2014/08/14

Tao Te Ching 14

Look!
   It's invisible.
Listen!
   … silence.
Reach out!
   … empty space.

Sense where these three enigmas converge
   and you there have the heart of the mystery.

The wise discern a contour in what is immaterial,
an invisible arc that spans the universe yet is never held by it –
a subliminal reality – like music borne on the wind,
fading as you seek to hold on to it.
   Follow and it disintegrates:
   Stand still and it moves on past you.

Learn the principle of cosmic energy flow [/Tao]
and time dissolves, revealing the power of the ancients to the present day.

Understand the principles of cosmic energy [/Tao Axiom]
and you see to the very dawn of the planet.

2014/08/13

Tao Te Ching 13

Fortune and misfortune destabilize us:
   yet we ourselves are the authors of our greatest misfortunes.

How so?
   Fortune excites us:
      misfortune depresses us.
   Gaining one
      makes us fear the other.
See?

Much misfortune arises from the ego preventing us seeing objectively.
Let its anxious posturings go
   and your misfortunes will fade away.

Learn to keep things in proportion
   and you can accept both fortune and misfortune with equanimity.

When you love yourself and others equally
   you can safely be entrusted with the very greatest gifts.

2014/08/12

Tao Te Ching 12

Hyperstimulation results in ennervation:
   Loudness leads to deafness:
Addiction to strong flavours corrupts taste.
   Cruel sports make one indifferent to suffering:
Obsessional acquisition results in ruthlessness.

The wise therefore become discriminating, centred,
and learn not to follow every impulse.


Today the sad news of Robin Williams' suicide was announced.
Parts of this seem like an epitaph.

2014/08/11

Tao Te Ching 1

This version is an interpretation of the words, rather than as a translation. I arrived at it by meditating on a literal translation, one chapter at a time, and allowing the meanings within the sometimes-perplexing baldness of the words to speak to me.


The cosmic energy flow [/Tao] we can comprehend
   is only a fraction of what pervades the entire universe.
Words can never capture the immensity of this force.
It is the well-spring of all created matter
   and governs the myriad forms it takes.

At its heart exists a duality
   where energy arises
   from desire and desirelessness
   perpetually encircling each other –
   one being perfect in thought,
   the other perfect in form.

This paradox holds the ultimate mystery of existence
   and is the lens to all that is holy.

2014/08/10

Tao Te Ching 2

If the world acknowledges beauty
   ugliness is also found.
If the world acknowledges goodness
   its shadow will be present.

The material and the immaterial revolve around each other:
   easy and hard are linked:
   long and short, high and low are inseparable:
   singer and melody interdependant:
   front and back, two sides of the same.

Therefore the wise study the underlying psycho-dynamic of events,
   consider people's motivations,
   and observe how things interact naturally.

When they initiate
  they do not seek to possess.
When they engage
   they do not claim ownership.

By not vaunting success
   jealousy is kept in check
and so their work endures.

2014/08/09

Tao Te Ching 3

If you glorify the successful
   it leads to conflict among the populace.
Do not assign value to rarety
   or you will encourage thieves.
Do not flaunt your possessions
   lest people become inflamed by greed.

Wise government
   satisfies hunger without inflating desire,
   encourages health but not acquisitiveness.

If the nation is founded on sincerity and social justice
   trouble-makers lacks a reason to foment unrest.

Act sincerely and all things are within your reach.

Tao Te Ching 4

The Tao is a void;
   when drawn on it is not depleted,
   so vast as to appear bottomless.

It blunts aggression,
   unravels knots,
   gives perspective,
   survives individual consciousness.

So nebulous
   it barely exists.
Without origin,
   it was present before humankind

2014/08/08

Tao Te Ching 5

Nature forms no judgment
   – it fears nothing.
The wise are without prejudice
   – nothing alarms them.

The space inside a bellows is empty
   yet it is inexhaustible.
The universe may seem a void
   yet is full of infinite riches.

Busy bodies often lose their way:
   the discreet need no instruction.

2014/08/07

Tao Te Ching 11

What is not
   may be as useful as what is.

A wheel is useless without an axle arch.
The size of a pot is described by its emptiness.
A house is useful in proportion to its space.

Intention creates form –
   form creates meaning –
but stillness creates both.

2014/08/06

Tao Te Ching 10

Stay centred
among the conflicting currents of life.

Listening to the breath,
listening to the heart,
restores the clarity and energy we were born with.

Who is untainted by the world's corrosion?
Even the noblest objectives may involve duplicity.
Can anyone truly see the bigger picture yet remain heart-led?

Conceiving something,
nurturing it:
can you let it go?

Encountering success yet avoiding arrogance –
guiding to fruition without dictating –
being strong yet invisible –
this is the ultimate life skill. [/Mystical Vision]

2014/08/05

Tao Te Ching 9

Which is better
– to fill the cup below the brim
or let it spill over?
– to extend the life of a knife by using it carefully
or to whet it and blunt it?

Can the rich ever store their wealth securely enough?
   With money comes delusion,
   with delusion a loss of intuition.
   Without intuition who is forewarned?

When you've made it
   stand back.
When the nail is in
   stop hammering.

Search for the best economy of means,
   the sweet spot between chaos and control.
   Elegant solutions hold cosmic energy. [/Tao]

2014/08/04

Tao Te Ching 8

The highest good resembles water.

Water benefits the whole planet effortlessly
flowing always to the lowest point,
just as cosmic energy [/Tao] is found where there is no pretension –

... forming a pool naturally
... reflecting each heart's depth
... refreshing all who seek
... responding preciely to each environment
... sweeping all before it without distinction
... infinitely flexible
... taking alternative forms in extreme conditions

Seeking no advantage for itself
its force is beyond argument, appeal or reproach.

Tao Te Ching 6

The valley is eternally sacred to the feminine spirit.

The archway of the great mother
is the gate between heaven and earth –

from it a continuous flow of subtle energy
that never depletes when drawn upon.

2014/08/03

Tao Te Ching 7

I recently picked a 1980s copy of the Tao Te Ching from my bookshelf and started to read it. The translation was so incomprehensibly klunky that I felt compelled to soften it. But then I thought that reading the book critically was preventing it speaking to me; so I bought another which was lauded as entirely accurate and having footnotes.

But the problem was that whereas one obscured meanings by attempting to be contemporary (and merely seeming dated), the literality of other was equally opaque. Neither translator had any real command of poetic english. So Ive accepted the inevitable, and begun to make my own version as I did with Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus

So I began with #7


Sky and earth are eternal
because they are eternally without self-interest.

Thus the disinterested are often propelled to the forefront of affairs.
That they survive this is due to their detachment from appetite-driven emotions.

By these means the common good is best served.

2014/05/06

Where do ideas come from?

You'd be really lucky if the whole of any idea arrived in a dream - and plainly, unless you’re a total eejit, you filter it throu your consciousness. You have to, how else would it get into communicable form? But the main thing I get from working in a respectful relationship with the subconscious is a kind of authenticity that rarely comes in any other way.

    The big change I underwent during my 20 years in the wilderness was allowing my mind to evolve (/be remade) so that now instead of my conscious mind pummelling my subconscious for things to sell I now use my conscious mind as the servant or secretary of my subconscious. Thus I depend on ideas emerging (whether in dream or otherhow) with a clear feeling tone, which I can then extract & extend by such craft as I have acquired.

    It means that I'm not beholden to other people’s opinions for what I do - FBOW. My principal concern is to ensure that what I produce has an internal integrity & logic in relation to the unique feeling world of each idea. That way I feel I have ‘acquitted my soul’, as George Fox was won't to say when he was being particularly rambunctious with the Restoration authorities.

    Thus it's no accident that most of what I feel led to compose is sacred /visionary music. To date this is of no interest to anyone. This has led me to think deeply about what the nature of ‘virtu’ or inner energy is in works of art, and to study the way in which structure & craftsmanship are valuable aids to providing others with entry points to the heart of a work of art when its ‘moral content’ (by which I mean intentionality) is not necessarily evident, possibly due to the differing perspective of creator & a potential interpreter.

    The (inarticulate) thing which I feel I'm ‘given’, which in fact I voluntarily entered the wilderness to learn how to express, reflects a personal perspective on, & evolved relationship with, the otherness which inhabits each human consciousness. Each person will cognise this otherness (or not) in their own terms seeing it either as ’that of God within’ or simply as the ultimate extension of the human mind. I'm easy with either.

    But expressing my sense of this otherness (without necessarily even fully comprehending it) is what I feel my principal creative task is. All the rest is (often very pleasurable) froth. What gives me quiet confidence that the music nobody knows about does in fact have merit and will in the long run be heard - tho very possibly not in my lifetime - is that I'm content that it authentically (re)presents my sense of this otherness. And I believe that it thus has the capacity to touch certain experiential archetypes in the way that Byrd or Vittoria do, or in the operatic case Janacek or Tchaikovsky. If I'm right, good: if I'm wrong, good. It’s not an indictable offence and no animals died in the process!

2014/04/13

Intelligent Design

For most people, the idea of a creator necessarily involves a controling intelligence, but what if the true nature of the Creator is that it is a facilitive intelligence? What if the 'daimonic intelligence' within the universe is in fact 'dumb' or 'blind'? Bear in mind that humans with a hearing or speech disability often have other compensating faculties.

The idea of a 'permissive intelligence' facilitating the work of others is not so ridiculous in view of how the worldwide web originated. Also, consider those inventions whose ultimate use was substantially different from that envisaged by the discoverer or creator - wireless telephony and the saxophone are just two examples that come to mind. Neither Marconi nor Sax was in any sense an 'impaired' intelligence ... yet that makes the point.

While each was the cleverest in their fields, they were nevertheless 'blind' to how the reiterations and repercussions of their machines would both transform other supposedly 'smarter' intelligences and be transformed by that interaction. Notwithstanding that these subsequent folk did not, and probably could not have, invented what they were able to exploit, they took each invention to a totally different level by developing the basic concept in ways that were the result of a different perspective. It's even more true of modern computing if you see it from the perspective of Babbage or Turing. And it's a sine qua non of developments in artificial intelligence and robotics, whose heuristic trajectory of transcending each previous generation's endeavours is almost like the arc of evolution itself.

We have a hard time imagining anything like this in relation to our concepts of a creator-spirit - in the same way that as children most of us could not imagine the limitations we later discover in our parents. Yet if there was a formative mind or generative consciousness within matter which had the characteristics of its human equivalent we would find it easy to grasp. But we don't. In fact what the nature of this difference is, or might be, has engaged the finest minds since the dawn of literature - which it probably gave rise to in the first place. That which cannot be put into words cannot be discussed, and yet what lies at the roots of the mystery of life itself still defies the most ardent rationalist.

Thus when those who claim insights into the nature of this creator-spirit say that it is 'radically other', do not these characteristics well suit that description, especially when we call 'blind' the heuristic by which we come into being ... love? Indeed do not all faith traditions teach that 'God is love'?

If one considers what the emotional power of music actually is: then it becomes clear that it is possible to encounter a phenomenon well able to illustrate or amplify some aspects of the psyche whilst not capturing others at all. Again here, interestingly, the range of emotions music can express are almost wholly monistic. Broadly they are those which characterise most opera arias. Positive emotions are joy, sublimity, exhilaration, playfulness, anticipation, love, ecstacy, peace. Negative ones are malice, anger, destruction, frenzy, despair, grief. Probably the only dualistic emotion music can conjure are around mistrust, conflict jealousy. (I'm asking you to think only of musical timbre, not its lyrics.) Does this range of emotions not admirably summarise the range of sensations which may act upon most intelligent life-forms as a result of natural phenomena they may encounter during a lifetime?

What differentiates humans is that our psychosomatic awareness allows a broader range of emotion as a result of our cybernetic ability to comprehend duality, as well as using language to articulate our experiences

Because most of us have been raised within 'command structured education', centrally dictated learning, we naturally see trangressing such limitations as the first step to adulthood. And where education has included ideas of a god it will likely be one that conforms to that model of social organisation – a model targeted on the supposed moral limitations of children, and which remains firmly rooted in credal assumptions of 'sinfulness'. Or even, nowadays, taught without reference personal spirituality at all, in the conviction that only what conforms to ontological observation is valid knowledge. Thus are we all nowadays the servants of Mr Gradgrind! Yet in culture it is not the artefact itself which is valuable but the numen surrounding it which imparts the cherished character(istic).

So it is that our best chance of understanding how Intelligent Design might work in the universe is to look not directly at any one physical manifestation but at the richness of relationships and networks that interconnect all aspects of the physical and metaphysical world/s. 

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

Responses to my recent e-mail about the significance of nursery rhymes to musical and personal development, has made me think more about cultural continuity. This sin't something most people think about, or if they do, don't consider that they have much control over it. But a composer has to think about such questions, especially if s/he is, as I am, outside the mainstream.

The act of self conscious creation is in any case a curious one, arising from the interaction of subconscious will, genetic predisposition, and acculturation. There is nothing the matter with doing it for money: but until you get beyond doing it merely for other people you don't reach the place where the maps give out and you have only your instinct is to guide you. At that point you reached the realisation that we are like "fleas in the mane of a galloping horse whose route we [think] to influence by what we decided to believe or not believe", as Arthur Miller put it. But there is still this question: if we are 'fleas' what is the appropriate response of a 'flea' to its environment? Even 'fleas' came from somewhere and can consider what direction they want to head. This is significant because every day, every act, every decision has the potential to take us towards our objectives; if we have formulated them, be they conscious external goals or internal subconscious ones.

I think about this a lot in relation to the young pianists I teach. The music they learn needs to be grounded in the music of today and yet link them to the music of the past. If it doesn't you get the idiocy of a quiz contestant who,when asked which film featuring Bob Hoskins shared the name of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, answered "Who framed Roger Rabbit?"

Last weekend I was reading a review of Graves’ letters & was struck by how no writer born after the last war would have Graves' (once, basic) equipment. Almost all knowledge has become compartmentalised - as is exemplified by a current BBC4 series about classical music presented by Suzy Klein which veers uneasily between assuming A) certain elements of musical knowledge & B) general ignorance which apparently demands explanation of rudimentary concepts that anyone who knew A) would already know.
   
Jonathan Harvey RIP used to say it was not uncommon to find music undergraduates who had no idea about the role of the Virgin Mary - beyond the basic joke - and thus lacked any perspective on western musical history.
   
But then of course Postmodernism is this lack of perspective writ large. My friend Harry Hough RIP always spoke of ‘the great march of ignorance’; but really where it really gains traction is when it meets Postmodernism to produce the moral foreshortening characteristic of the modern e-world where only the present exists. It’s really true that for today’s youth ‘early music’ is The Beatles. Everything before this is swathed in prehistoric irrelevance.     

Dreams - a perennial inner resource

We all have an innate initial reluctance to engage with the (life) journey we’re on. We'd all prefer to turn over with the pillows over our head and go back to sleep. It's so much more comforting. And almost all the commercial mechanisms in our society are designed to reinforce the message that it’s perfectly alright to remain asleep, and all your sleeping needs will be catered for (at a cost).

But for those who are propelled to awakening by whatever combo of stimuli there is only the path of differentiation from the herd – which is sometimes painful, sometimes rewarding, but always present as the background of unfolding events.
   
As they say: Life is the only game we play where the main purpose is to find out what the rules are?  

Infinite books have been written about this game - but the more specific they are, the more partial, and the sooner their language is outdated. Paradoxically (as I've been thinking while reading The Clovde of Vnknowing) the less user-friendly they are, the better and the more enduring their perspective.

But the one thing you can rely on is the one thing we're born with - dreams. It only recently came to me that we are not abandoned as orphans in a hostile universe - as the post-Enlightenment thinkers would have us believe. Like seeds that fall to earth encased in nutrient we are provided with the means to sustain our psychic as well as physical life. The reason why Existentialists & their successors haven’t wanted to recognise this is because they're so preoccupied with the conscious mind that they’re blinded by the headlight of their own ego/s.

The first two clips of The Way Of The Dream really explain the process of how dreams offer us a compensating opposite to our conscious world which is designed to keep us balanced, and also outline how our dreams change over the years to help us keep our balance as our perspective alters.

If it all seems weird that’s because nature is a lot weirder and yet a lot less complicated than the rules we've made up for it to conform to.

2014/03/28

What is it kids hate about classical music?

It’s an interesting question why kids today think anything before the Beatles is ‘early music’?

I see it arising from the psycho-cultural revolution in perception that has been underway for a century now, driven by two forces & underpinned by two other – all of which originated in the USA. These were 1) the rise of the 'black beat’, 2) motion pictures, 3) capitalism, 4) technology.

By 'black beat' I mean metronomic music derived from drumming - which manifested first as ragtime then mutated into jazz and finally colonised all US popular music thanks to radio. By WW2 it had created an international musical ‘common time' that defined modernity and marginalised indigenous musical styles all over the economically-developed world. See a historical perspective.

The second force, the exponential growth of moving images from jerky novelty to sophisticated worldwide ubiquity, needs no further articulation. See my take on its effect on perception.

3 & 4 are both forces with positive & negative aspects; but the genius of the American social melting pot married together them to create art(plat)forms which, for the first time in history, would communicate effectively to a mass market of widely diverse ethnicity rather than appealing to elite audiences.

When I was young the skiffle craze as mere undertow to the imminent tsunami of Rock. Since then the relentless gray squirrel of US musical hegemony has all but eliminated the red squirrel of individual national cultural identity wherever there is mains electricity - or at least created a fundamental musical orthodoxy to which even today’s so-called ‘world music’ largely conforms.
   
This is the planet today’s young pianist has inherited. Inevitably the emerging adolescent is driven by fashion & peer pressure & thus their imagination is most effectively captured by the kind of music they're surrounded by and listen to. To be sure it’s morally-restricted and commercially-driven style, but  its fore-shortend worldview is cleverly tailored to support the reassuring wall of illusion with which immature personalities prefer to surround themselves.
  
The ‘problem’ with classical music for young people today, beyond ‘classic hits’, is not merely that it’s whole timbre is unfamiliar but much of its harmonic language evokes emotional voids - certain profound experiences which those raised on today's 24-hour-party world have rarely encountered - with the result that they are often made to feel quite uneasy by the range of emotions found within classical music. Moreover its execution often requires a subtlety of mind and technique which, in an automated & leveraged world, is no longer seen as an essential, or even desirable, prerequisite of endeavour.
   
All these factors make even show-tunes of the pre-war era as foreign and old-fashioned to kids as houses without central heating. I think it’s an interesting challenge to circumvent young people’s natural reluctance to move outside this comfort zone.

2014/03/22

The Voice of the Martyrs

This piece is a dear child, one of my first mature compositions, dating from 1973.

At midnight I bowed my knee before God, and thanked him for all his graces which he has shown us. He has forgiven all our sins - places us on the way of truth - he comforts us in our misery, in our suffering, in our separation. 
We will pray for the cleansing of the church of Christ, that she may bring forth more fruit. We will pray for the ministers, for youth, for the prisoners, for our country and its government. 
Don't weep soul that griefs surround you. You dont have your lot in earthly life. Your whole happiness is there where saints who finished their course sleep peacefully.
Yes, I was obliged to go this way. There is no other way for me as a minister. And if anyone wishes to be a minister he must know beforehand that when Israel entered into the Holy Land, crossing the Jordan, the priests entered first into the dangerous waters and were the last to leave them.

I set these beautiful words by David Klassen, a Romanian Mennonite minister, the same year they were written while he falsely imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. Two years later a 'ransom'  of $26,000 was paid by W German Christians to allow him to travel to the West by which time he could no longer walk.  

The words still speak to me about the cost of being true to the light within - which is one that I hope on the whole I have paid cheerfully during the 50 years I've only been able to hear my 'heart music' silently, except for two choral recordings I conducted.

What is of interest from a perspective of 40 years is how my conception prefigures the integration of documentary sound & intentional music which was a big feature of my electronic compositional soundscapes at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop & RCM EMS 15 years later. Alas I was never able to integrate these spiritual interests with my commissioned work - which was one of the reasons I abandoned my 'career' in order to journey to a place of musical at-one-ment, even tho it has involved 20 years further silence.

In The Voice of the Martyrs I sought to create a Russian sound-world with basso profundo. Possibly I have a deep psychic connexion to the slavic soul for 35 years later I had one of my most profound spiritual experiences in front of an icon in a Moscow church.

Altho the tyranny that gave rise to this prayer has ended, it has been replaced by a far more insidious economic tyranny that coerces the populace into collaboration. I have always hoped that my music would sound a clarion call for those who do not bow the knee to this false god, and be a voice for those of goodwill who seek intunity with spiritual truth. Therefore it has been intensely painful to me to find noone in my own country who sees or understands the power that this music has. I hope the Society for Universal Sacred Music may see this for I have always believed that when the zeitgeist is ready for this music, this music will be a vehicle for the spirit of a new era. I thank them for holding the space for this vision.