Writing/thinking in the stream of
[this is a classic early
show from the Avalon Ballroom in SF, CA -- poster above -- featuring a 20min ‘Dark Star.’ Another exquisite Charlie Miller
soundboard. Miller is the concealed sage
that discloses so many of the best archived shows. The set runs just over
84mins, which is the average amount of time I spend when writing my
commentaries.]
I see that the delivery
of my ancient Greek text book just arrived! Need to note that. Jaime just now brought it up to my studio:
“I have a present for you…a new book!”
Thank you son!
Last night I was
memorizing the alphabet alpha to omega, and wrote λόγος for the first time from
within; λόγος had to be the first word written…and on the PES war room board, of course!
“Tuning”…on cue snow
begins falling.
There are some marginal
notes on the pages of the original pages.
Meditations from 1/23 & 1/24/05 overlap on p. 574 of the original
manuscript. And at the top right corner
of p. 574 the note: “the Grooves, the down-beating of teaching.” And on the top of p. 575: “teaching as
contra-puntal, counter-pointing,” and “the Openness as Riff.” Today I read those
notes as indicating the technical language of music-making philosophy, and I’m
envisioning the writing a very short book (under 100 pages, and closer to 75
pages) under the title Handbook of
Music-Making Philosophy, which would have the form of reference book. I’m looking up at my book case for an
example and the example jumping off the top shelf is Zarlino’s The Art of Counterpoint, which has received some attention in the pages
of this blog and elsewhere. For example
in the commentary OPM 302(303), 12/18/14, which is
organized around the describing the seizure of the student as, from the side of
the student, an experience of rapture:
Thinking
rapture as the state experienced in passion leads me to quickly review OPM 260
thru 300, and search for ‘passion’ in those 59k words. The search leads me to discover that moment
when ‘passion’ is separated from ‘compassion,’ specifically ‘compassionate
listening’ (thinking of the heart through which agapē makes its
appearance). ‘Passion’ makes its appearance
in OPM 294(295),
December 9th, on the day that begins by
paying homage to Coltrane’s A Love
Supreme, on the 50th anniversary of its recording. ‘Passion’ emerges through a citation of an endnote from my paper “Retrieving
Music’s Soulful Education”: “Gioseffo Zarlino’s 1558 The Art of Counterpoint (1558). Zarlino interests me because he emphasizes
the power of music to move the listener by “inducing” passions.” Zarlino’s describes what he calls harmonia propria, which includes both
consonance and dissonance, and can induce passions. The ‘proper’ (propia) music is the one capable of inducing passions. In my debate with Arendt I turned to
Schoenberg and thus developed a category of a ‘higher harmony,’ but Zarlino is
equally helpful. There isn’t anything coincidental about ‘passion’ appearing
apart from ‘compassion’ on the 50th anniversary of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and for it to be
introduced as existential event that is induced
from without by music. Indeed, this
is where we discover the originary state
of rapture from whence unfolds learning as music-making philosophy. – [The “Uncle John’s Band” from 12/18/93 is
remarkable…and only today after 40 years of listening to the Grateful Dead have I
understood that Uncle John is the Gospelist John!!! Yesterday, 1 hr and 53mins
of Bach’s The Passion of St. John,
today, the Grateful Dead’s 12/18/93 unusually long 23:06 “Uncle John’s
Band”: “oh oh, I want to know, how does
the song go? Come hear Uncle John’s band, by the riverside, got some things to
talk about here beside the rising tide. Come hear Uncle John’s band playing to
the tide, come on along or go alone, he’s come to take his children
home…………….”] --
This
12/18/14 commentary is revisited the very next day when I make a correction of
my reading of “Uncle John,” whom Kelly correctly (I think) identifies as John
the Baptist. The 12/19/14 is also the
most read post of B&L 2.0,
because it was in the midst of that post that I announced the Masked
Philosophers Ball! Its already been well
over a month since that announcement, which has attracted a lot of attention
and received almost unanimous praise and support.
“All
grace for instruments are known.”
[memo
to GD 50th planning committee:
open the first night in Chicago with “Cryptical Envelopement”…you
know: “The other day they waited…” and
then please drop into “New Potato
Caboose” and just let the classic melt down via Lesh get the proceedings
underway 20 mins into the anniversary
celebration. Just follow the format of 1/24/69! ]
Originary
thinking as a beating down of the groove; the grooves, the down-beating of
teaching. Sure, talking of teaching as
happening through ‘beating’ can be misunderstood. Especially if someone has the tendency toward
the humorless malapropism and ‘by accident’ switches the term so that instead
of the teacher establishing a groove through the down-beating of his active
listening (evocative questioning), the teacher is described as beating down
upon the students. There is no such
beating down, but there certainly is a beating back, a renouncement, a
renunciation (recall Heidegger’s citation of Rilke and Holderlin: ‘Soon we
shall be song’ and ‘Song is existence’ that happens by way of the poet’s
renunciation). This is the context for
the beginning of the mediation on 1/24/05: “The beating back en-acted by
teaching re-sounds the beckoning toll of silence that echoes the hidden harmony
of the mysterious presencing of Being…”(BL
357)
‘Beating
back’ and ‘down-beating’ denote something other than a dialectic, something
other than what Ewert Cousins calls the ‘coincidence of opposites,’ although I
suspect the later may be what is happening in this twofold double sided action,
understood in the language of force as the simultaneity of
repulsion/propulsion. This not yet named relational ‘logic’ is fundamental,
appearing in the basic relation of Being/becoming, originary/original,
concealment/unconcealment, and now rhythm/melodic.
The appearance now (today) of the
pair rhythm/melody (or rhythm/melodic) compelled me to do a cursory
etymological search of ‘melody’ and discovered that its roots are in the ancient Greek melos (‘song’). And this works well in thinking the pair,
in thinking music-making philosophy as happening through student ‘singing’ or
‘song’. To paraphrase Rilke and
Holderlin: with learning we move into
the realization of existence as song.
Soon we will be song! And, what’s
more, the emphasis placed on learning as singing leaves in place teaching as the offering of the more fundamental down-beat, or what Rocha calls ‘the one
beat’, which, if I hear him, denotes the pulse of the human heart; that is, can
be reduced to the heart beat and/or is the actualization of the heart beat via
drumming. (Perhaps Rocha will make a
cameo appearance and clarify this?) Yet, the cursory etymological search also
revealed the not yet understood relation between mélos (μέλος)
as ‘melody’ (‘song’) and as parts of a
‘body’ (‘limb’ or ‘instruments,’ such as ‘instruments of war’ or ‘working
parts’ of a ship.) It was Paul who appropriated μέλος from its Hellenic origin as a description of the community
of faith who are gathered together as parts (members, instruments?) of Christ’s
mystical body (Eph 5:30).
What
then is the link or connection between the collection of notes (via voice or
instrument) that make ‘melody’ and the collection of bodies/souls (people) that form a
‘community’. Here, it seems, I have
encountered the place where music-making philosophy and the learning community
co-arise, where mélos and koinōnia co-arise. [I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised this
disclosure is happening during the 1/24/69 “Dark Star,” precisely at that
moment -- c. 17min -- when Garcia begins then stops to sing the third and final
stanza, “Mirror shatters….”?)
All
that commentary in response to the first line from 1/24/05...but in the set from 1/24/69, the “Lovelight” is already underway…so
only about 13mins remaining. [Jaime is
chomping at the bit to get outside in this snow!]
What
is beaten down is the self. Teaching
gets underway after self-overcoming, and, for me, there is no going back, and
here is where the pivot will happen when, at some point, I make a critical
respose to Irigaray’s description of ‘thinking’ as a return to the self. With her I am identifying listening as the
point of departure for teaching and for making what she calls the ‘new logic
of/for the co-existence in difference.’
And I am adding, emphatically, the description of this listening as
active, as a responsive prompting question-posing listening. In this sense it is a ‘hearing’ in the
jurisprudential sense of the term. Yet,
with the beating down of the self, the denouncement of the didactic magisterial
voice of the know-it-all, is “the down
beating of the juridical voice [that] re-sounds as the steady cadence of
steadfast openness that en-opens the ground and makes way for the creation of
the new, the improvisational performance.”(BL
357)
To
conclude along with the set from 1/24/69, with “Drums”, i.e., with Sentences on
essential down-beating of the teaching:
1.
“we also identify this re-pulsion
as the pulse of the down beating rhythm of the groove as the riff that maintains the constancy of
rhythm and estables the en-opened ground from which the new makes its
appearance.”(BL 357)
2. “riff is ‘a short rhythmic jazz figure
repeated without melodic development and often serves as a background of solo
improvisation.’”(BL 357, Websters
Third Inter.)
3. “to
give the name riff …is to identify the
teacher’s renunciation as the positive negation of the contra-puntal that
conducts (transmits and arranges) the event of unveiling that ‘enlivens’ by
contrast or juxtaposition.”(BL 357)
4. “The
counterpointing unfolds as the teacher’s down beating of ‘labeling’ that
operates under a logic of identity and the principle of non-contradiction.”(BL 358)
5. “This
down-beating conducts the contradiction that en-opens the space, the gap from
where differentiation appears.”(BL
358)
6. “the
contra-diction, the counter-saying…welcomes the excess of the poetic, the
in-effability of the ‘not yet.’” (BL
358)
7.
“The with-holding of the juridical
is the counter-point rhythm that expresses the (re)-pulsion of the beat (pulse)
that dispenses the differentiation of difference arising with the spontaneous
birth of the new and the arrival of the strange and uncanny…”(BL 358)
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