How Do You Keep The Music Playing?

How do you keep the music playing? Does the sound keep streaming from the silence, or must I be content with the silence in infinite repose? In the simplicity of this question, this haunting concern looms like a shadow over every moment. How does one keep the beauty flowing? How do you keep the love sustaining each moment? How do you hold on to those that you love? How do you clasp forever? How do you embrace those that define you and make you the music --- just as they are the decibels of my soul singing... Captured by this beauty, I languish in the anticipation of an empty silence.

Such is the source of my melancholy... wishing that I could stave off an inevitable void that threatens with such certainty. The only solace has been and is the music... music cuts through the fear and provides reassurance through the vibrations that our songs do and must continue. With no music playing there is no universe... no existence...

Music defines my identity... as long as the music is playing I live in the love and energy of such passionate resonance. I sing, I hear, I improvise: therefore I am. But this existence is in the symphony of sounds of all those that inhabit my life, my singing, the performance that is the music unfolding as the infinite presence of everyone, ---of you performing me... and me performing you...

Then I realize that you don't need to keep the music playing. The music plays itself, and in the playing it is the presencing of you and me in infinite convergence.

Mysterious Musician of Miracles

We sat silently enjoying the receding December afternoon as the shortest day of the year was fast approaching. Around us were countless paintings heavily influenced by the art of ancient natives of the Americas.

Our meeting was something of a quest, and the destination seemed cloaked in darkness and doubt. We sat in an intimate midtown dining room, virtually empty except for our presence. Although the location had seemed expedient and convenient, we began to discover that this restaurant Zuni was entwined with our exploration and quest, perhaps in its own a way a ritual for discovery.

Even silence seemed laced with meaning. The Zuni were a people deeply involved with Kokopelli, the flute player whose message was peace and prosperity. Kokopelli's melodies were the essence of mystery, the shaman of discovery, the soul of well being. During the meal, which was simple and elegant, we were flooded with the silence of Kokopelli's mystery. For me it was the sense that Kokopelli was with us and perhaps channelled through the person that sat across from me. Nothing was said about Kokopelli at that time, but the presence was unmistakable and palpable.

The destiny of the person across from me seemed linked to Kokopelli, and my understanding of this godlike messenger was transformed. As a shaman of fertility, the core of Kokopelli is the creative force. Kokopelli is the mystery of creation, the harbinger of the advancing reality, the passion of Time and Space erupting into the infinite abyss of Now. Kokopelli is reborn through each of us. We have only to listen. Music comes from the infinite silence, called into Being by Kokopelli. Now I understand why the opening of our first Internet2 performance reached across cyberspace and cybertime with the call of the flute from California, answered by the flute in New York as a new medium was born. Kokopelli was eloquently disclosed as the passion of our new creation. Now we are engaged in a similar mission of discovery where the new eludes us, just ahead, around and through the columns of Time, in the mystery of our undisclosed being.

Immediacy

Stumbling around the Internet last night, searching for new glimpses of the awareness of immediacy as a force in our experience, I came upon "The Immediacy of Rhetoric" by Steven Krause, a remarkable research document that the author describes as "nothing more than an odd and well-documented personal essay, a 'creative' work designed to help me (via the process of writing and the product that results) come to grips with and then to understand the quickness, the sheer and dramatic speed around me, the world's immediacy."

I have long regarded "writing as inquiry" as a means to discovery, the emergence of reality uncovered by the miracle of language. Dr. Krause has modeled this process, and I recommend his dissertation as an outstanding journey inhabited by insightful companions such as Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, and many more, including a final gesture to Laurie Anderson:

Ultimately, my goal with this exploration of immediacy as it applies to rhetorical situations has been about reconfiguring questions. As I suggested in the close of my introduction, the questions of immediacy are similar to the questions Laurie Anderson raises in her song "Same Time Tomorrow": "Is time long or is it wide?" I don't have an easy answer to that question or the questions of immediacy. But I hope that by asking these challenging questions about immediate rhetorical situations, I have exposed new possibilities for discourse.

Dr. Krause began this inquiry sometime during the 1990s and defended it in 1996 and presumably published it on the Web shortly thereafter and made some minor adjustments (although apparently not to the text) in 2002. Then it began its new habitation in Time and Space somewhat like an abandoned spaceship. There once was a links page, but that was eliminated in 2002 since the links so quickly lapsed and were out of date, disappearing into the blackhole of derelict websites begun so brightly full of hope, dissipating and disappearing in efforts requiring more resources than originally anticipated in sustaining such projects. Hopefully Dr. Krause will keep his site available, but I am reminded that nothing is forever, and I would invite you to explore his thinking sooner rather than later.

In addition to immediacy, Dr. Krause couples this inquiry with rhetoric, a discipline that has enjoyed a renaissance and has been a source of inspiration for me. Rhetoric's import for creating music and for interpreting works of art has been a source of discovery and speculation in working with a colleague who, while exploring phenomenology as providing insight into the process of making art, came upon the rhetorical terrain and began to mine its resources as a fruitful instrument of inquiry.

Prior to that, immediacy had occupied my thinking with regard to creative process. My inquiry was embodied in the creation itself rather than writing about it, although I have several unfinished manuscripts lying derelict somewhere in the dusty stacks of the past.

Within the well-mapped exploration that Dr. Krause has forged for us, we can sense a vital, creative energy that underlies his inquiry. In his dissertation he is tethered by the format and the process, although he manages to reveal the emergence of many portions of his text as acts of immediacy. Yet the form forces him away from the poetic vision that might reveal even more.

Applause and kudos to Steven Krause who is apparently a professor of English who willingly posted his inquiry for us to discover and embellish. One wonders if he has created new work since he may no longer be restrained within the formal protocols of institutional research. Despite the formal restraints on "The Immediacy of Rhetoric," a creative vision underlies his work. His inquiry exists as a model of creative inquiry and discovery where we learn more in the process than in the end result. It is this creative energy that needs to be brought to research, much like that of Christa Wolf's Cassandra, the embodiment of art emerging as creative research.

In the midst of my own creative efforts, I welcome the energy articulated in these ideas. To Krause, I am grateful for being reminded of the tremendous efficacy of languaging as inquiry, the reason I began these short blogging excursions in the first place.

With All Good Will

From New York City, anxiously awaiting some sign of snow, the only snow decorates my monitor with countless scenes of blizzards and blowing drifts as I post these good wishes on some server somewhere in Time and Space, awaiting your call.

Somehow Christmas has come. Once Christmas was my busiest time, filled with countless concerts and many months spent composing and arranging materials for festivals of song and merriment. Now, perhaps a few scores remain somewhere and no recordings because then I celebrated the temporality of such moments. Christmas emerged from the darkness of the future and disappeared into the density of the past, stacked in endless array. The joy was in the immediacy of the spontaneous presence of incandescent thoughts of intense beauty. In the passion of that moment was condensed all the goodness of our kind, where the only reality was the presencing of love and joy in the flow of forever. Somehow, however briefly, our kind have been able to comprehend that reality and cling to it in our most private reflection. Somehow we see the truth of ourselves all connected in the goodness of conscious presence. We have called it many things, including Christmas. It is a festival of lights and sounds to remind us of who we truly are.

And so, with all good will I rejoice in the truth of who you are, making me who I am, and I wish you the blessing of your true vision where that faint glimmer through the darkly glass erupts in the brightness of understanding, Truth, and Love. Somewhere we meet in this revelation, and now we are in the midst of such reveling in the mystery of ourselves.

Media and Me --- Media and We

Now that we are coming into the age where all experience is more or less mediated, I realize that the time ahead is the secret source of me. The idea of what constitutes media is actually changing even as I write. We think we know the media, but this is an illusion and the old notions of media are being redefined. Media are still about communication, but not in the old magazine and newspaper sense... not even in the old television and cinematic sense. Media is about community and represents the fracturing of the masses, a splintering into communes of interest --- not the communes of the Bolshevists which were designed to control masses, but the emergence of communication and consensus.

All that matters is that we are here, that we are part of the whole. I am concerned that this new media has a slight tinge of conformist pressure. This is necessary as part of a transition to a major shift in culture and civilization. We are experiencing this transition in every phase of human expression... all music sounds alike, all rap is the same, all websites are copies of each other, all films are knock-offs of each other, books are siphoned through word processors with cut and paste precision, and images are all photoshopped to death. Technology escalates imitation, but the creation of new masterworks materialize through emulation. In the newness of ourselves there is an immediacy, an awareness that our most profound knowledge is gained as something is happening rather than when it is completed.

Technology has empowered us with a new sensibility enabling us to move through materiality to a spiritual presencing. We experience this as a form of electricity sustaining a network emulating consciousness. With each advance, our material equipment is less cumbersome, smaller, more immediate. Connecting and sharing burgeons as the principle of Being. In the initial stages we rely on this not for the inherent spiritual power but for reassurance, a validation that we exist and that our existence matters and is confirmed by others. But this has already changed in a few of us.

Almost imperceptibly we are evolving as a new species. This is a major happening, and the advance sentinels of this new species are scattered among us. Like any emergence of a species, these modern individuals are few, but they are the advancement of all that we are becoming. We are the new media.

The Clatter of Pigeons

I usually pay no attention to pigeons. I have thought of them as fellow travelers, sharing this time and space ... quiet and usually unassuming, subtly retreating from my advance as I walk along a path or through the park.

But this evening as I walked, there was a flurry and clatter of wings on the air. The sound was overwhelming, and as I looked to my left, a horde of pigeons were swarming toward me at eye-level. It was sudden, an eruption that seemed explosive as these birds suddenly took flight and headed directly toward me as though on the attack.

I stood paralyzed by the sudden clatter and the sight of so many pigeons acting in unison. In an instant they were upon me. I couldn't help but recall the attack in Hitchcock's The Birds where the entire avian population sought revenge against our species. But that thought quickly disappeared as I tried to duck the onslaught of this sudden ambush.

At the last moment they swerved above my head and flew in formation toward the sky. As they swept by me, I felt the tremendous energy and power of their flight. I felt the wind of displaced air as they circled high and swooped downward. They were magnificent to watch, a whirlwind of wings revolving above me.

I glanced back at the spot from where they launched their invasion. A lone pigeon suddenly flew out of that obscure shady area. A straggler, I thought. There is always one that can't keep up with the pack.

But to my amazement this lone laggard flew to the head of the flock and took command, leading it to a new sanctuary. The mass fell into line behind the leader. I wondered if these pigeons had swarmed upon their leader's command, since their retreat seemed so controlled and orderly. Maybe this was just a friendly reminder that they had just as much right as I do to be here in this time and space.

As they disappeared, I felt my impressions of pigeons as fellow travelers in time and space was confirmed in this brief moment. I had seen evolution in action, an advanced protocol of a new species in the calculated control of the mob leader. I had also felt the tremendous power of the mass in its upward struggle for survival.

The Hemingway Solution

We are always in the midst of our own destruction. Last night I saw this so clearly, and now in the light of day the dark clarity of that moment is fading. Somehow I understand the fleeting, evanescent state of the human condition. Recognition that at some point we all die is an intellectual abstract that our consciousness cannot grasp since Being does not include Not Being.

Yet my human condition moves inevitably toward its own destruction. I struggle on a slippery slope and my optimistic intuition suggests that even though I will slip into oblivion, somehow the universe will rescue and preserve my awareness. It is this awareness that defines and makes the universe what it is. Without awareness, the universe is nothing.

Beneath my hope is that existential angst that drives me toward some control of my exit strategy---especially since my entry into the human condition was beyond my control (or so we surmise). I fully understand Hemingway's solution. Once there is no further hope, at least there is some integrity in controlling when to say Goodbye to All That. Yes, goodbye and good riddance if I am betrayed by my belief. Not that there is anything I can do about it anyway (or so I surmise).

Last night I lay in a stupor, having finished Young-Ha Kim's extraordinary book I Have The Right to Destroy Myself. Chi Young Kim's translation is riveting, but one can see beneath the words to the spiritual bedrock of the text, touch the mind of the author who has achieved a poetic level that helps me understand myself as an artist who is just passing by or passing through, if you will. I envy my Korean friends who read the text in its original Korean because I know that language is more cinematic than English. But to get back to last night. My existential dilemma was much clearer than now as I lay in a text-induced delirium with hallucinations defining my understanding. Kim begins his novel by describing Jacques-Louis David's famous painting, The Death of Marat. Marat lies, murdered, in his bath:

I have already tried to make a copy of this painting several times. The most difficult part is Marat's expression; he always comes out looking too sedate. In David's Marat, you can see neither the dejection of a young revolutionary in the wake of a sudden attack nor the relief of a man who has escaped life's suffering. His Marat is peaceful but pained, filled with hatred but also with understanding. Through a dead man's expression David manages to realize all of our conflicting innermost emotions. ...We should all emulate David. An artist's passion shouldn't create passion. An artist's supreme virtue is to be detached and cold.

I am transported to years earlier when I wrote an opera libretto that included a critic who shared this conviction of detachment as a virtue, the daemonic divorce of feeling and reason. I know that I am in for an adventure as this author is measured, always in control, always shrouded in mystery masquerading as clarity, a genius of misdirection. I am concerned that critics have described his work as perverse because that never occurred to me as I read his text.

Through this beginning Kim has set the tone for revealing a mystery. Perhaps the narrative is real, or perhaps this is the fiction of a writer who lurks calmly on the outskirts as the main character, but then recedes assuming all identities of the narrative. Are the characters in this book simply the novel the author is editing? The writer is the book. He is the wizard pulling the strings. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Yet, he is calm and unflustered --- detached.

I am anything but detached. In my state I am everyone in the book. Kim ends with The Death of Sardanapal by Delacroix. It is the death of the king's steeds, his concubines, all brightly lit as a delightful spectacle of murder and mayhem, while in the upper left corner you discover the detached figure of Sardanapal in the shadows. At first you might think he is watching an orgy, but on closer scrutiny you see the knives thrust deep, the writhing, dying women, Sardanapal presiding over the death of his kingdom and the fall of Babylon. His actions have taken him to his own demise. Now I begin and end in the utter detachment of death, just like the narrative structure.

The symmetry of Kim's narrative almost pulverizes me as I discover that it mirrors my own quest for literary and artistic symmetry. I find myself reeling in the vortex of passions unleashed but casually contained. There are the brothers at odds and quietly at war, each a polarity of each other. There is the writer editing his novel and servicing his "clients." These three men are balanced by three women, Judith, perhaps Klimt's Judith, and Mimi, the stunning artist whose explosive work challenges the premise of artmaking, and the woman from Hong Kong. Even as I write this, I know there is no stability, the terrain shifts even as I unravel the mystery. It becomes clear that Kim IS Sardanapal oddly detached as the reality he has constructed deconstructs, just as HE was Marat in the opening, calm and coolly dead, filled with hatred and understanding.

My own fantasies mix in and I understand why the novel is about self destruction...and my own disintegration continues like some subtext to this narrative. I see Hemingway nodding and smiling in approval in the confusion of my cluttered, unlighted room. I am worried that I am Sardanapal presiding over my own deconstruction. Everyone is me and I am them in a feverish delusion of dimensions where I disappear into the text, now streaming as an alternate reality...