Found Poetry Fake People

Words lurk everywhere. Hidden in them are poems waiting to be discovered. We used to take pages from magazines and cut up words and phrases and mix them up in a pile. We would pull words from the mix and gradually a poem emerged. Or we would take a text and cross out words. What remained was the poem we discovered as meaning buried in the text.

For example, here is a poem I found during class:

Orange windows
fake people
empty and silent.

This poem was discovered by marking out text in a newspaper:

Found art is all around us waiting to be discovered. Found sounds are lingering everywhere, often in materials dismissed as junk and hiding exquisite sounds just waiting for a musical context. You are that context.

The world is teeming with art waiting to be discovered. Visual, sonic, kinesthetic, text materials exist in such abundance that the works we uncover can dazzle and astonish us. Wake up to the possibilities!

Of course, as you discover such works, you realize that the art you have found was deep inside you all along. The materials around you were the catalyst for discovery and creation.

“Choosing is creating.” So spake Zarathustra.

Therefore choose with wisdom and imagination.

The DNA of Theme and Variations

Just as we have an alphabet that provides the material for our daily improvisation in conversation and speech, our species has its own alphabet, its DNA, that allows an infinite array of individuals to emerge as humankind.  Looking deeper we realize the our world is riddled with DNA that closely resemble each other. Our DNA is not that different from trees, Life itself, then, is endless variation. Perhaps this why musical form based on variation continues to fascinate us. Jazz itself comes from the energy of endless variation, of spontaneous creation of new material from  older material.

So rather than be something remote from our experience, variation of material is among the most basic of all forms.  Even we we do not intellectual pursue the form, variation emerges as the natural outcome of exploration of material.  Such a process is based on deep immersion into the nature of our original idea or theme.

In class we listened to the creative activity of composers inspired by Paganini’s 24 Caprices  which he composed at the turn of the century (1801). This continued to resonate with composers, extending through Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Lutoslawsky, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  There is something compelling about the theme. It has a sharp, simple melodic and rhythmic identity that immediately seems to spill over into fresh ideas generated from the original. Perhaps that is why the Caprices themselves are a set of variations.

Where can this process take us? Variation is a process of discovery that leads the ear and the mind into new terrain, new territory that is both challenging and entertaining.

I Wish I Knew

In class, I asked the students to sing “I Know Where I’m Goin’” by repeating each phrase using “la’la’la” etc. The mood was subdued, and the activity almost seemed remote and foreign. There was some hesitance about the process… a tentative mistrust, but as we repeated the phrases, we became more confident, and finally we added the words, which must have seemed somewhat bizarre. We are a class of explorers, and much of what we do involves our inner awareness of ourselves and our process. The song itself is one about being unsure of the future, and the Dorian quality is due to the way the phrase moves to re (d).

The tentativeness for me was underscored by the shift in Time because of Leap Year. I have been extremely sensitive to the tiny tears and rips in the fabric of Time. This is especially true for this year. To be sure, these are man-made lesions, but they represent our fundamental alignment with the cosmos—an alignment that emerges as a global people. Leap Year is a great name…a fundamental leap of faith in our mutual ongoingness, our future.

I know where I’m goin’ is almost a contradiction of itself. The line begins was such certainty, but eventually we are lost at the end of the phrase, because for all that I know, I also do not know how I will end up… only the cosmos knows.

And yet, for all that, I wish I knew where I was going… This is a recurring question and a recurring question on a personal level and for our species… in the end, only the lord knows (whoever or whatever that might be) where we’re going.

Viola Enluarada

I have blogged about this remarkable song elsewhere: A Classic for Our Time: Viola Enluarada.

When I first heard it. I did not know what the words meant, but the music spoke to me, including the sounds of the language and the person singing. I listened over and over like someone getting a fix:
Viola Enluarada
What do you think? You can find a translation at my earlier blog. You could line it up with the original language and follow the recording. Here is a literal translation:

In the hand that plays the guitar
if needed [(it) notes the war
kills the world, hurts the earth
In the voice that sings a song,
if needed, (it) sings the anthem,
praises death
in the countryside, it’s like a sword,
moonlight viola, moonlight night
hope of revenge.

In the same foot that dances the samba
if needed, (it) goes to fight
Capoeira
(the one) who lies, at night, his companion
knows that peace is transitory
To defend her (peace/companion)
(it) stands up and shouts: I go (I will)
Hand, Guitar, Song, Sword
and Moonlight Viola
through the country-side and the city
Porta bandeira, capoeira
in the parade (refers to carnival) they sing
Freedom
Freedom, Freedom!

This is a ballade, a love song for revolution and freedom… so beautiful and inspiring! Everything is encapsulated in “Hand, Guitar, Song, Sword and Moonlight Viola…” our emotions, our lover, our friends, our music, our love of freedom…the moon enlightened guitar embodies all of this and more.

SnowBound and Quietly Creative

Snow had been falling for hours and the white mantle served as a muffler, quieting city sounds, even people talking on their mobiles. It was so quiet that I could hear my footsteps crunching in the snow and thought of Debussy’s Footsteps in the Snow. As I approached the class site, I thought of us as somehow bound by the snow. Almost everyone made it to class.

Small matters of technology were introduced, My failure to get a good capture of last week’s improvs was the focus of my lament. If you forgive the distortion, the quality of musical expression was quite high. Played the improv of the Pacific Quartet, a quiet, reflective moment of exploration: Easternly meditative and briefly interrupted by a Schumanesque phrase before receding back into the reflective state.

Some Tech matters about how fragile firewire cables are and the physical difference between firewire and USB… brief demo of the digital camera, the digital tape, and the technological extension of ourselves so that instruments become less material, as much the extension of consciousness as of our fingers.

Then some reflecting about musicing, and Amanda shared with us the use of the movable fields more musical scoring and performance that was so much like Stockhausen’s Frame Notation. Divided into two groups that created different strategies for using the assembled components of the score. The score components were based on solfege and both groups worked in close proximity—quiet unconsciously using the same “doh” as they sang through their compilations.

Outside the snow continued to fall steadily. You could see it falling just outside our classroom space, a large hall that dwarfed our class as we huddled at the southern end of the room, near the windows. The two groups quietly performed for each other, almost with hushed deference to the snow silently subduing the city.

I suggested that we follow Amanda’s model to create warm-ups and warm-downs for coming classes, and that someone would also archive our class with the video camera.

As I walked out of the building, Mike was at the entrance with his mobile phone. The snow was coming down even harder than before.

“More snow…” I ventured, and Mike replied, “Yes it’s impossible… have to cancel rehearsal!”

I started through the snow again, focusing on the quietness and the sound of my footsteps.

Sneaking Into Musicing

There was something always mysterious about my entering a world of musicing. One of our fellow musicers expressed something similar by writing that “music chose me.” I am not sure that was quite what happened to me, although surely there was some truth to that—in fact that is likely true for all musicers to some degree.

But musicing was always a mystery to me. It was the world of my mother who always played the same thing at the piano, was a tempestuous listener—especially of opera, and my sister who was the real musician of the family and about 9 years my senior—and of course my father who was literally a closet musician… because while rummaging through a closet, I discovered my mother’s old violin and a clarinet that had been the passion of my father in his teens when he practiced in a basement with John Philip Sousa in Kansas City—at least that is the family legend. He never spoke of that time, and had, I suppose, in his bid to become a responsible father decided to put away childish things.

For me, I lurked in the shadows while my sister practiced. In stolen moments I would approach the piano and sound out things I had heard, but also just explored the sounds. I began to remember things I had played, so those became compositions. My first public composition came when we had participation day in school and the teacher asked me to do something. So I went to the piano and told them that I composed music and sat down to play.

]I had no idea what I would play, but I began to play and after a time I came to an end. The teacher thought I had just been “doodling” so she claimed that I couldn’t play it again, but I remembered it and sat down to play it again, to my teacher’s dismay because it was quite long.

Again, there was something furtive about my entry into musicing. It wasn’t really legitimate. I remember making up a head piece (as I called them) called “Devil’s Tombstone” which I played in sixth grade. There was a really fabulous pianist in our class and he asked if he could use it in a contest. I said yes… and he entered it as his own composition and won a prize. Somehow that didn’t bother me because the music came so easy and there was much more where that came from.

Somehow I sneaked into music and have been there ever since… sneaking around and stumbling upon new discoveries…

Creating A Community

Meeting the class Creative Process in Music Education in our new space was a revelation about the participants. You descend into the space off Thompson Street. As I entered the space, I discovered it to be a large rectangular space with a high ceilings, very much like an auditorium. The chairs were in a circle, and there were almost enough chairs to accommodate the class. The chairs were near the entrance to the room and the rest of the space was empty, waiting to be filled. I thought perhaps some class member had preset the chairs, since we had sat in a circle at the first class, but they had discovered the chairs arranged and waiting for us. At the far end (the south end) of the room large rectangular windows a street level opened on West 3rd Street and passersby caught glimpses of us as they passed. Some stayed to watch a while, but saw only people silently sitting in a circle as though they were waiting to conjure some mystical Magus from an ancient, forgotten realm.

I thought of Robert Frost’s couplet:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

We weren’t dancing, at least not outwardly, but inwardly there was a slow sarabande in progress that we had yet to uncover. Outside darkness had fallen. In a few months it would be light outside those windows… before long the Spring Solstice would call our dancing into celebration.

We got to know each other a little better, describing the instruments we play or have played. I wish I had thought to phrase the request a little differently. Instead of asking that we tell what instruments we play, I wish I had the forethought to ask “How do you make music?”

Our musicers bring many resources, and maybe we can explore musicing in ways that nurture new ideas, new expressive powers.

We shared some short poems that we created on the spot. The request was to compose a short poem of three lines. I did two poems, and the class remarked that they were like Haiku:

All these young ideas
Exploding around me,
Endless possibilities.

The second poem was about an experience I had several weeks ago:

Birds flying above me
Silent and swift,
Dizzily dazzling me.

We performed our poems by reading them. Aural poetry often needs several readings. Listening to poetry is certainly a different experience than seeing poetry on a page. Near the end of our class we read our neighbor’s poem aloud simultaneously in an attempt to shape the moment musically.

A wonderful sensibility comes from the participants. We are not a community yet, but we are getting there.

Becoming Ourselves

I am amazed at the dynamic energy of ourselves emerging from the nothingness into the somethingness that is constantly unfolding as the discovery of ourselves. This is a Blog that explores how this becoming embodies the creative process. Every moment erupts into Time and Space augmenting the Time/Space Continuum. The relentless thrust of reality invades nothingness, and in this process we have become the makers of ourselves.

In some ways music is a constellation floating in Time, occupying space as the manifestation of ourselves. Musicing is human activity, and this presencing of our world through sound is an eloquent testament to our uniqueness.

Now we have an opportunity to explore our creative source to acknowledge and celebrate the wonder of making art for the sheer joy of nourishing our imagination.

Language can be an instrument of discovery, and this opportunity may help me break through barriers that obscure meaning into a new and different understanding of myself and my world.

Yet, I am not alone. There are others that search their own terrain. Perhaps this awareness of the other is the most profound revelation of the universe. We belong to the whole, the infinite We that defines the essence of reality recognizing itself.