As of the beginning of 2021, having reached a certain level of infrastructure development with my recording studio, I am turning my attention back to compositional and instrumental considerations as well as digital marketing to a limited degree. As a musical creator concerned with meaning, I am doing a lot of thinking, listening, research, and experimentation in order to find substantial grounds on which to base compositional practices. This quest is not one to which I expect immediate results as it is the sort of occupation that engages one for a lifetime if all goes well. The concern with ultimate meaning in life and art has elicited an array of responses beyond the scope of this writing. Instead I will speak to subjects of personal consideration, past and present.
Humanity does not exist in a vacuum, metaphorically speaking. For this reason, the prospect of making music that is based strictly on historical precedent or in relation to purely human activity has never offered significant motivation for me. I cannot lay claim to speak for the motivations of all composers for they are as varied as the kinds of music in our world. Personally, the interest in music as a grounds for metaphysical discovery, cosmological representation, and the psychological development which would allow for extending ones epistemological capacity have been primary drivers for an array of sonic experiments that I have performed in private over the course of 20 years.
At this point in my career, there are questions more than answers: How can music be used to expand human awareness of and integration into the cosmos as a whole? What is it that humanity needs to hear through music at this point in time? How can music be used to express the unity of being and the interdependence of the many forces in life? What principles, aesthetic, mathematical, acoustic, psychological, or otherwise determine the meaning of music as it is encoded by creator and as it is then received by listener? To what degree can music as a symbolic language represent knowledge of the cosmos, and what facets of reality is it best suited to express? What are the corresponding sounds of known patterns of a natural order? How can music serve a positive evolutionary function individually or collectively? In what ways does music intersect with human relationship to some absolute of being (The Absolute, Deity, etc) and how can it further elicit this response? What is the role of music in the inner life? What is the future of music in the 21st century as we experience the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the increasing digitization of society?
Given the dramatic re-organization and turmoil that our society has faced in the wake of Covid-19, it is no surprise that one would seek perspective for understanding the meaning of music and musical activity going forward. Much of the musical world has come to a stop almost overnight with no promise of restarting. In doing so, life has seemingly presented a window to examine the role of music on a very personal level. Outside of the possibility of social impact or monetary reward, why do we practice music? What motivation do we have to continue working on this art or towards goals with little or no certainty of those goals being realizable? Moreover, where can we turn as musicians situated in a highly challenging predicament with undeniable economic and psychological effects for definitive answers to these questions?
To set the stage for my current endeavours to meet these kinds of questions, I began building a studio five years prior to the onset of the pandemic. While considering potential future outcomes, it occurred to me that there was a high risk of being placed in a situation in which there was no recourse to access other musicians or production resources at some point, and I began preparing to maintain independent creative activity should this circumstance arrive. At the announcement of the first lockdowns, I had just finished assembling the range of instruments and production equipment envisioned in the initial iteration of the objective, and since then, I have been locked in place with these resources (and a considerable level of financial stress). This time in isolation has been frequented with such questions as previously listed and while I do not yet have sufficient responses to them in musical terms, they are important questions to ask in determining the course of future work. This kind of inquiry is of enough significance to call into question commitments to genres or styles of music making and serves as a necessary stimulus to bring about the kinds of change in perspective and action that a flourishing musical future may require.
A second stroke of serendipity came with the saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman beginning to offer private lessons. My first contact with Steve occurred at the Banff Centre of the Arts in 2014. As the director of the Jazz and Creative Music Program, pianist Vijay Iyer brought Steve in as one of the teachers for the workshop. During seminars, I overheard talk about Steve and the importance of his work creatively and philosophically. It further came to my attention that he was extremely well versed in the philosophical and esoteric literature which had been central to my prior studies (alongside intensive contemplative practice). At this point, I resolved to speak with him and managed to spend about 6 hours with him, and a few others who filtered in and out, covering subjects of music history, esotericism, music theory, Egyptology, Indian culture, and the like. I was and continue to be deeply grateful for his willingness to indulge a young musicians desire for knowledge.
This was by far one of the most important and confirming conversations of my musical life. The value of seeing someone at Mr. Coleman’s stage of creative mastery and accomplishment served to provide validation by example for a path that had previously developed in near complete solitude. Moreover, as a thinker, Steve’s extensive independent research and in-depth understanding of music and a wide array of related subjects places him as one of the most important intellectuals associated with the creative avant-garde.
Returning to recent events, Steve kindly responded to an email and offered that we meet for three lessons which we are still in the process of. In the first lesson, we covered subjects of music as a symbolic language, gestural properties underlying musical symbols, the evolutionary origins of symbol making in language, correspondence thought in the astrological practices of ancient cultures, ideo-kinetics and the ability to play the contents of one’s inner ear, the ability to hear in absolute and relative pitch space, philosopher Hans Kayser and his work “the Textbook of Harmonics”, and the esoteric influence of Danish composer Per Norgard to name a few. With the next lesson set for to cover the subject of the influence of Kayser’s thinking and the ratios underlying astrological phenomena in Steve’s recording entitled Harvesting, Semblances, and Affinities, this will definitely be a valuable object lesson in extra-musical influences in the creative process.
My hope for future growth in this area depends on an existing conviction that the purpose and meaning of music is intertwined with particular set of experiences arising in contemplative practice and a deep-seated wish to communicate these forms of awareness to others. Another promising framework through which to delve into this tangent of meaning is the one delineated in Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game whereby fields of knowledge are linked inter-connectively with music and mystical knowledge as central themes. Nikola Tesla famously quoted ‘If you wish to understand the Universe, think of energy, frequency and vibration.’ Speaking loosely about epistemological method, in terms of a model based on cosmological and psychological resonance that Tesla would surely espouse, there are grades of harmony between mind and cosmos. These come forth with deepening attunement to reality during introspective listening and can become no less than revelatory. Such states vary in intensity and affect and carry with them transformative power. They are also associated with heightened creative energy, and this inevitably stimulates internal and external growth of all kinds. In my own life, these experiences have often provided the general perspective and concrete information required to alleviate the pressures of existential questioning. They serve to assist the mind in answering questions the each person must answer for themselves, should they be answered at all.
While this is by no means a substitute for methods of reason or science and the meticulous research associated with these disciplines, it is both a necessary and complementary component of a complete model of human knowledge. In my own experience, direct and intuitive ways of knowing have provided equally verifiable and accurate information as to the state of reality, in both universal and specific cases, which could not be otherwise accessed in some cases. I will finish by saying here that it is my hope to understand how to effectively translate the meaning and content of such states – and even the states themselves to some limited degree – so as to provide the same good to others through music that has been shared with me in sonic contemplation. At present, I am only at the beginning of gaining the requisite skill for this goal. One is required to gain competence in music, in navigating these kinds of states independently, and in navigating these states in the context of music. An undertaking of this nature takes time, experience, and maturity which I do not expect to fully acquire immediately.