OPM 101 read during the Dead Zone [wrhu.org Sundays 6-8pmEST], which has become the norm for the Sunday readings. This one was particular synchronous because there is a heading atop the meditation for that day: THE MUSICALITY OF LEARNING (all caps in the original). Clearly, I anticipated that if the writing experiment were published the material beginning with the writing on May 25th would fall under that heading, which would possibly be a chapter.
There are some interesting connections between the writing in OPM 101 and some recent pieces I've been reading, and more widely, the work I was doing at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 on music making philosophy, specifically, improvisation. And it was not surprising to read during the Dead Zone: "To become a learner is to show care and concern for the other, but to do this involves a celebration of the many (ta panta). Learning is the celebration of the many. This celebration is another way of describing poetic dwelling. We use the term 'celebrate' to underscore the festive nature of learning as an initiative, improvisation gathering. The improvisational gathering, the festival of the many, gets underway and is guided by that 'voice that determines and tunes' the nature of those who gather. Those who gather, the apprentices, are gathered by a sparing speech that bears the glad tidings of peace and freedom. The open region into which the apprentices leap is revealed as the mysterious and unforeseen path of discovery. Discovery is the improvisation emerging in the give and take of poetic dialogue. The Sage, as maestro directs or guides the apprentices along her path." After reading this I made mention in my commentary of the coincidence of the appearance of this term 'maestro' and the post I made two days ago (OPM 99, May 23rd) which discussed the improvisational and experimental guitar player Keiji Haino.
Following up on that article I cited in OPM 99, I found another interesting pair of articles by Sasha Frere Jones, which circle around John Cage (composer of the piece 4'33''....of silence) and his rejection of studio recording. Only the live performance can capture of spirit of music making for Cage. And Jones suggests this 'suspicion' of recording can be traced by in the 'west' to Socrates' suspicion of writing. This is why I am so interested in what Nietzsche calls the 'music making Socrates,' the one who appears at the beginning of the Phaedo composing lyrics! This is the 'prophetic' Socrates who is envisioning a philosophical writing of the future, the one that is closer to the improvisational dialogue of 'live' conversation. Indeed, THAT is what THESE mediations are all about!!! As I say in my post-reading commentary, this is yet another way of understanding the repetition that happens from one meditation to another: akin to the playing of the familiar so as to create optimal space for the innovative 'solo' (flourish of poetic writing that captures the free movement of thinking).
And in OPM 101 I'm bit conscious of this happening in and through the meditations when I write: "Here [in this meditation], as we go further into the open region of learning, we emphasize what we might now call the 'musicality' of learning, and thereby explore the originary mode of the poetic as performance, as a chanting, a singing, a playing. To fully grasp Learning as the collaborative free play into which we are released by evocative speech, we must explore how and why this message is able to be stirring, and captivating." This is where the phenomenological is heard quite clearly if not loudly, and one might say, heard almost in reverberational way, as a kind of feedback of the ideas re-turning back through the same source aka Hearing the writing, and re-writing the writing that is heard. [this makes 'sense' to me as I write along with the 'Dark Star' that is playing on The Dead Zone at this moment! So consider the conclusion of this blog post a phenomenological description of 'Dark Star' as performed in May 1970 at the Fillmore East, NYC.]
There are some interesting connections between the writing in OPM 101 and some recent pieces I've been reading, and more widely, the work I was doing at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 on music making philosophy, specifically, improvisation. And it was not surprising to read during the Dead Zone: "To become a learner is to show care and concern for the other, but to do this involves a celebration of the many (ta panta). Learning is the celebration of the many. This celebration is another way of describing poetic dwelling. We use the term 'celebrate' to underscore the festive nature of learning as an initiative, improvisation gathering. The improvisational gathering, the festival of the many, gets underway and is guided by that 'voice that determines and tunes' the nature of those who gather. Those who gather, the apprentices, are gathered by a sparing speech that bears the glad tidings of peace and freedom. The open region into which the apprentices leap is revealed as the mysterious and unforeseen path of discovery. Discovery is the improvisation emerging in the give and take of poetic dialogue. The Sage, as maestro directs or guides the apprentices along her path." After reading this I made mention in my commentary of the coincidence of the appearance of this term 'maestro' and the post I made two days ago (OPM 99, May 23rd) which discussed the improvisational and experimental guitar player Keiji Haino.
Following up on that article I cited in OPM 99, I found another interesting pair of articles by Sasha Frere Jones, which circle around John Cage (composer of the piece 4'33''....of silence) and his rejection of studio recording. Only the live performance can capture of spirit of music making for Cage. And Jones suggests this 'suspicion' of recording can be traced by in the 'west' to Socrates' suspicion of writing. This is why I am so interested in what Nietzsche calls the 'music making Socrates,' the one who appears at the beginning of the Phaedo composing lyrics! This is the 'prophetic' Socrates who is envisioning a philosophical writing of the future, the one that is closer to the improvisational dialogue of 'live' conversation. Indeed, THAT is what THESE mediations are all about!!! As I say in my post-reading commentary, this is yet another way of understanding the repetition that happens from one meditation to another: akin to the playing of the familiar so as to create optimal space for the innovative 'solo' (flourish of poetic writing that captures the free movement of thinking).
And in OPM 101 I'm bit conscious of this happening in and through the meditations when I write: "Here [in this meditation], as we go further into the open region of learning, we emphasize what we might now call the 'musicality' of learning, and thereby explore the originary mode of the poetic as performance, as a chanting, a singing, a playing. To fully grasp Learning as the collaborative free play into which we are released by evocative speech, we must explore how and why this message is able to be stirring, and captivating." This is where the phenomenological is heard quite clearly if not loudly, and one might say, heard almost in reverberational way, as a kind of feedback of the ideas re-turning back through the same source aka Hearing the writing, and re-writing the writing that is heard. [this makes 'sense' to me as I write along with the 'Dark Star' that is playing on The Dead Zone at this moment! So consider the conclusion of this blog post a phenomenological description of 'Dark Star' as performed in May 1970 at the Fillmore East, NYC.]
3.0 - Writing on in Philly, early morning, day of the semi-finals of the lax final four. Reading the 2.0 comments and the fragments from 1.0 and I'm struck by my commitment to the Heideggerian discourse. By day 101 I was deep into the language and it was as if the terminology had taken on its own agency. But it in 2004 it really was about the writing, the exploration, the improvisation, the speculation, the desire and commitment. Exploration is an apt description, but so too wandering. Wandering can be strolling, it can be meandering, and it can even imply getting lost. Wandering as Heidegger suggests is also close to wondering. And there was certainly quite a bit of wonder motivating the original project. Today, as I anticipate getting going on my sabbatical book project I am less of a mood of wandering and wonder. Rather I'm in a strategic mood. I'll be writing in a prudent way, and able to offer a direct response to that question I always found so impossible to respond to when asked: who is your audience? In 2004 my audience was myself. That writing was poetic. Hence the "musicality" of the project. I took quite literally and still do the muse's command: "Socrates, make music and work at it!" The fragment from this day of writing that speaks to what I am addressing this morning: the "'voice that determines and tunes' the nature of those who gather." In 1.0 I was referring to the Sage, the one who evokes and thereby calls learning and gathers the learning community. Today I describe this evocation of learning as happening via a pointing to the significant object, the object of study, the text, the question, the idea. I'm more inclined to describe this moment via Plato's Allegory, the "silent" guiding of the one who liberates the cave-dweller, turns him around to what he has never encountered before, specifically to what is more authentic, genuine and real. This is key. The distinction between what the authentic and inauthentic. There is not a spectrum of authenticity. The authentic/inauthentic is a hard distinction. And the authentic is always related back to musicality, to the poetic, because it denotes the original, the origin. Originary thinking is authentic, "of undisputed origin, genuine," as the dictionary puts it. And for me improvisation is the key that opens the door to the writing that is authentic. Improvisation is wandering, because to wander is to move without intention, without a plan. But wandering doesn't necessarily capture the desire for illumination that motivates exploration. And exploration also is linked more closely to learning, to study. Exploration like improvisation is motivated by a desire to encounter something truly original, something that hasn't been encountered before. Discovery? To discover is to unearth, to draw something out of hiding, out of concealment. And this of course is Heidegger's way of describing 'truth' via the Attic aletheia (unconcealment). The writing that is improvisational is authentic, original, and unconcealing something that has been hidden or that is hiding. Why is it hiding or hidden? Because it veiled or shrouded by the mist of inauthenticity, the fog of the fake, covered by what is phoney and bogus.
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