ARGUING ABOUT WOLVES? My own view is simple:
wolves are a natural and essential member of
Earth’s creation, with every much a right to be as
you and me. At the same time, I have many ranchers
for friends. I also have a good ten years of experience
working as a shepherd in the Alps. I know the havoc
that one lone wolf on a killing rampage in a single
night can wreck. And yet, in a way, I don’t really
care if you’re “for or against” wolves, so to speak.
What I DO care about is that wolves, in a very deep
and profound sense, echoing back to the beginnings
of our own natural history as humans making charcoal
paintings in caves, are MIRRORS OF RELATIONSHIP.
How do I mean this? Wolves are mirrors which reflect
our relationship not just with THEM, but more
importantly, with EACH OTHER. If it is a sign of an
educated man or woman to be capable of holding
two different points of view at the same time, it is
also a prerequisite for genuine dialogue. In my view,
this is the key component missing in the perennial
“arguing about wolves,” It is also–potentially–a
defining characteristic of our species, a characteristic
not shared, it might be noted in closing,
with Canis lupus.
When science opens an hitherto unseen door
to thresholds it cannot yet cross, we have the
beginnings of spirituality; When spirituality
manifests in new number, ratio, and universal
theory, we have science at its best, as a journey
of discovery. Science and spirituality, just like the
relationship between known and unknown, or tradition
and creativity, are always two sides of one movement.
The line we draw between them is like the line of a
distant horizon, forever receding as we come near.
Metaphor is then the scientist’s rhyming of meaning,
in both word and number, the sense of wonder that
becomes the songline that guides us deeper and
deeper into this uncharted, essentially pathless,
land.
“Trying is only emphasizing
the thing we know already.”
F.M. Alexander
We shape the world and the world shapes us.
Passion in performance is priceless; it is part of
the movement of what we might call a transcendental
spirit-energy, an energy which carries us up and over
our prosaic petty state of daily isolation; it carries us—
alone and collectively—to some wild, unknown and
wonderful place. Passion in performance is the heart
and soul of real, living, artistic excellence. And yet,
what is so difficult to grasp is that, passion in performance,
like humility, is always unaware of itself. A style or species
of inauthentic self-conscious passion, however, has
become the norm not just on TV and in the films of
Hollywood, but also the pop and classical music stages
of the world; it is but a cheap imitation, a kind of 2nd-hand
reality. The Muse will allow neither for true Love to be
faked nor sold. See the fact: We can pay for sex. The
outward movements are much the same. But we all
know the difference, and this difference is perhaps all
we can know. In other words: we observe in neutrality—
that is, dispassionately—the fact of why and that we
generally are:—not passionate.
We shape the world and the world shapes us.
Passion in performance is priceless; it is part
of the movement of a transcendental spirit-energy
which carries us away out of our prosaic petty
state of daily isolation—alone and collectively—
to some wonderful, wild and unknown place.
Passion in performance is the heart and soul of
real, living, artistic excellence. And, like humility,
it is always unaware of itself. The species of self-
conscious passion which has become the norm
not just on TV and in the films of Hollywood, but
also on both the pop and classical music stage, is
but a cheap, 2nd-hand imitation. The Muse will
neither allow for true Love to be faked nor sold.
We can pay for sex. The outward movements are
much the same. But we all know the difference,
and this difference is perhaps all we can know.
♫ BACH Motet “Jesu, meine Freude”
Vocalconsort Berlin w/ Daniel Reuss
http://bit.ly/GzK3dk
Sung as one magnificent whole,
as it was composed
COMMENTARY ON TWEET NO. 2700]
There are many things I find remarkable about
this fine production. Musically, there’s the rich
creative tradition of word and sound and voice
so wonderfully balanced here. Just
15 voices, w/ bass and organ for resonance
and support. Politically, however, such artistic
excellence is now threatened everywhere, not
just in happy Amsterdam, by the mean-spiritied
economics of “balanced budgets and perpetual crisis.”
I beg to differ: First, War creates debt. Then, War
creates the politics of cultural self-destruction.
Finally, Creativity’s voice will no longer be silenced.
That is protest. That is what I hear in this great
spirit of Bach’s music. “Trotz dem alten Drachen /
Defy, the old Demon” The demon is not debt.
The demon is war.
Money buys me the dubious privilege of living
on he “clean” side of the dirty divide of
environmental injustice.
Behind every liter of gas I use to cook my food,
behind the warm, protective synthetic fibers
and clothes I wear, behind the myriad digital
machines and networks that enable me to articulate
and share these thoughts, behind all these perks
and privileges of what we call “the developed world”
is a dark side of inhuman poverty and unspeakable
pollution which is kept deliberately out of sight,
hidden from even the most compassionate heart.
This is not just that my gain, leisure and productivity
is for someone, some place else, their loss and
suffering. No. It is also the moral injustice in which
I admit I am thoroughly complicit and upon which
I have become dependent. As a profiteer and
participant in this collusive, systematic culture
of ignorance, I myself bear witness to the
contradictory character of my own, what others
might perceive as, rugged, simple, and independent
lifestyle. This much is clear seen from the neutral
center of the scales of justice. What remains to
be demonstrated is the ensemble of clear, decisive
actions that will bring the two sides of the scale
into proper balance.
Music is movement. Music is a movement of relationship.
We sense–not just hear, but sense–somatically by
means of the instrument of the whole body. What
shapes sensing is formative metaphor. But which
metaphor shall shape our experience? Domination?
Force? Conflict? Aggression? Or the poetry of love
making? Contemplation? Dialogue? The fierce energy
of outrage? The empathy of shared grief? Or the
wonder of distant stars? It is up to us. We shape the
music, and the music shapes us.
We shape the world and the world shapes us.
In Music, what we need is a listener-based criticism,
and not merely the self-interested views of producers,
conductors, performers, and composers. Relevance,
or how we experience music as being fresh and new,
is how the music we perform resonates with the current
repertoire of cultural metaphysical urgencies. Vision is
the why, the energy, of meaning, why compose and
perform this music now. Without relevance and without
vision we have a music which is no better than the worse
than worthless chatter heard in parliaments around the
world, hysterically debating wholly pseudo-problems like
evolution while we destroy the biosphere of our home
planet. Without relevance and without vision we may
it is true in a state of comfortable collusion with each
other enjoy perhaps another technically perfect Tschaikovky,
Bach, or Paganini CD. Yet from this wider perspective
of the listener firmly rooted in the crises of the current era,
such work is as uninteresting as it is unethical, more like
strip mining the greatness of the past, than rising to the
necessity of nurturing new seeds of creativity now. From
this point of view, what we see marketed over and over
again as beauty is really just more shrink-wrapped trash
ready for the decomposition bin of self-centered cultural
excess.