Thinking/Writing [again!] in the stream of
[beginning with “Minglewood Blues” repeated 3-4:
“Doctor man call me crazy,
some say I am, some say I ain’t”
the
repeating jumping to “Althea” 3-4 times, then “Cassidy” (2-3) then jumping to
“China>Rider” and “Estimated” 3-4 times…This run of late December shows from
82 are on my top 3 list of any run of shows.)
“Music
expresses that which cannot be said but and on which it is impossible to be
silent.” –Victor Hugo
Before
(re)turning to the writing/thinking from this day ten years ago, I want to
share some of the gifts I received yesterday:
The first
gifts arrived with the final exams from the the music
education students in this past semester’s undergrad phil of ed course. One of the most compelling is the one offered by my student Elizabeth Woods, who wrote, performed and produced original music. It's brilliant:
[Liz asked
me to remind folks that this is a rough
cut!]
Liz’s final project represents the culmination of two decades of teaching philosophy. Her project (along with 3-4 others I
received in the course) represent the standard for all further demonstrations
of music-making philosophy//philosophy of education made via music. And this precisely how it had to turn out in
this year of music-making philosophy, a year that got underway with the writing
of the paper “Feeling the Funk:
Taking Up Nietzsche’s Prophecy of a Music-Making Philosophy” (presented in Chicago in February, and written
in the wake of the paper “Learning by Jammin,” completed in late 2014), the undertaking of this project in the same
month of February, and the work on Rocha’s Late
to Love in May.
The second
gift from my student James, from his HUHC final response to the first prompt
(taken from my contribution to Rocha’s album):
Duarte,
HUHC Final, Prompt 1. “All
is Given. Or is it? All is not given per se. We can arrive later
than too late. Or we can never arrive
at all. We can get lost in the labyrinth
of choices, and exhaust ourselves at one too many dead ends. Or we can receive the offering, and pass it
along. We can re-present the Giver in the time of music-making. We can say Yes! (Si, se puede!) [Sí, se puede!]
[Duarte,
“Palabras Entre Nosotros,” Late to Love]
I had a copy of Being and Learning with me on the last day of class I – I’d left it
out on my desk when I was removing my teaching materials. A student noticed it and asked to see it,
and a very brief discussion of the book’s cover (cf. top of the page of this
blog), which features a Jackson Pollock painting. This is not the place for an exegesis of
Pollock’s description of the modern artist.
Suffice it to say I am intrigued
by his claim that the modern artist is “working…expressing the energy, the motion, and
other inner forces.” Originally, I had chosen
the Pollock piece because (a) it was made on Long Island (Sag Harbor) – on the east
end of the geographic location where the vast majority of the meditations were
written, and (b) he painted while listening to jazz. [nb: Coltrane composed his A
Love Supreme in Dix Hills, which is 13.2 miles northeast of Amityville,
where I wrote the majority of the mediations]
The
next gift came from many of my HUHC student finals, which took up of Paul’s
confrontation with the law via faith, a confrontation that discloses the
apostle’s paradoxical diff’rence (identified by Kierkegaard, and taken up
in yesterday’s [12/25/14] commentary):
Duarte, HUHC Final, Prompt 4.:
Faith versus the Law? What ‘faith’ and what ‘law’? Paul’s Letter to the
Galatians: 3: “I want to learn only one
thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by
believing what you heard” (Galatians
3:1-3); “the Law has become our tutor to
lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith” (3:24).
Indeed, what ‘faith’ and what ‘law’ is Paul referring
to? And, what’s more, how about this
‘learning’? Further, the need to take up
the contrast between “doing the works of the law” and “believing what you
heard”. By now (over ten months into
this project) it is quite obvious that I am inclined to go wholeheartedly with
Paul on privileging listening [as recently as yesterday, in fact, I wrote in my
commentary about “the sonic conversion of
Saul. The calling of Paul that is so
profound, and powerful, sonically, that all who hear it are rendered
speechless, and, Saul is without sight, and can only hear, for three days. From Acts III: 9…”(12/25/14)]. But this excerpt from Galatians is calling out for an exegesis
that will examine closely the tutorial of the Law that leads us to Christ. Indeed, what kind of teaching and learning is
happening via that ‘tutor’? I suspect
it has something to do with the faith that is propelled by listening, a
listening that hears the teaching that offers the Spirit. And it seems, further, that Paul himself in
asking his question is anticipating a response that will convey the very sonic
force that moves faith. “I want to learn only one thing from you…” Yet, I’m left wondering about
this work that is done.
The final gift I want to share is the one from Rocha, what
he titled: “An
improvised poem, for Christmas”
Nativity, natality, native ancient song
Sings in voices of magic tones, intoned
Incarnate lover, fleshy skin, a new cry into darkness
Fragile hope, soon to flee, Imperial threat abides
Friends we've been, brothers became, blood of spirit life
Life sustained, words poured out, melody and dance
Thanks I give to Christ and Church for my blessed Hand
Brother who I never had, (re)born in Bethlehem
May our past remain in futural skys and sea
May your harvest be rich with generosity
May their prayers keep us grounded in the mission corn
May His light shine
“How does this rapture with the Being of beings
unfold? First and foremost, the
aesthetic state is the principal modality of learning as…”
As
documented in yesterday’s (12/25/14) commentary, the preceding “fragment
written on 12/24…is suspended on 12/25, begins with a question…”
…and
the fragment is suspended “the principal modality of learning as…”
On
12/26/04 that sentence is picked up in
media res, and completed as “steadfast openness, expressed through the
tacit acknowledgement of the relationship with the Nothing, which as claimed us.” Hence: the principal modality of learning =
steadfast openness. That is, the
originary modality is steadfast openness aka (com)passionate listening. And here it is important to reiterate the
commentary from 12/24/14, which described the fundamental relation between
originary listening and the Nothing: “What is offered, then, via the Open,
is the possibility of music-making: fecund
Silence. This is why the First
Question is announced as “How is it with the Nothing?”(BL 322) The Nothing is the fecund Silence. Using Kantian styled language for the
description we might call it the a priori
condition for the possibility of music-making philosophy. The First Question’s calling is received as
“the ceaseless arrival of [the]
invitation…the call to create [make music]…”(BL 323) Originary thinking
is initiated by listening, by the reception of the resounding call of fecund Silence, the breath before
the arrival of Logos.”
When
the Nothing claims us this seizure
happens sonically; it is a sonic seizure, or a calling (vocare). And with this
seizure we identify further demonstration of Heraclitus’ “We
must know that war (πόλεμος
polemos) is common to all and strife
is justice (dike eris), and that all
things come into being through strife necessarily.” How does polemos appear in the Nothing’s claim? By steering “the silencing of the juridical
voice and the ‘self-enclosure’ of the egoistic posture that ‘measures’ all that
it encounters. The ruminations and
calculations of this ego cogito are silenced in the rapture of the aesthetic
state, muted by the carnivalesque spectacle of sights and sounds encountered
with Being’s movement.”(BL 323) [I suspect I was thinking/writing while
listening to GD show…and/or using the experience of being at a GD show as the basis of the metaphoric description of
Being’s movement.]
πόλεμος
(Polemos) steers the movement into learning via ‘shock
and awe’ – [in 2004, a most deliberate
qualification of the sonic seizure; an attempted deconstruction of the then
circulating ideology, that logic of lies that was being promulgated by the residents
of 1600 Penn Ave.] “…the awe…the shock,
fear and anxiety of this an-archic dispersal that signals the irreducible
complexity of Being’s performance…draws the learner in-to the unfathomable
source, the ‘special’ space from whence this performance un-folds.”(BL 323)
On
12/26/04 the description Nothing, denoted in the recent 2.0 commentaries as fecund Silence, is rendered
cartographically as “the ‘special’ space.” “This space is coupled with
‘temporality’ (the signature of Being’s dynamic {fugal} unconcealment)…”(BL 323)
The phenomenological reduction to the originary discloses: the Nothing, fecund Silence, the Open; all ‘resting’
in the atemporal//kairological Eternal. In turn, the phenomenology of the originary
is huacaslogical
(a thinking in/or sacred place). This
designation, which appeared in my contribution to Lapiz volume 1, was on 12/26/04 disclosed through the stark
category of ‘spatiality,’ the quality of the ‘special’ space or Space.
1. “Spatiality,
like the air, remains the hidden presence of the most essential, but, unlike
the archaic principles of the Milesians, space is not a material first
‘substance’…”(BL 323)
2. “Space is
the immaterial phenomenon of the Open itself that remains the most hidden and
concealed…”(BL 323)
3. “Space
remains the other of all matter, including the ‘mysterious’ matter of
electromagnetic waves.” (BL 323)
4. “Space
is the boundless boundary through which the heterogeneous continuum moves; that
fecund and fallow ground from when existence appears and happens.” (BL 323)
5. “Spatiality
is the gift of possibility.” (BL 323)
6. “The
attempt to deny the presence of spatiality is oppression, the radical
confinement and enclosure, the fore-closure upon the futural.” (BL 323)
7. “To
dwell in/with the profundity of spatiality, herein is the essence of the
aesthetic state.” (BL 323)
8. “The
artist dwells in the radical openendedness of spatiality, moving, unbound, in
this boundless boundary.” (BL 323)
9. “The
work of art is a disruption of the circulation of the same that en-opens the
spatiality of space as the preserve of possibility, the abode for the arrival
of the futural, the in-effable.” (BL
324)
10.
“To learn is to abide in the rapture
of the aesthetic state that dwells in the ‘special’ spatiality of the Open, the
Space that is the comport-ment of …openness, the cup bearing the emptiness of
peace and preserving and protecting the production of the everlasting new, the
Eternal em-bodiment of humanity’s Imagination.” (BL 324)
**It
has just occurred to me that the
preceding must have been the last
line from what must have been the
meditation I completed on 12/25/04! I
simply forgot to date the meditation on 12/25, and, yesterday, I simply took
for granted the integrity of my dating/coding system. But there is noticeable break in the
thinking/writing that concludes with the sentence that makes up thesis 10
above, and the first sentence of the next paragraph, which begins in media res a description of “the
invitation” offered by the sage.
--
[“Don’t worry about me, don’t worry about
me, no; don’t worry about me…”] --
So,
at this point in my commentary, I turn, briefly, to the shift that occurs when
the sonic seizure is described as
mediated by the sage, who returns on the scene.
“The beckoning of the sage…is a vocare
(calling) as a re-calling of this originary event…”(BL 324) The learner receives
and responds to this (re)calling by moving into the Open where the sage dwells,
and thus begins the dialogic building, dwelling, thinking of the learning
community.
--
[“…Ain’t not time to call your soul a
critic now…Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world….The heart
has it seasons, evenings and songs of its own.”] –
The
dialogic building, dwelling, thinking of the learning community: “the work of the artistic performance,” (BL 324) “the work of the learning, as an
artistic performance, takes up [the] ex-cessive spilling over of Being that
marks the presencing of the Being of beings…”(BL 324)
--
[“Drums”] --
If
the calling (vocare) is mediated
(called) by the sage, then the work must be an mimesis that is no simple ‘imitation’ but a mediation of the Present presencing; the art work of the learning
community is happening via koinōnia,
a steering gathering: “to be with this presencing is to be (re)-collected in
the gathering of the essential sway of the Eternal irrupting in/with the
mortal. The artwork is the
(re)presentation of this irruptive presencing, the poetic response that en-acts
the Embodiment of the Eternal…Learning is the on-going birth of wonder. The artwork (re)presents the birth of the new
and is an expression of the re-collection of natality and the reception of the
(re)calling of the originary dispensation.
The work of the artist…is an expression of the openness of the Open…the
response is mimetic…re-presents the improvisational
process…The work of art conveys the spontaneity of Being…The poetic of the
dialogic event is thus an expression and (re)presentation of the aesthetic
state, a conveying of the spontaneity and ex-cessiveness of Being. The dialogic event en-acts and em-bodies the
essential sway of Being.”(BL 325)
11.
“The work of the artist is a
response to the heightened awareness of the stand(ing) in/with the special
spatiality of the Open, which situates before the en-openning of the futural.”
(BL 325)
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