THE ART SPIRIT

Have I abandoned the quest?

Such an interval of silence...such an extended absence...

Disappearing into the shadows of my beginnings...  struggling to comprehend the clearing ahead that slowly comes into view. That was how this Blog began a little more than 15 years ago. But at that time, I was exploring the frontiers of my experience and thinking... using Time to attempt to capture a qualitative moment in Time.

It's true that I have diverted much of my digital musings to FaceBook for the past two years.  The remnants of my posting are poems, text, images and video. But while to some degree this has been a creative shaping of materials, FACEBOOK is not a medium for engaging in deep process. Even the name "FaceBook" indicates we are only looking at appearances... our images in a mirror. Regrettably I have many IMPACT FACEBOOK group pages that I meant to extract to document a time capturing of group creative collaboration and process and preserving that Time AS Time.

But even as I fell away from this digital domain, I continued my romance with Time in poems, songs, and meanderings through the creative activity of everyone around me.

I have been busy in a private domain of handwritten inquiries...penning my way through blank pages in search of ideas... a quest for discovery that has always marked my inner itinerary. My blank books have been forming diversions that fuel the imagination... a lived research that penetrates and unravels moments of immediacy into an awareness of Being, an understanding of phenomena that have often gone unnoticed. In fact, one of the manuscripts is about NOTICING. On my final years at NYU, I tried to challenge students in our experimental class EXPANDED MUSIC to actively notice the content of their experience. After all, isn't that what poets do? They draw attention to their unique noticing of their world, and share their particular experience so the reader can, in some measure, connect with their awareness of the moment. These blank books invite engaging the moment in such a way that Time is concretized and the luster of experience can take on an aura of permanence. Time is connected to text, and text takes on the qualities of "fossils" of experience. Recently my colleagues have described certain phenomena of consciousness as Qualia.

I haven't had a name for my process, but pursuing Qualia seems to be an apt description of what seems to be happening... or at least it's getting close. I carry these blank books with me and pursue the contents of my conscious awareness. I started this as a green blank book for writing poems when I was eighteen. And then the pursuit became more widespread as I got to New York City and sought out the coffee houses where others had gone to write.

I recently visited of Madrid, and found so many coffee houses and bars devoted to those in pursuit of the written word. Here is my focusing Time and the written word to get at my qualia of Madrid:

Madrid is more than magical. It is designed around squares such as Santa Anna and Sol. They have identified Absolute Zero, the center of Spain, and the point where all roads in Spain converge. One can feel the sense of geometry when walking the narrow, cobblestone streets that honor the past while hosting pedestrians strolling in search of adventure. Being there in December, there were grey days and marvelous sunny days. I was to surprise there was a Madrid Broadway with shows such as the LION KING and WEST SIDE STORY are long running hits. I would have liked more time to explore.

I believe on SOL Square, APPLE has acquired a classic, venerable building to host Madridians... it was chic in this setting, and walking in, I might have been in APPLE SOHO except the chatter was all Spanish. Spanish is spoken in a kind of staccato, crisp and somewhat anguished or hurried... or maybe “intense” is a better description. At night, flames from warmers at outdoor cafes and counters cast a warm and cozy glow in the squares and along the streets...romantic and practical.

Nothing will deter Madridians from the night. Its citizens live for the night with such abundant social and artistic pursuits that you can feel the shift in energy the moment the sun disappears.

There were so many European style cafes and bars that beckoned for your presence to hang out... maybe write a poem or use the setting to begin a story. I felt Madrid was a city for poets, writers, and musicians.

I lingered in the streets which were decorated with the most elegant graffiti.... sensitive and provocative... sensual textures applied to wood and stone... creatures born of the night of the imagination and etched into the soul of the city.

Madrid calls itself MAD. Indeed, this madness stems from the night, and for me madness is the essence of each new adventure. At night in Madrid you can feel everyone reaching out to each other looking for something to validate their true existence. Laughter and animated conversations tattoo the Squares and streets with such a vibrant polyphonic tapestry that I find myself adding my own contrapuntal improvisations... that’s it! ...it is a city to improvise the destinies of future moments... a place to notice who you are, and to divert directions to paths not yet travelled.

But the energy behind this quest came from my first mentor, Gene Hemmle, who was the founder of the Music School at Texas Tech, whom we all knew affectionately as "Doc."  He had a brilliant career in New York City as a dancer and singer on Broadway, and as a founding member of the Robert Shaw Chorale. He was invited by this emerging new University, Texas Tech to come to create a music department that quickly grew into a school. Although I had my eyes on Julliard, Doc convinced me to give Texas Tech a try. As a promotion, he had used the students of his new department to stage a stunning musical revue that toured Texas as a vehicle to recreate new students. It was like a Broadway production.

The show played in my hometown, Amarillo, and Doc Hemmle had invited me backstage after the show. As I saw him backstage, he put his arm around me and said "Johnny... you don't want to go to Julliard... you'll be there with thousands of students and no one will really know who you are... but come to Tech and you'll compose for the ensembles, you'll write and stage your shows... "  and after seeing the show he had just produced, I was hooked... and what followed were some of the most productive years of my career. What a laboratory for creating and performing!

One day, I walked into the lobby of the music building and I saw Doc Hemmle reading a book titled The Art Spirit.  He looked up from the book and saw me. "Have you read this?" He held up the book so I could see, and I said I hadn't read it. He closed the book and handed it to me.

"Here take it... it's yours." He continued, "You may think it's about painting... but it is just as much about music." Just like that. Doc Hemmle opened worlds for me. Many times he would be reading, and if I hadn't read the book... he would just hand it to me...even though it often contained his marginal notes and underlinings. I remember getting Stravinsky's Poetics of Music in the same manner.

In my years at NYU, I often would give books to students, as a tribute to honor how Doc's sharing of books (that meant a lot to him) deeply affected my life.

Then when I revived the EXPANDED MUSIC course that had been the first course I taught in 1960 when I began teaching at NYU, I decided I would continue Doc Hemmle's tradition by giving the text for the class, FREE PLAY by Stephen Nachmanovitch, as a gift to the students.  In addition, each student received a different book of poetry that I would pick up from the Poetry Bin at Mercer Street Books.

Each Expanded Music class explored improvisation and collaboration and posted their discoveries and exchanges on FaceBook. So each semester had a different posting. This process was dynamic and inspiring, as Facebook became a dynamic unfolding of a creative syllabus of ideas and experiences. But now I don't know how to extract that richness... or if it even still exists.

In the final year of Expanded Music, during the production of BEING, we achieved a special level of creative collaboration. It was during this time that I began to perceive that the ART SPIRIT should become an award, for unique contributions to creative and collaborative process and activity.

Now, I am in the midst of developing a business devoted to Well Being and Collaborative Process in the Arts. I am hoping to establish the ART SPIRIT award as an activity of the Foundation, and as a tribute to the Spirit of artists like Doc Hemmle and Stephen Nacmanovitch who inspire and transform the quality of life and experience... contributing to the QUALIA within our conscious awareness... celebrating how Qualia is a transformative presence that we share with the world.