What an aimlessly self-indulgent load. We'll try again tomorrow.
As we near 4,000 footnotes on our implicit theory of everything, perhaps it’s an appropriate time to reassess and determine if we’ve gotten any closer to it.
I suppose this is like asking a musician at the end of his career, How did it go? Did you get any closer to Music? "Yeah, there was this one time in Vancouver when the band almost touched it, but then we fell back down to the bandstand."
A reminder of Theolonious Monk’s 25 tips for musicians, for example, #10 Let’s lift the band stand!!, #15 What you don’t play can be more important than what you do, #17 A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination, and #24 A genius is the one most like himself.
But the real answer is that the reaching is the playing (and vice versa), at least for a genuine artist who is most like himself, as opposed to the mere entertainer who is like most anyone else.
That may sound trite, but it’s weirder than you might think, because a musician will know when he’s reached the goal, but how? It’s not a matter of mere execution or avoiding mistakes. Rather, some sort of meeting takes place in the vertical space where music is created and perceived.
It reminds me of something Schuon says, that beauty is an adequation. Obviously, this is antithetical to the postmodern view that it is solely a matter of subjectivity, opinion, and taste. In fact, there can be no such thing as good or bad taste, in case you were wondering about our culture’s unending celebration of tastelessness.
I’m also reminded of Keith Jarrett, who can be a bit pretentious, but then again, he’s earned it. He says the master musician
goes onto the stage hoping to have a rendezvous with music. He knows the music is there (it always is), but this meeting depends not only on knowledge but openness.
There's no doubt that it's a spiritual practice, but you can't find what you're not looking for:
It [music] must be let in, recognized, and revealed to the listener, the first of whom is the musician himself.
The structure -- the basic form of the composition -- only
provides a layer of substance above or beyond which the player intends to go. It's also possible to do this by going deeper into the material.
While looking for that quote I also found this from an old post on the African Orthodox Church of St. John Coltrane:
Our primary mission at the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church is to bring souls to Christ; to know sound as the preexisting wisdom of God, and to understand the divine nature of our patron saint in terms of his ascension as a high soul into one-ness with God through sound. In our praises we too seek such a relationship with God. We have come to understand John Coltrane in terms of his sound and as sound in meditative union with God.
No doubt wacky, but it sure beats the Church of Ghostface Killah.
Everything is in reality like a play of alternations between what is determined in advance -- starting from principles -- and what is incalculable and in some way unforeseeable (syncopation mine).
For "principles" substitute chordal structure, and for "incalculable and unforeseeable" say improvisation, AKA spontaneous composition, and here we are: jazz blogging. Except I'm not a credentialed philosopher, a trained theologian, or a certified writer. Well what is this then? Punk metaphysics?
Hmm. Not bad. At least in the early stage of punk, when it was all about heart and simplicity, not rebellion and fashion. Which only lasted about six months.
However, that combination of love and simplicity is always at work somewhere in the musical world. It motivates the whole genre of garage rock, the ranks of which are filled with basically untalented groups that could nevertheless record one perfect tune, but never expand it into a whole career.
These primitive peoples played with a naive enthusiasm. But as Schuon says,
If to be naïve is to be direct and spontaneous, to know nothing of dissimulation and subterfuge and also no doubt nothing of certain experiences, then unmodernized peoples certainly possess -- or possessed -- that kind of naïvety...
Moreover,
there is naïvety everywhere and there always has been, and man cannot escape from it, unless he can surpass his humanity….
[What matters is] the fact that the sage or the saint has an inward access to concrete Truth; the most unpretentious formulation -- doubtless the most “childish” in some people’s eyes -- can be the threshold of a Knowledge as complete and profound as knowledge can be.
If the Bible is naïve, it is an honor to be naïve. If the philosophies that deny the Spirit are intelligent, there is no such thing as intelligence. A humble belief in a Paradise situated among the clouds has at least a background of inalienable Truth, but it has also and above all the background of a merciful reality in which is no deceit, and that is something beyond price.
I'll take three chords and the truth over mere virtuosity in 17/14 time.
28 comments:
In fact, there can be no such thing as good or bad taste, in case you were wondering about our culture’s unending celebration of tastelessness.
There's a phrase I see every now and then, when a sane person expresses disgust over an insane person's aesthetic or behavioral choices:
"Don't yuck my yum!"
As though having a preference for some amount of rat poison in your ice cream is a totally valid and acceptable life choice which should be offered just like chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry, with no warning about potential negative effects. Maybe even offered as the first choice, just to make sure everybody is, er, "encouraged" to give it a try.
Some notable quotes in regard to music, which seem appropriate"
"The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." Beethoven
"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf." Lippmann
"Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought." Munger
There's a book called Beethoven: His Spiritual Development that has a lot of similar quotes. It's more than a bit hagiographical, but I remember it making some good points.
It seems we face a wall of musical Dunning-Krugery, because you apparently need a Beethoven-like genius to appreciate Beethoven's genius.
Further consideration of Lippman's quip suggests that it would not necessarily be a truism for Beethoven.
I also recall someone once saying to me, and I paraphrase, that the more music, genres, one appreciates the closer they are to God.
And then there's the classic, "For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul's own speech., which brings to mind all the times music as praise is mentioned in the Scripture.
Give Nietzsche credit: "Without music, life would be a mistake."
Come to think of it, numerous references to music in my current read, From the Dust of the Earth. Music as such reveals something essential about the nature of reality.
For example, this: "there is a deeper structure that makes the adventure of biological life not utterly random but orderly, somewhat like jazz music, in which basic tunes are recognizable when played, buy always played with innovation and creativity..."
"Benedict's approach to evolutionary creation envisions a creator whose work is best described as a melody, symphony, play, or story."
In the beginning was the Word, but who is to say that word wasn't sung?
I'm reminded of Tolkien's version of the creation story, where it all began as music.
Music is a mysterious thing, because it presupposes an interior spatial and temporal -- or vertical and horizontal -- relation of the notes, to which animals have no access. On top of that, there is the purely aesthetic value, which can never be reduced to the notes. Monk also said "The inside of the tune is the part that makes the outside sound good," which reminds me of a Sinatra or Van Morrison, who do indeed get "inside" the song. Who knows how it happens, I only know it happens.
It's kind of what distinguishes good from bad phrasing. Singers with poor phrasing can only sing from the outside. They throw in all sorts of technique, but that only makes the Fail more evident.
Same with guitarists who overplay to compensate for lack of artistry.
Not to mention writers whose prolixity can never compensate for the absence of ideas.
No post today because I have a cold. Best I can do is endorse this sentiment by Ratzinger:
"[T]he alternative materialism or a spiritually defined world view, chance or meaning, is presented to us today in the form of the question of whether one regards spirit and life in its ascending forms as an incidental mold on the surface of the material world (that is, of the category of existing things that do not understand themselves), or whether one regards spirit as the goal of the process and, conversely, matter as the prehistory of the spirit.
"If one chooses the second alternative, it is clear that spirit is not a random product of material developments, but rather that matter signifies a moment in the history of spirit. This, however, is just another way of saying that spirit is created and not the mere product of development, even though it comes to light by way of development.
"Every human being is more than the product of inherited traits and environment; no one results exclusively from calculable this-worldly factors; the mystery of creation looms over every one of us. This would then lead to the insight that spirit does not enter the picture as something foreign, as a second substance in addition to matter; the appearance of spirit, according to the previous discussion, means rather that an advancing movement arrives at the goal that has been set for it."
[AKA the Great Attractor, Point OMega, Celestial Central, the Cosmic Telovator, etc.]
If that's the case, this must be purgatory.
Or maybe purgatory, illuminatory, sanctifatory, and unionory.
Also metanoiatory, i.e., vertical step one.
Ratzinger may have been a complex man-spirit, but I do know that he grew old waiting for Trump to come and visit.
So how many votes til you get to the center of a speaker pop? I went to Gateway Pundit to find out. Their answer: F$%& McCarthy, we want Trump. Now don’t we all want endless speeches about MAGA, stolen elections, far left conspiracies, tax returns and Qanon?
Personally, I’d rather congress build the wall and lock her up already. But where's the fun in that?
Dupree - indeed.
Bob, I hope you feel better soon. Most of the people I know are just getting mild colds, but a few are getting the horrible bronchitis that lingers for weeks (Vanderleun being a prime example, but I know of two others personally). Vitamin D, zinc, and a zinc ionophore are your friends, especially if it seems like it's lingering.
Been meaning to ask, how is Mrs. G doing?
Hi Julie, thanks for asking. I'm feeling good enough to get impatient that I am not 100% yet. I'm pretty excited that I'm the healthiest one in the family today, though! (Tristan has a virus.)
Yikes! I hope you stay well, and continue to heal with no troubles :)
I'm almost surprised we don't have a house full of sick people this week. We had something start the week before Christmas, but mercifully it never got a foothold. I kept telling the kids thy were allowed to get sick after that, but so far they haven't taken me up on it :)
Gagdad, take Julie's advice, and get over that cold. Pleased to see the missus is improving, too. Impatience with progress is a good sign, for her, I'd say.
The only trick for me is that when you're sick, the liver wants to help out by dumping glucose into the bloodstream, so I need to take like 4X as much insulin. I guess the liver is like a liberal: STOP HELPING ME!
I wondered about that; crazy! I know being sick can influence all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, but never would have guessed the liver could dump so much glucose.
Also, I woke up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night due to fever, and distracted myself by listening to a box set of Dylan's overtly Christian period, which is surreal enough without the fever. I don't even know if I like it, but I do appreciate the weirdness. It's a bit like entering the psyche of an old-school preacher or prophet.
Let us consult the Japanese, because it must be extra-surreal for them too (I think I already posted some of this):
The DVD has subtitles in the sermon part, but it's natural to have Japanese subtitles, but there are French and Spanish subtitles, but there are no English subtitles!... Orz
Well, it's a Pax Americana logic like “What are you talking in English with English subtitles?”, but it's a bit of a shame.
When you first listen through, it's a little too much, isn't it?, but after listening to it several times, I began to think, “Oh, this is not enough...”
Alongside Dylan around 65 and 66 years, there are some places that are too tired to argue with the singing voice, but I feel more familiar with the time of 79 to 81 years.
Dylan at this time was out of alcohol, so the singing voice was the best in Dylan's career.
I was numbed by Dylan's tense vocals singing these songs. But it was also annotated -- maybe it was a non-English speaking impression where Dylan's words did not come directly... there was anxiety that I finally cling to human reality and living -- I loved it)...
Dylan is still singing with the power of a great Tension and strength of confidence, the joy of getting a new expression like the “Like Rolling Stone” of that Dylan throws words into the sky with twitching...
The Lord your God is in your midst, the Mighty One will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. - Zechariah 3:17
True, but sleeplessness, fever, and a little xanax doesn't hurt.
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