partch using elements of his hobo life to structure his music, or Steve Reich’s applying recordings of street preachers and the pulse of train rides for musical form. The music isn’t “about” these things; it uses them as raw material.

            This all leads to issues of intention that we’ll address soon.

The Lamb Played Piccolo

“The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.”

Igor Stravinsky

I was in fifth grade when buses pulled up at my grade school one day to haul us off to Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota so we could experience a matinee concert by the Minneapolis Symphony. Someone took to the stage before the concert to explain what we were about to witness and how we should experience it. She told us that the composer intended for us to see specific pictures when listening to his music. We were to close our eyes and try to get an image in our minds of what the composer was seeing. She even helped us out by telling us that in the piece of music we were about to hear the composer wanted us to see sheep on a green hillside. I gave it my best shot—my brow furrowed and eyes tightly shut, desperately trying to summon up the predetermined picture. Nothing. I could hear the music. I could feel the hard arms of my chair and the kid squirreling around next to me. But the smell of our wet wool jackets was the closest I could come to anything ovine. And no green grassy hill.

            I was subtly and thoroughly convinced that day that I was not equipped to properly experience music…and certainly not classical music. I already played four musical instruments—accordion, flutophone (a plastic recorder), trombone, and cello—but if I couldn’t see the pictures I must be kidding myself. I wasn’t aware at the time of how demoralized I had been by the concert experience.

            Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has spoken of how our school system installs a poetry deflector shield in students that stays in place for a lifetime. Music appreciation classes did the same thing. I had been drawn to music since infancy. My first toys were a cardboard guitar and a plastic Emenee accordion (later replaced by a 120 bass Italian instrument). But classroom experiences of “Blow the Man Down” and rounds and descants and invisible sheep on hillsides were deadly dull and disappointing.

            I had two other experiences at that time, experiences that redirected my life and saved my soul. They were so natural and organic that it took me many years to figure out their importance.

            My parents went out one evening and I babysat my two younger brothers. After I got them tucked into bed I settled in to wait for our folks to come home. The house was filled with a quiet, deep, and ominous loneliness. I turned on the radio…a hefty plastic pre-Bose-System high-fidelity tabletop radio with a great sound. I searched for distant mysterious AM stations like the one from Little Rock. Instead I came across the most amazing sound I’d ever heard. I’d never been transported by anything in that way before. I floated and bobbed on some distant sublime bed of cloudy, comforting loneliness for what felt like an eternity. I didn’t want to ever come back. I didn’t know or think about what style of music it was. I’m certain now that it was something “classical.” I didn’t need instruction on how to appreciate it.

            Soon after that we moved to a farm in southern Minnesota for a year. My brothers and I spent a summer exploring woods, trails that had never been seen by human eyes, and abandoned pig and chicken sheds—literal farm animal ghost towns. My favorite things to do that summer were reading and going alone to my private outdoor spot. Behind some barns there was a gigantic galvanized grain storage bin. It had some sort of mechanical fan/drying unit at its base. I would sit nearby, listen to its endless drone, and sing long tones in unison or harmony to it. Time would stand still.

            I had no concept of the musical or meditative implications involved, or the way that drones and repetitive music would dominate and compel me throughout my life. And when I fell completely in love with Joe Zawinul’s eponymous album in my 20’s it never occurred to me that it matched in some way my late night fifth grade radio experience.

            The fact is, all my energy since those days has been aimed at recreating the sensations I've described. My music listening, playing, and “teaching” (not to mention my endeavors in other art disciplines) are based on the deep belief that others have had experiences that are similar in some way to the ones I've related here. The sensibilities engendered by those experiences may be deeply buried, but they are sending out a homing signal. If people can be diverted from the input coming from teachers, lessons, magazines, and marketing it’s possible to find the music that is calling to them. The music deflector shield can be uninstalled.

BTW, this is what my Emenee accordion looked like. What a beaut’!

Justice

anytime I hear the word “justice” I put my ear to the ground and hear a commercial comin’ down the line

A Link To The Exclusive New Mr. Limbo In Purgatory Blog

Mr. Limbo In Purgatory now has his very own blog! Follow him and get into purgatory on the ground floor. Tell your friends so they can visit Mr. Limbo In Purgatory, too. Things are starting to heat up for Mr. Limbo:

Mr. Limbo In Purgatory

Sheet Music For Behave Yourself #1

Here is the sheet music for the brief guitar exercise, Behave Yourself #1. It's a jpeg file that you can drag to your desktop, save, and print.
You can hear Behave Yourself here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8-RNIxdu4A&feature=youtu.be

The Blind Tongue Libretto

A video  of The Blind Tongue by Gary Lee Joyner and Mark Warhol can by found at this YouTube link (I wrote the libretto and directed this production):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruS4RMPsmEQ&feature=related

Here is the libretto:

 

THE BLIND TONGUE

Gary Joyner

© Copyright 2000 by Gary Joyner

“Our motions resolved the landscape into concentric circles revolving at different rates depending on the distance.”  Witold Gombrowicz

INTRO SCENE

Flute enters and begins playing. Flute is joined by He, She, and Marimba in a ritual circle.  He gravitates to the center of the circle.  Flute stops playing, turns to him, leans over and extends flute toward him .  They can’t quite manage to touch.

He:            (Sings to Flute)Some stammering god spit

And I was hurled into being

Against my will

            Hesitant, unsure

            (Spoken)  No, that’s not right

            (Sings to Marimba)  Existence was injected into me

            An inoculation of enthusiastic quickening

            Immunized against this daily disease

            (Spoken)  Try again

            (Sings to She)  Someone sent a message

            That never arrives

            In a language I cannot read

He looks at the message, but the language is in the music, the flute repeats sounds from the opening of the play.

            In the beginning was the word

And the word was night

            And the night was a stammering circle

            Of repetition

(He stops singing, looks to the left, to the right, and down.  He suddenly looks straight ahead and says clearly)  Begin

SCENE I

Flute enters, followed by He.

He:            Ah, this one

I haven’t seen it for weeks

The message will be in blood

On the wall

Here

He continues to explore the area and follow Flute.  Flute points out a new development.  A woman has appeared.  Her head is draped with a large cloth.  She takes a step one way, stops, takes a step another way.  Her fingers individually move as if they possess vision.  Through the rest of the scene he moves around her in a diminishing spiral until he is near enough to remove the covering from her head.

He:            (Spoken)  Something new

She:            He had the head of a rooster

With aquarium eyes

A leaky birdcage heart

That beat da-DA, pa-PA, da-DA, pa-PA

His hands were military parades

He was simplicity

He was a museum coat rack

He was an open window

He was the stillness at the center of a chessboard

He:            Sister

Your fingertips

Alter the walls of this cave

They draw hunger and the hunt

They give shape to desire and need

(Whispers)  Come to me

She:            What do you see?

He:            I hear the decay of ice

She:            What do you see?

He:            My nostrils flare

The stench of rotting snow

She:            What do you see?

He:            Mouth inside of mouth

Beyond the cave door

I see the horizon lift its lip

            Exposing teeth smeared with blood

            They laugh like a startled jackal

She:            You confuse me

He:            I see yellow eyes of wisdom

She:            (Moans)

He:            I see a heaving breast

Wordless

            Animal

            Breath

She:            Temptation

Music builds to the instant when the man reaches out and whips off the drape.  A red sash is bound around her head and eyes.  She remains blinded.

He:            (Looking out)  Begin again.

Blackout

SCENE II

The woman is at a table.  She is a seer of some sort.  She studies a layout of fortune-telling cards.    He enters.

He:            I return.

She:            Return?

He:            I was here last night

She:            It means nothing to me

He:            (He holds up a picture of himself)  What do you see?

She:            I see a man

He:            (Spoken)  Ha!  Your are wrong

            (Sung) As always, you are wrong!

            It is the image of a man

            How can you help me

            If you can’t get this right?

            (Presents himself)  What do you see?

She:            Now I see a man

He:            (Spoken)  Wrong again!

            (Sung)  You are hopeless

            I too am an image

            A phantom of the night

She:            What do you want?

He:            To throw light on a mystery

She:            Light creates shadow

Illusion is its child

            (Looking into the cards)  A dying red ember in a bowl of darkness

He:             (He looks over her shoulder)  What do you see?

She:             First you must confess.

He:             There is nothing.

She:            Confess!

He::             (thinks a moment)  In my home

            Not one thought remains

            I am naked

            Before I undress

She:             More.

He:             (Looks at Flute, who has moved near him)  I met a woman in a bar

            She had the eyes of a cat

            Her teeth were torn from a wounded fox

            Her scars screamed blasphemies

            I followed her into the night

            She leaned against a tree

And wept like a lion in church

The flesh is weak.

Wash it away!

            Now, what do you see?!

She:            (laughs at his pretension as she repeats his words)  The flesh is weak

He:            (Spoken softly.  He kneels before her at her table)  Tell me what you see.

She:            Rubies drip from a blue cloak           

While a tongue is numbed by ice

            No more

He:            What do you see?

She:            No more!

He:            Say it!

She:            (She stands, looms over him, he crawls away and she follows, towering over him)

A locked door

            Lonely thirst

            A blade of steel

            Hidden in a block of ice

            Numbing cold

            Painless, a tongue is shredded

            The taste of blood excites flesh-lust

            Ribbons of scarlet

            Cascade from an unbelieving mouth

He:            I don’t understand

She:            (Laughs long)

He:            (Looking out)  Again

Blackout

           

SCENE III

He is down stage, throwing cards into a hat in utter and lost boredom.  She moves around an altar up-center.  It has a candle and a wolf’s head with an open maw.

She:            No icons

No alters that rage

Only brilliant shadows

Across a landscape of holy need

He:            (Spoken)  She wore a silver amulet

            In the shadows below her neck.

He:            (Moans)  The torment

When she bent forward

            I ran my tongue over her body

Tracing unknown letters on her breast

He:            First it was dry

Caught and dragged across her skin

Then pink streaks appeared

In a moist trail.

She:            I melted with each pass of his tongue.

She:            (leans toward him and laughs sensually deep in her throat)

No icons

No altars that rage

Only brilliant shadows

Across a landscape of holy need

She:            A noise at the door.

He:            It’s nothing

            A messenger who never arrives

She:            We embraced

            In a fury of snaps and snarls

He:            It’s only natural

            It’s only…

He:            A yelp

A bellow

A howling

She:            A yelp

A bellow

A howling

He:            I bite a bellow

A howling

I am natural

I bite nature on the thigh

She:            Midwives revolt

Infants give

Midwives revolt

Infants give birth in the

He:            Revolt

Infants give birth in the sunlight

And are sunlight

And are dragged beneath the revolt

She:            Infants give birth in the sunlight

And are dragged beneath the sky

He:            By red sunlight

And are dragged beneath the sky

She:            By red veils

He:            Coyotes crawl from their turbans

She:            Coyotes crawl from their holes

He:            And are dragged beneath the sky

By a red snare

She:            Coyotes crawl from their holes

He:            And erupt in their holes

She:            And erupt in support

He:            Another yelp at being holes

She:            And erupt in support

He:            Another yelp at being reborn

Both:            With a broom to dust off

The yelp at being reborn

With a broom to dust off the moon

And howl again at the moon

And howl again at something beyond

They sing together wordlessly, in the new language.  The music that finally fades up and away like the howls they described.  Then, an uncomfortable silence.

He:            (Looking out)  Again…

Slow fadeout