SAWTOOTH PEAK, crest of the Hurricane Divide, North Wallowas [click photo for next . . . ]
On the road in the Northwest of America.

When music loses its relationship to dance,

it loses its sustaining and nurturing resonance with

the physical body, both of the individual performer

and, by implication, that of the Earth itself;


When music loses its relationship to poetry,

it loses its sustaining and nurturing resonance

with the human voice and, by implication,

the more subtle realms

of meaning and things spiritual.

Join me in my campaign to bring the conservation of Nature
and the best of classical music together. The sonosphere—the
sea of sounds which surrounds us—deserves as much attention and
care as our water and air!

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END OF MATERIALISM / END OF RELATIVISM

[TWEET NO. 6,868]

We don’t hear #Music.
We hear our MAP of music;
It has many distortions
which lead us astray. NEW MUSIC
begins in awareness of the map.

We shape the world and the world shapes us.

Spiritual Uplift? When we hear music of the highest
spiritual excellence, we for some unknown, mysterious
reason, without thinking and without force, align
ourselves naturally to the vertical Earth / Heaven life-axis
of tall trees and high mountains. We are somehow
lifted up into our full, potential stature, as the Alexander
people say, suddenly realizing, as if awakening from
a deep sleep, "Yes, this is who I really am."

The reverse is also true. The corrupt commercial music
of systematic intentional excesses of a thousand kinds
enters and somehow distorts the physical / spiritual body,
and with time will cripple us as surely as contaminated
food or polluted water.

The great danger here is that we easily, because of
social pressures and norms, even in the classical arts
not tainted in principle by self-centered commerce,
become tacitly addicted to the bad. In Education, this
is an ethical question of crucial significance. In matters
of spiritual necessities like poetry and music and dance,
the young, naive mind of any age, requires a free, open
and protected space. This is a space that must be
safeguarded and watched over in the same way we
care for a meadow that has been replanted with its
native flora, on occasion plucking out the invasives
and other mischievous, unwanted volunteers.

The dead-end philosophies of Materialism—that the
physical body is all there is—and Relativism—Who am
I too say—make it easy to shirk this essential responsibility.
In a world in which we are bombarded day and night by
the bad and ugly in every conceivable form and direction,
from disingenuous corporate greenwashing, to government
power-elite propaganda, to inherently biased commercial
media of any kind, to the lowest, vulgar, 'bottom-line' pop
art on TV, the only antidote strong enough to withstand
the onslaught is, in my view, clarity, metaphysical clarity.
By this I mean simply a kind of meditation, a kind of
watchfulness in neutrality of how all these influences
work upon oneself, alone and together, as a formative
force. (This is, of course, one of the meanings of my
oft-repeated line, We shape the world and the world
shapes us.)

This need to observe, to be watchful, also holds true
for the good. But how are we to know? Well, I would say
that the good must be demonstrated. The old mountain
farmer who can silently sit down and tap out rhythmically
the nicked blade of your scythe, and then work it with your
own whetstone to a sharpness that will last an entire day,
that's how truth is demonstrated, both truth in content,
and truth in function, as the great American philosopher /
scientist, David Bohm, frequently pointed out.

Simply observe how music affects the body, before—
you start thinking about it.

It is worth noting here, perhaps, that the good and the
bad are not contraries in the traditional sense, are not
in any way related, like loud and soft, high and low, or
warm and cold are related. Why? Because they do not
share a common source. Just like polluted water was at
some point pure, so it is with music and sound. In my view,
the "How are we to know" question can only be asked
at the place where Culture meets wild Nature. In other
words, only by means of the simple test of what I think
of as cultural fasting, of doing without a lot of the artifacts
and assorted habits of an overly urban civilization—Yes,
we can become and are too civilized in the way that
Henry David Thoreau spoke of—only by making this
test of doing without, and then coming back, returning
to Culture, do we begin to become aware of where
we have gone astray.

XI.30.2011
Eagle Valley / Hells Canyon
(Muted) Snake River Rim

| download mp3 here [8.6 Mb] The speaker is
the syn-voice for picture-poems.com, Viki. I prefer
to hear metaphysical texts on human nature read by a machine.
If you'd like, make a recording yourself, and send it to me.
The magnificent baroque violin heard as prologue and
coda for this piece is Hélène Schmitt. She is playing
a solo movement from Nicola Matteis' (c. 1670 – c. 1698)
view on AMAZON Suite en La: II. Passaggio rotto,
Andamento veloce e Fantasia a violino solo senza basso

The above metaphysical pieces are featured
in my 100 MINIATURES. Please preview . . .

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