Four Miniatures: Learning; Perception; Limit;
The Musical Body

(1) Learning knows no method. When and how a child finds
its natural gift, its center of skill and creativity, is as unpredictable
as the precise time of sprouting and then flowering of a cluster
of unclassified seeds held in a loving hand. The task is not to
force creativity into a single convenient mold, but rather to provide
a free and open space so that it may reveal itself according to the
exigencies of its own natural intelligence.



(2) Self-fulfilling perception? With Nature, we describe a relatively
autonomous world; When our theories are wrong, when we say
the moon is made of cheese and it turns out to be made of rock,
the moon itself is evidently not effected.

With Art, however, we describe a world largely of our own making;
When our theories are wrong, when we say that flutes made of
concrete sound the same as flutes made of silver, our perception
of sound and flute playing may change, potentially in a very
negative way.

Freedom from the unavoidable distortions of this description/
perception cycle evidently comes only when we give serious
attention to the formative workings from the cycle itself, and
not merely to the outward nature of the particular content at hand.



(3) On the difference between limit and control

Control imposes order from without by projecting the predetermined
thought, conditioned by the past, of what should happen. The need to
control invariably increases as the disorderly, unexpected, side-effects of past
efforts accumulate, which results in ever-greater unnecessary difficulties
or complicatedness; In contrast, limit allows order to emerge from within
by determining only what at any given moment should not happen. Limit
is therefore open to the future and tends strongly towards ever-greater
simplicity.



(4) Much of Western classical music moves as if we had no lower body
under the neck; much popular music moves as if we had no head above
the groin. That's bad.

What we want, especially with children, is a music (and a poetry and a
dance) that speaks to and awakens the whole of the body, with rhythms
in every toe, melodies in each finger, and ears which soar with eyes
liberated from the tyranny of the perpetually antiquated --
and behind the beat -- printed page.

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