02009-03-21 | Uncategorized
Friday afternoon I took a walk. Sat down in front of a cafe with a coffee and read a couple of pages…
I am reading Gary Snyder’s book Back on the Fire: Essays on my iPhone (on the free Kindle application) and bookmarked this:
The moon shines on the river
The wind blows through the pines –
who is this long beautiful evening for?
– from the Cheng Dao Ke
Isn’t that wonderful? And here is another passage that struck me. I am quoting Gary Snyder who quotes Gregory Bateson…
I would then suggest: as climax forest is to biome, and fungus is to the recycling of energy, so “enlightened mind” is to daily ego mind, and art to the recycling of neglected inner potential. When we deepen ourselves, looking within, understanding ourselves, we come closer to being like a mature ecosystem. Turning away from grazing on the “immediate biomass” of perception, sensation, and thrill…
What I like about ebook reading is that I have always have the books with me, on my phone. Books by Gary Snyder or Ken Wilber or Basho need to be ingested in small bites and well-chewed before they are swallowed. I remember when I first read one of Ken’s books in 1999 I would read a page or two and then put the book down and contemplate what he had written.
The above Gregory Bateson quote reminds me of something Stephen Batchelor said:
Buddhahood is simply the optimum mode of being that can be reached within human existence.
I quoted that from memory and it might not be word for word correct.
It seems to me that, just as every clump of small trees can eventually become a mature forest, humans can reach an optimum way of being, (((whether that’s colored atheist, buddhist, christian, moslem, pagan etc.))) given enought time. With the destruction of our ecosystem the race is on for humans to mature a tad faster, but as a species we handle pressure pretty well. In fact, we don’t seem to do anything until the last minute, until the water heating in the pot becomes so unbearably that we have to jump. :-)
Check this out – the water in that pot is getting hotter!
Played guitar for a couple of hours last night. Sometimes I notice that making music aligns all of the molecules in the universe. Things feel different afterwards. Rahim calls it settling the soul.
It takes an hour just to really warm up the hands and the last half hour of two hours is really fun. And in case you are wondering whether that means that the first half of a concert is a just the warm-up, no that is not the case because we play a lot during the day. Stevo and I find rooms to play guitar in and Jon walks around with his bass plugged into his in-ear monitors and plays a lot. And we always have a soundcheck that can last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I’d say on tour we each play an average of 3-4 hours very day. Sometimes more.
I was wondering about starting shows with Silence: No More Longing again. I hope the audience has not grown tired of hearing that song. I find that it perfectly tunes me, the guitar, the room and the air in it, and of course the audience. Afterwards I feel ready to make Music, no, actually that happens at some point during the piece… I enjoy playing it and I really enjoy when I start the tremolo and Jon steps up and plays a solo. Silence is a nice way to introduce the band to the audience, the music to the room, the audience to each other and so on.
Saturday Morning. Early. Santa Fe Baking Company. Breakfast burrito – no bacon, and coffee. You know what I mean, Stevo! Did I mention that a friend introduced me to an elderly woman once, who he said invented (((and he meant that literally))) the breakfast burrito a couple of decades ago. For as much sense as a breakfast burrito makes, it wasn’t always so.
Old school fixie riding!
02009-03-17 | Uncategorized
Woke up at 01:30. Was I startled by a noise or a dream? Turned my little 2W LED reading light on and started reading The Pyramid by Henning Mankell – and suddenly it was 05:00. I went back to sleep for a while and got up at 06:30. Well, I don’t have to drive any heavy machinery today, just a couple of phone interviews in the morning, so lack of sleep won’t be a problem. Phone interviews can be fun. One can be dressed or naked for a phoner, one can violently shake one’s head No! while one says sweetly oh yes.
Interesting comments to Saturday Music. Thank you.
Boris writes:
At school they taught us about music but they did not teach us music at all.
I understand what you mean. Music is ephemeral. It is difficult to teach such things. A melody may be inelegant or simplistic, a melody may be gratuitously complex, a melody may be a lot of things, but it is never wrong in the way that 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong. Therefore testing is difficult. If one emphasizes the rules that have been developed for music, one can test for understanding of those rules, but every one of the great composers broke many of them. So, how can one really teach music in a school system that overvalues testing? And, more importantly, is music less valuable because it is not as cut and dry? Basic math is easy to teach and easy to grade. Two apples plus four apples equals six apples. If the student writes five apples the answer is wrong. (((Well, things look quite different in higher math, but that is taught in universities.))) History is equally easy to teach, although, while it is easy to teach, test and grade historical facts it is much harder to convey historical meaning.
I am seeing some interesting connecting planes here… the basic computer is simple, it excels at Two apples plus four apples equals six apples. It’s the other stuff, the stuff music, art and meaning are made of that the computer has a much harder time with. (((give it a couple more decades!!))) Have we adapted teaching to how computers work? Somehow we have decided to throw out a lot of stuff that is very important for the human experience, the stuff that cannot be tested or verified, the stuff that is difficult to teach and equally difficult to get – but oh so important and rewarding.
Some of my favorite hours in school, the memorable hours, the ones that changed my thinking, my outlook, were the ones where a teacher talked about something passionately and they were always classes that could not possibly be graded, unless one simply graded for participation. Those are the moments that inspire. Should one get rid of those, because they cannot be tested and graded?
I am thinking ahead to April… maybe a LAVA track I remixed last week, (((much improved, methinks!))) plus a track from the recordings I made with Rahim, plus a song or two from next week’s rehearsals… whaddaya say? Thanks to all who have signed up to Ottmar-Friends in the last couple of days. The response has been great. We’ll have a lot of fun!
Time for me to stop staring at the screen and get out there. The weather is frightfully dry, but gorgeous!
02009-02-14 | Uncategorized
HOLD THE COPROPHAGIA
“Intense hysteria,” she recited now, from memory, “depression, coprophagia, insensitivy to cold, echolalia.” She kicked her shoes in the direction of the wardrobe’s open door. “Hold the coprophagia,’ she added.
(Via Gibson Blog)
When I read William Gibson, I often have to look up a few words. Sometimes the meaning is surprising/interesting/unexpected/funny like in the case of caprophagy and echolalia.
02009-01-15 | Reading
Currently in my reading pile:
On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno – David Sheppard
Mysterious Tales of Japan– Rafe Martin
The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays – Richard Taruskin
Affluenza – Oliver James
Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens – Johann Peter Eckermann
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World – David Abram
Re-reading:
Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems – Gary Snyder
Just arrived:
Break The Mirror – Nanao Sakaki
2666: A Novel – Roberto Bolaño
Partial list of books I read last year:
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Quiet Girl – Peter Hoeg
Traffic – Tom Vanderbilt
Bashō’s Journey – The literary prose of Matsuo Bashō
Assassin’s Cloak – An anthology of the world’s greatest diarists
The Rest is Noise – Alex Ross
Temperaments: Artists Facing Their Work – Dan Hofstadter
The Years of Rice and Salt – Kim Stanley Robinson
Things I have learned in my Life so far – Stefan Sagmeister
Tao Te Ching – translated by Stephen Addiss + Stanley Lombardo
Plain Talk about Fine Wine – Justin Meyer
Urban Iran – Various Authors
Hot, Flat and Crowded – Thomas Friedman
Being with Dying – Joan Halifax
02008-08-03 | Internet, Musings, Reading
If the world wide web is global and books are cosmopolitan, storytelling and oral communication are local. (I am paraphrasing David Abram)
It seems to me that the third option, story-telling, is vastly different from the first two.
In all three instances molecules are moved and energy is transferred, but only the last one exchanges energy directly between the content-creator and the listener/receiver. Breath is expelled, air is shaped and propelled and received by ears and interpreted. Pheromones are exchanged, scents are traded and we can get a feel for the other person that is more than the sum of their talk. The story is not contained in words alone, it is the entire presence of the speaker.
Without the support of a local engagement, that is to say oral communication and person-to-person(s) conversation, the other two become a card house, lacking a real foundation.
