We live in ugly times.
Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.
Johannes Kepler published his book Harmonices Mundi in 1619. In it he proposed that it was the Creator who “decorated” the whole world, using mathematical and musical harmonic proportions. The spiritual and the physical are united.
Presuming that there is such a thing as “progress” when it comes to music, and that music is “better” now than it used to be, is typical of the high self-regard of those who live in the present. It is a myth. Creativity doesn’t “improve.
One forgets that part of one’s performance is one’s history – or sometimes the lack of it. You’re playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there’s baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can’t see.
The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they’d be avaliable to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing. The mixtape was your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.
Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in architecturally similar monasteries and cloisters.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell, however, thought that the temple and cathedral are attractive because they spatially and acoustically recreate the cave, where early humans first expressed their spiritual yearnings.
The performing musician was now expected to write and create for two very different spaces: the live venue, and the device that could play a recording or receive a transmission. Socially and acoustically, these spaces were worlds apart. But the compositions were expected to be the same!
Every outfit carries cultural baggage of some kind. It took me a while to get a handle on this aspect of performance.
Still, making music is its own reward.
I ride on the shoulder of a road that is lined with chain stores, none of them specific to this area. Everyone who works in them is therefore an employee hired by some anonymous distant corporation. They probably are only allowed to make small decisions and they have almost no stake or investment in the place where they work.
Music as social glue, as a self-empowering change agent, is maybe more profound than how perfectly a specific song is composed or how immaculately tight a band is.
There is water at the bottom of the ocean.
Complete freedom is as much curse as boon; freedom within strict and well-defined confines is, to me, ideal.
It’s often said that proximity doesn’t matter so much now – that we have virtual offices and online communities and social networks, so it doesn’t matter where we are physically. But I’m skeptical. I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine and perfect for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and that’s less likely if you only communicate with your “friends.
We have been taught not to like things. Finally somebody said it was OK to like things. This was a great relief.
Song references are like emotional shortcuts and social acronyms.
What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realise was exactly where you wanted to go.