Piano Sings from Silent Decades of Neglect (Part III)

 (Readers are encouraged to begin with Part I: 
http://wyzardways.blogspot.com/2014/01/piano-sings-from-silence-of-twenty.html

Months passed.

Subsequent tunings would align strings that had strayed slightly. This went on for several weeks as the piano tuning had be be done slowly when restoring to concert pitch and to also even out the strings that had been abandoned for so long.

When I  improvised at the keyboard, I found myself struggling with the inertia of my own neglect.  And somehow I my guilt and ineptness struck out at the piano for not performing as it had twenty years ago... it seemed slow and sluggish (or was that me?)

But as I searched to find my way over the keys beneath my fingers, the piano seemed to be replying "Where were you all this time? What you are asking me to do is unfair...  I haven't struck these hammers to the keys in so many years... do you think I can be instantly repaired as though those silent years never happened?"

It has not been an easy road to recovery for this wonderful piano that was such a wonderful friend and source of inspiration through its inimitable sonorities.

But the journey back may have been even more tortuous for myself. My encounters have been fitful with slight instances of breakthroughs when  truly new ideas erupt in a multitude of accidents that somehow assumed shape and substance. But do these musical ideas stick in the mind? In the past this was simply a process of sitting down with my friend, fingers poised on the keys... and the adventure resumed often from the previous endpoint.  Now I seem to be trying to rebuild pathways to the continuous improvisation and discovery.  In the past there was never a thought that this musicing would lead to anything outside itself.

Some have suggested I should record these transient episodes with this piano, as though that would serve to replace musical ideas when memory fails me. But this is a more organic process and such recording would never replace the texture and substance of thought and physical connection with my Steinway friend. We both have enormous chasms to bridge within ourselves. It may be true that the reconstruction required may beyond my reach and the rich of my friend who exists only to map the sonorities in exquisite detail in the expectancy of Time unfolding.

And yet there have been such wonderful moments of sonority that touches and resonates somewhere is the deep recesses of consciousness, lingering on the brink of that vast inner domain we call the unconscious.  But the unconscious mind is just a construction, an invention to explain the ineffable domain that we are constantly surfing and mining.

But my Steinway seems to be forgiving me... its resonances coaxing me in new directions. It is a new process and new era.

Piano Sings from Silent Decades of Neglect (Part II)

After meeting with the synthesist who was also now a piano technician, I was alone with the piano in the apartment. It was the first time I had really acknowledged its presence as a piano in years. I wasn't sure if it still had a voice. I also wasn't sure of my feelings... I knew my skills had disappeared and I had some need for spiritual and physical repair.

But there were all kinds of materials on top of the piano, a sculpture called the "Trio" that my mother had given me when I first moved into the apartment, some books, some piles of unopened mail, a pitch pipe, some posters of Dinu Ghezzo, and a candle. I realized I needed to make preparations, so I found a permanent new home for the sculpture and removed all the other paraphernalia.

And I waited...

The tuner came at the agreed time. He put his coat on the couch and looked at the piano, acknowledging his perception of an important instrument that commanded respect. He went to the piano and lifted the keyboard cover and played some notes... hopelessly out of tune. He winced. He tried to lift the piano lid to get at the strings, but it was a missing a pin for the hinge, so we had to use a nail to hold the lid in position.

The tuner used his tuning fork and started to work from the bottom register. I left the room. I knew the tuner needed some space, and I knew that the sounds coming from the piano were painful stretchings... raw and occasional tonal groans that seemed to come from a crippled deformity of sound...

I was gone for some time... and when I came into the room, he looked at me and smiled... "last note." He sat down and started to play a few excerpts... the piano responded, and at times began to ring...

"The tuning is already slipping a little." he said.

I asked about the action.

"Yes, it is a little stiff. But some of that will work out as you play it."

This statement stunned me a bit. It never occurred to me I would have to play the piano. I just had envisioned he would restore the piano and it would be there then for guests and visitors to play. I didn't think that I would be involved.

"I will be back to do another tuning., " he assured me. Next time I will take the action out and explore what we need to do to." He then left.

I was alone with the piano.  The piano stood there, lid raised, waiting...

(to be continued)  See Part I in earlier posting

Piano Sings from Silent Decades of Neglect (Part I)

For now, suspend your disbelief. Suspend your judgment. Suspend your insistence to understand the reason for excessive neglect of such a sensitive persona that had been a life-long companion in several incarnations and was discarded twenty years in response to a different necessity and condition for existence. Two decades ago in a fit of despair, this brilliant instrument of imagination that had served without fail for generations, seeing me through from boyhood to maturity was abused by rejection and neglect---not as a deliberate callous act, but due to circumstances that could have no other outcome.
I was caught in a vortex of contradictions, and as conditions changed when this instrument could be embraced and nurtured, I was was too battered and traumatized to make any gesture of reconciliation.

You wonder how these things begin. How does breaking away from relationships reach such an impasse that there is no way back, no way to repair the damage? Time passes and you forget. You forget all of the tiny pleasures that created such a bond with another...moments creating memories, and memories becoming the substance of who we are and who we are becoming.

And yet I can see vividly how this perfect storm of events that led to conditions of reconcialiation literally exploded in my life on a Saturday afternoon. It was monumental. I arranged to meet a dear friend I had not seen for six months who was under siege in all aspects of health and spirit ... She came into Zuni, radiant, like light filling the dark corners of despair that grew out of the abrupt schism of my life.... And we had such a great inquiry into what could be possible trajectories for future work... And then we connected through a suddenness of need with another friend from whom she had been estranged ...  A few hours later, fresh from this reconciliation, I saw one of the greatest films of my life... Le Grande Bellezza... As though it had been created to reconcile me to life at this precise moment as I recover from a damaged perception... A lost soul wandering empty... alienated from those who had once sustained and nourished me.

I was transformed, renewed and reborn.... And then I stopped at the Mercer Street Bookstore and was drawn directly to a book of poems by Lucas Hunt,  Light on the Concrete, an edition that was signed by the poet... With poems that spoke directly to me ... I might have written them...the first poem was about reconciliation:

          Together at Last
We see the world with shadows all around
and rage to be more alive in the light
of love, thus our hearts, as nimble as  deer,
Pause before leaping the highest fence.

The next morning I had brunch with a former student who is a craftsman and whose passion is making music with analog synthesizers.... I had not seen him for six years, but he came tumbling into my life almost unexpectedly and I could feel the magnetism that aligned us at this particular time.

He was a person that worked with meticulous precision with his synthesizers, at one time having an enormous collection of electronic instruments. Recently he had turned his artistic craftsman skills to piano tuning with an aim not only to tune but to restore.... and as we talked I suddenly knew that I had found someone I could trust to reconcile me with a past that had bruised my sensibility and awareness and cut me off from my expressive companion.

He described how years of tuning oscillators had sharpened his ear so that tuning the piano strings fell into place. As we finished brunch, I told him that I had a piano sitting in my apartment that had not been touched for 20 years. I tried to explain why the piano had been so neglected... but the story is so personal and painful, I could only explain that circumstances in my life and situation conspired in such a way that the piano was blocked from my consciousness. The piano had been my constant connection to the exploration of sound and ideas.  My obsession on the keyboard was to improvise for hours at a time... and the sonority of this piano gave so much feedback to me that original ideas erupted abundantly expressive, powerful, a spontaneous communion as a musical interrogation, uncovering such exquisite constellations of musical ideas.

"I have no idea what you will find," I said, "if you were to take on the project of nursing this instrument back to performance... I am sure it may take four or five tunings, if the pin board will hold. The action will need detailed attention. It is an instrument that was once so proud and now through this neglect is a mere shadow of itself."

I paused.

"Is this something you would be interested in?  Would you like to come and at least take a look and assess the challenge?" I sensed in him a compassion and commitment to quality, the kind of quality manifest in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In fact I discerned in him the kind of artist mechanic that would be needed for an adventure like this. If he was focused and sincere, he could begin the process of reconciliation that I so desperately needed.

These events led to my increasing awareness of the healing energy that was forming the essence of this new experience, of renewal of friendships, of renewal of commitments, of a creative renaissance flowing from these interactions. I began to see how connecting again with my friends, the experience of the film, the discovery of the poem, and the serendipitous background leading to new skills in this gifted young synthesist had converged into a pivotal moment that  could change my life.

He agreed to give it a try and made an appointment to come visit the piano the next day.

A Broken Thread: Long Live the Gate Keeper

David  W. Ecker, Artist,  Philosopher,  Educator

The last day of 2013 was the passing of an era, almost unnoticed, as all the players have moved on in spite of our indebtedness to our mentor and pioneer in the quality of life: David W. Ecker. And yet this quiet giant of phenomenological inquiry who taught us all how to see, how to listen, how to write, how to teach, how to be... has passed from this earth, a true broken thread  to the past.  Even though I had a doctoral degree and was newly arrived at New York University, my colleague David Ecker began my real education about art as experience and the basis for understanding our experience of life. He has always been my mentor and my catalyst.

I was mystified that since his passing on December 31, more than two weeks ago, almost no one was honoring his presence and his passing through any public sharing. PLEXUS, an International community-based art experience over which Ecker had significant influence and experience, appeared not to have noticed he's missing among us. I was hoping to read some tribute from PLEXUS since Dr. Sandro Dernini, who is the heart and spirit of PLEXUS, was one of Dr. Ecker's greatest allies and collaborators. I am delighted that now the PLEXUS FaceBook site is posting images and celebrating the work of this man who was both an elegant scholar and an articulate maker of art and events.

And the website ISALTA that sprung from the genius of his ideas and conception has become so dormant that there is no memorial tribute... as though everyone believed the dream died long ago. In fact, the web address ISALTA has become the index page to the activity and interests of Dr. Carleton Palmer who was David Ecker's protégé . Admittedly, ISALTA as a website exists only through the efforts and perseverance of Dr. Palmer. But it has been a source of concern that when I give the ISALTA web address to friends and colleagues who have been excited about the philosophy underlying ISALTA, there is nothing of ISALTA at that address.

I am encouraged by some communication from Dr. Dernini in which there are plans to dedicate future projects to David Ecker, and I anticipate his passing becomes the opportunity to honor him in the process of text, and the creation of works that his leadership has encouraged and inspired.

I call David Ecker the Gate Keeper because it was the vigilance of his vivid consciousness that kept our efforts true and honest to the integrity of pure inquiry as the nature of experience. He was such a splendid advocate for phenomenology, because it was central to all that guided his actions and interactions. When people first met David, they expected him to explain "Phenomenology".  He always refused, but not directly. He would just smile and proceed to have us learn through engaging in inquiry and description of specific encounters with works of art. He taught by example much more than by lecture. Sitting in on his "experiments" was always such a revealing process because he helped us uncover our direct perceptions, edit out the garbage, and emerge with a deeper sense of our experience.

Breaching the Abyss

You broke your long silence just as I  found myself in the trenches of the Abyss. The Abyss is fundamental to human experience. In some ways the Abyss exists as our terror of nothingness.

I have passed through an autumn of despair always on the brink of the Abyss ... celebrated the full moon at Autumn Solstice, and I did look at that beautiful moon and thought of all my friends around the world... I thought of you and wondered how your transition to a new life was going. I thought of those beautiful souls that brought this celebration into my life...and how this solstice moon changed my perception of the world,

My Abyss is filled with the cacophony of silence...  a troubling rift  in the soundscape, filled with the energy of the sounding presence about to happen... a silence that spins sound into being....

I have passed through a really difficult time that I will never understand and now find myself in a world that somehow seems strangely alien. 

What sense can I make of this stage of my experience... everything that had started four years ago suddenly tumbled down and out of my life...

So I am in a new place...  now going through radical changes in my consciousness... I step into new terrain where I don't recognize things that should be familiar...

I know there are intense energies changing the universe and penetrating my reality, and I am watching with a certain wonder and hoping that somehow I will find the language that will reveal some meaning of the riddle of the Abyss that has always haunted me...

The opera I had started for Second Avenue broke apart like brittle clay, but there were lovely clusters of music resonating as though somehow they might assemble into something even more poignant and compelling...  for it has always been the music that has sustained and inspired me, no matter what the faces and the spirits that surround me and invade my soul...

And the occasion of breaking your silence has reached across the world and awakened a moment in me, igniting a passion that clings to life and living, to beauty, truth, and wonder... you are such a splendid catalyst...

I suddenly wish I could bring us all together to celebrate the magnificent splendor of who we are... connected, but unconnected, in a universe that shimmers like the solstice moon disappearing over the rim of a hill... breaching the Abyss in the recognition that what we have created together endures and continues to resonate.

Tales from the Abyss

It's difficult to pinpoint this process of awareness that comes in like ocean tides, waves sweeping in and covering me and then receding and leaving me exposed and raw as I understand that for a moment I couldn't breathe, and I was gasping for air. Then suddenly there is a flash of consciousness, and I become aware of thoughts and ideas that were uncovered as though the sand of the beach was swept away and what was left was a kernel of truth.

It is even harder to understand that this is a fundamental flashback to points of discovery and to moments when I committed myself to believing in impossible dreams. I was also embedded in despair of a world I thought was dissolving out from under me, and there was no more reason to continue in any direction because everything was quicksand.

So into this abyss came the Trio, or perhaps my invention of the Trio was my hope that such vision for beauty and truth could be shared and become the reality of its potential. So when I asked my friends if we might adventure together for a time, it was an innocent and naive assumption that such a fusion of purpose was possible and desirable.

What followed was indeed adventure and deception. 

The Year That Was....

I am not sure what should be written in this space as I know I am entering a time of existence that is not shared by everyone. I know that I have been through the worst of years and in some ways, I am passing through the best of years.

2013 has been a a bewilderment. It has had my best moments, and it contains my greatest disappointment and despair.  I have come to appreciate how we define each other, and how the relationships we pursue transcend the ways that we survive the day to day challenges that create the continuity of our awareness. Perhaps our greatest focus is the one that forms our survival through the creation of partnerships through which we create families and populate the world. For most of us that is the ultimate focus, but I suspect there is a new time ahead in the adventure of cosmic awareness. We are on the verge of discovering ways of being that extend far beyond the notion of survival.

I am sensing a different level of exchange among those I have been fortunate enough to meet and follow their adventures.

It is true that we never really repeat anything. But we often miss the immediacy of what is happening, and the moments that pass endure as a reality we cannot really grasp because we are not equipped to enjoy the scale that forever requires.

I find that my love for all who occupy my world has deepened, and my perception of the meaning each has brought to me continues to expand to connect the past with the relentless surge of Now.

Such feeling is too intense... Too combustible, too demanding... And so I must retreat... Or be consumed by the very passion that inspires us to be the best that we can be.

This passion is the life force of us all... Until now I have been reluctant to acknowledge its power in my life and have hesitated to embrace its manifestation. I have allowed illusions to distract me, and fear to paralyze me from the true freedom of being. So as I try to understand this extraordinary balance of past, present, and future, I know that I am on the verge of creating many new ideas and works that have been brewing for decades...

This was the year that was astonishing as it surprised me through dismantling all that I thought was fixed and established, and revealed that my greatest challenges are waiting somewhere ahead...

I actually don't know if I will survive the provocations exploding all around me. I don't know if I can endure such profound beauty of awareness.

A Story That Could Be Short...

How strange,  as I approach what is described as my golden years, that I should be shook to the foundations of my feelings and emotions… As though I were a teenager overcome by emotions and fainting on the stairs.

Feeling closer to so many people... More than at any other time of my life... Feeling the joy of knowing them and being witness to the greatness that resides in each and everyone of them...

And in such deep and deftly etched feelings,  I face a dilemma that is unsolvable and also simple... So vividly simple...  in the midst of such turmoil, I touch the fabric of such joy... The joy of having known and shared so deeply --- without the slightest caution or reserve... Only to find the appearances of illusions that mock the simplicity of trust and all that was created… Yet I would not give one moment back to gain peace of mind… I am brimming over with ideas… all stemming from the inspiration begun within the majesty of such devastating beauty that comes from the source of being… of who we really are… it was not a mirage of mental fabrication… we were tangible… we were real… we were the elegance of pure connection… we were friends...

We were the innocence of trust. But maybe such innocence was my diversion. Yet, something came from  nothing... something emerged in the world that had not been there before...  it is still there, illuminated and pure, but distant, as though I have somehow wandered to new and foreign regions.

I love all that has been these final years... My awakening... My renaissance... The new work ... The incredible surge of energy that illuminates these moments....and those who have inspired and sustained me, and those friends that bonded in a moment of time... ah, but Time is so fragile... The only time machine is memory, and memories fade...

Now I feel the simultaneous loss and gain that Time brings to this moment... Yes, it is all over... Yes, it is all beginning...

It all began when the afternoon sunlight of Spring poured through the window and left me dazzled...

Embodying The World

Since I was about nine years old I have regarded consciousness as a medium for being the world and connecting to beingness and timelessness through imagination which then presences the world as emerging reality… but reality is not just isness, it is the continual becomingness…

Sorry to enlarge the words… but being and time have become so value laden that I was trying to imbue them with an urgency of NOW, but not doing it very well…

We often think of ourselves as being in the world, enveloped by the awesomeness of the planet we inhabit as well as the universe that earth inhabits. But perhaps the reality is that this is all consciousness,and it is more inside us than we are inside of anything.

Embodiment has been my way of integrating technology and the human form... my creative experiences all have sought this integration. My creative work has been about embodying technology for discovery and extending our expressive range. Through this awareness of embodiment,  the things we do take on sharper meaning, and the reason for connecting and creating becomes more focused and more purposeful.

Embodiment has been my experience since my earliest days of sports and dancing... the presencing of ourselves as the embodiment of being the world is central to understanding what the world is to us. The world inhabits us, we embody the world, and give shape, purpose, and continual unfolding of moments which is more like the flow and expansion of air that the ticking of a clock.

Consciousness is not something that exists inside a brain, it is the process of our being, creating from nothingness and evolving and changing reality. Consciousness is us embodying the world. It is not somewhere. It is everywhere, but not static and stationary... dynamic and the essence of creating and creation.

That is why everything about us is always about change.

A TEXTING MOMENT

The texting below was an exchange that took place just before midnight... Earlier I had been texting to another person and it started to go bad because the ideas were very complicated and misunderstandings started to erupt. So we decided to stop. Such negative Texting can be a source of tension and miscommunication. This can also happen in email exchanges. Having suffered through the extreme misunderstandings that can occur through cybertext, I know that such discrepancies are not trivial. Some have changed my life in ways that I wish I could take back. Once text has become an object occupying space and no longer an expression in time like conversation that vanishes into fleeting moments passing by, it can become a destructive force that gathers momentum.

But the text offered here was a spontaneous exchange. The imagery that was created in the moment will serve as a road map to the planned experience in the Greenwich Village restaurant known as Choga. LN is a noted and accomplished choreographer, multimedia artist, and educator.


Wizard: I was advised to take it slow in making changes...
This struck me as spectacularly wise.
Did I ever give you the book Science and Technology in the Arts 

LN: No.

Wizard: That big book in guest room...

LN: I looked through the book when I was there and wondered if I could get a copy.
Our legacy is in that book!

Wizard: But "taking it slow" seemed good because I thought I would be surrendering a property I have been working on for more than 50 years.
My Credo was multimedia...

LN: Yes, give yourself some time.

Wizard: Stewart Kranz was impressed and that was why I was in the book...
If you look, the images are like pictures from IMPACT...

LN: Yes! I want to teach a course and use that book!

Wizard: When I got to NYU, I had chance to implement ideas as curriculums and productions
That's why I'm Having so
Much fun with the new EXPANDED MUSIC

LN: Great! Wish we had planned for your course and mine to connect!

Wizard: NOW EXPANDING MUSIC INCLUDES THE SENSE OF TASTE AND IMPROV AT CHOGA
Let's see about next semester. I'm
Offering it again...  Will have so many students for Spring
I have a great cellist in my class.
He is from Turkey.
His mother makes cellos.

LN: Wow!!!

Wizard: He is playing her instrument...
He is so sensitive and musical

LN: Does be compose?

Wizard: We have terrific violinist ...
Cellist seems afraid to improvise and we are
Taking all of us there tomorrow on video.
We are officially having class in Choga.

LN: This is unbelievable. I just came from a meeting
with a very important person and I suggested we use a
music composition with violin, cello and flute!

Wizard: They now have multimedia.
Choga has three screens and good sound system

LN: You never cease to amaze me !

Wizard: We are linking movement to notation
Our dancer will be our notation...
We will play her as she moves...
We will use both physical and emotional space as the score.
LN: Are you actually going to notate (symbols on a page)?

Wizard: I wish I had that Korean Artist... But yes... we will ask some students to map it.
Thanks for reminding me to take materials!
The strategy of getting musicians aware of embodiment  has really worked...
Last week everyone choreographed each other...
Conceptually this has been growing with me
and that IMPACT student Connie who was interested in embodiment

LN: One of the basic techniques is learning how to open to using space

Wizard: Not sure what you mean
How to open using space

LN: If you take you arm out to the side, it has a certain extension.
But if you take your arm out with the intention of expanding to the length of the room
You fill more space
You take in an idea

Wizard: Interesting... We use similar analogy with the voice

LN: Let the body open to dimension

Awareness is everything

You can do all kinds of movement awareness exercises.  I make them up. Try this one :

Bring your chin to your chest
Now left your chin with no particular intention
Now bring your chin to chest again

This time think about throat opening
Revealing throat
Do you feel your throat more?

Wizard: Yes

LN: I'm not sure that came across

Wizard: And I could see or hear filling the open throat with sound

LN: If you bend your elbow,
Now think of opening at the joint
To straighten your arm,

Wizard: I forgot to mention that Choga has this big open
Space in front of bar... So it is like a stage... a place for embodiment...

LN: Embodiment is about intention

Wizard: Yes, I agree
But it is also about Beingness

LN: And Nothingness ..

Wizard: And Heidegger

LN: Sartre

Wizard:  I'm going to take this text and turn it into my blog