[Dixielandjazz] Space as feeling in music

[Charles Suhor]

Bill & all--

If your intuitions don't line up with Cage's ideas, Buddhist 
perspectives, etc., or if you've got syllogistic arguments to 
"disprove" them, that's your reality and no one can deny its validity 
for you. Your well-reasoned arguments, though, bedsides being 
answerable with other well-reasoned arguments, don't seem to 
acknowledge that paradox and ambiguity are enriching and revealing. 
Paradox and ambiguity are at the center of what Cage, Reimer, and 
Buddhism--not to mention poetry, music and the other arts 
themselves--are all about. Ironically, paradox and ambiguity are the 
source of the clarity that art brings to our experience.

To be fair, it's certainly possible to dig the arts thoroughly and not 
like particular formulations of aesthetic theory and practice, like 
Cage's. I just happen to find those ways of looking at music to be 
useful, both as logical statements and as emotional resonances.

Ambivalent and loving it,

Charlie Suhor



On Apr 15, 2005, at 12:10 PM, Bill Gunter wrote:

> Hi listmates,
>
> Charles Suhor writes (regarding "silence" and "music"):
>
>> In a sense, everything we hear is perceived against a backdrop of 
>> silence.
>
> This is way of saying "silence is something" as opposed to "silence is 
> nothing."
>
> I could restate the issue by saying ". . . everything we hear is the 
> absence of silence."
>
> There is nothing mystical about silence - it's just the absence of 
> noise.
>
> Music, in any sense of the word, must have that element of noise. 
> Without it there is no music. Such idiocies as 4'33" do not strike me 
> as profound as much as they strike me as absurd and hence, at best, 
> funny!
>
> I used to think that 4'33" was deep and that Cage was promoting deep 
> cerebral convulsions in the listeners grey matter.  Today I find the 
> notion puerile and without merit.
>
> Charles goes on to say:
>
>> In the Buddhist tradition, attention to this spacious source is 
>> blissful, and sense impressions of all kinds move through it like 
>> clouds drifting in a clear sky. John Cage was saying something like 
>> this, I believe, when he said we can experience everything as music . 
>> . .
>
> When you say that "everything is music" then you are truly saying 
> "nothing is music."
>
> Music is "special" and if you try to aver that everything is "special" 
> then "special" has no meaning.
>
> There is the story about the Buddhist monk who, when he became 
> "enlightened," found that all his perceptions of the world were false. 
> When he realized the true nature of the universe birds sang special 
> songs for him and all the woodland animals came to him and ate from 
> his hand.
>
> But finally one day he became "fully enlightened" and he discovered 
> that trees were just trees and the birds no longer sang for him and 
> the woodland animals simply ignored him.
>
> Cage was trying to make music something that it isn't and, in the 
> process, produced nothing. 4'33" is the ultimate expression of this 
> folly.
>
> Other than that, Cage was a genius.
>
> Respectfully submitted,
>
> Bill "Running for cover" Gunter
> jazzboard at hotmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Musicologist Bennett Reimer says,
>> "when we approach the transcendent quality of experience, the breadth 
>> we feel is more like silence than sound (even when musical), more 
>> like quietude than action." In the Buddhist tradition, attention to 
>> this spacious source is blissful, and sense impressions of all kinds 
>> move through it like clouds drifting in a clear sky. John Cage was 
>> saying something like this, I believe, when he said we can experience 
>> everything as music, letting all sound play itself to our ears and 
>> into our open consciousness. I don't see this as high-blown puff 
>> talk--I think it describes the way most of us feel in moments of deep 
>> appreciation of anything, and it's accessible on an everyday basis 
>> through cultivation of awareness.
>>
>> Charlie Suhor
>>
>>
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>
>
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