DIPPER FALLS, Cliff River | Nine Essential Fragmentations

NINE ESSENTIAL FRAGMENTATIONS of primary
cyclical—complementary—orders of movement

MUSIC IS MOVEMENT, a movement of energy, a movement of meaning manifest in sound, a movement of sound that we sense—not just hear or see—with the whole sensitivity of our mind / body as instrument.

MUSIC IS IMBALANCED once these cyclical movements are, for whatever reason, fragmented or broken apart.

MUSIC IS ENERGY, a quality of energy. So, regardless of how we think about it, or how well a music is performed, etc., music "can be bad for you" in the same way polluted water "is bad for you."

Bad sound; Bad water:—No difference.

To question the quality of energy of any particular music is neither to make aesthetic judgements nor ad hominem attacks. It is rather a crucial part of a new kind of dialogue, a circle of awareness in which we look—alone and together—at the destructive, divisive natural of thought and thinking as a whole. This dialogue is then a kind of ground tone, or tamboura, if you will, always playing softly in the background. This dialogue begins in the arts and music with the fact that we do not hear music directly, but rather we hear, and our shaped by, our map of music. At present, it can be argued that this is an impoverished, highly distorted and distorting map, not just in terms of any particular musical reality, but more importantly in terms of the musical actuality as energy, as movement. So new art, or new music begins, we could say, with new ever-ongoing awareness of this map as a formative process.

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Movement begins with difference.

Difference—as in high and low, or loud and soft, or fast and slow—generates complementarity.

Complementarity is always a circle, a circle moving, which becomes a cycle.

Now, to break any cycle apart is the very essence of fragmentation. Just a moment's reflection will reveal that this kind of fragmentation is everywhere, not just in music or art. Indeed, it has become almost a defining feature of Western culture generally.

To question all of this, is what makes new music, and new musical thought, revolutionary.

Right from the outset, it should be clear that this can only take place within a more general revolution of consciousness, or being. One need only ask how a music is in, or is not in resonance with the world of Nature that is, ultimately, its ground. Clearly, one of the main functions of dialogue is to help keep these circles, within circles, aligned, or in harmony, or "in tune" with one another.

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HERE IS A list of nine primary fragmentations.

Again, note that these are all cycles of complementarity that have been broken apart.

And note that they are very general in nature.

That is, they describe, and are key features of, movement generally, not just in all types of music. In other words, they also are germane to dance, film and poetry, or any other art form in which rhythm and movement are key.

They are perhaps all in need of explanation and development of some kind, but first it might be helpful to get an overview. It's interesting, as one begins to explore such things, that these aspects of what we might think of as the shape of change are features of the actuallity of musical movement wheter we like it or not.

That is, our map of what we sense as musical reality may—or may not—include them, but they are still there, are still actual, whether we may think, or however we may perform. So any map which ignores them is bound to be highly distorted.

That's the whole problem. And what we learn to observe as we give energy to the creative space of sustained, serious dialogue:

(0) earth / stars // yin / yang // feminine / masculine // descending / ascending // minor / major, etc [irre-balance, or 'falsely' balanced, or one-sided]

(1) simple / complex [irre-complexity or complicatedness]

(2) concrete / abstract [irre-abstract]

(3) vowel / consonant // harmonic / nonharmonic // linear / nonlinear // whole number / complex number [irre-simple, or irre-complex]

(4) improvized / pre-determined [irre-notation]

(5) unmeasured / measured // synch / nonsynch [irre-measure]

(6) one-voiced / many-voiced [irre-voiced]

(7) regular / irregular [irre-regular, going too far to one extreme, either regular or irregular]

(8) SMALL circle / BIG circle, as nested cycles of meaning within meaning, or the actual piece of art or music within the wider cultural and natural contexts upon which it depends [irrelevant]