JC HeislerOne cannot rehearse tradition; one observes and LIVES a tradition…or not.
Tradition fashions by consequence of its boundaries, extolling awareness upon one’s unique personhood in THIS specific time and space.
To create is an indictment, to DARE to DECIDE. It is not to cajole, try, convince, preserve, nor replicate.
NO ONE, can stand in for you.
Music is a language that we must take seriously.
It is the language of the unseen, the language of the intellect, the language of the heart, the invocation of the soul, the choreography of the body, the architecture of the mind, the physics of sonority, the meaning of silence, the movement in all life’s patterns, processes, and ways, the emancipator of the poet, the sonic conjuring of spirit… So you see this is a very serious study.
We who are musicians should strive to get as close to music as we possibly dare.
Thich Nhat Hanh
adaptation by JC Heisler
To perceive always means to perceive some thing. We believe that the object of our perception is outside of the subject. But that is not correct. When we perceive the music, the music is us. When we hear the music, the music is the object of our perception.
The music is our consciousness; it is the object of our perception. It is our perception. Perception means, the coming into existence of the perceiver and the perceived. The music that we hear is part of our consciousness. The idea that our consciousness is outside of the music has to be removed. It is impossible to have a subject without an object. It is impossible to remove one and retain the other.
The source of our perception, our way of hearing, lies in our store consciousness. If ten people listen to a symphony, there will be ten different perceptions of it. How the symphony is perceived depends on our mind; our memories, our experiences, our emotions. Our perceptions carry with them all the errors of subjectivity; then we praise, blame, condemn, or complain, depending on our perceptions. But our perceptions are made of our afflictions, craving, anger, ignorance, wrong views, and prejudice. Whether we are happy or we suffer, depends, largely on our perceptions. It is important to look deeply at our perceptions and know their source.
We have an idea of excellent performing. We believe that only certain conditions will make us perform well. But it is often our idea of an excellent performance that prevents us from performing well. We have to look deeply into our perceptions in order to become free of them. Then, what has been a perception becomes an insight, a realization of the sounds. It is a clear listening, hearing things as they are. Our performing excellence and the performance of those around us, depend on our degree of Right Hearing. Touching reality deeply, knowing what is going on inside and outside of ourselves, is the way to liberate ourselves from the suffering that is caused by wrong perceptions. Right Hearing is not an ideology, a system, or even a path. It is the insight we have into the reality of music’s invocations; a living insight that fills us with melody, harmony, rhythm, understanding, peace, and love.
Sometimes we see our apprentices doing things we know will cause them to suffer in the future. But when we try to tell them, they will not listen. All we can do is stimulate the seeds of Right Hearing within them, and then later, in a challenging moment, they may benefit from our guidance. We cannot explain an orange to someone who hasn’t tasted one. No matter how well we describe it, we cannot give someone else the direct experience; he must taste it for himself. As soon as we say a single word, the pupil is caught. Right Hearing cannot be described, we can only point in the correct direction. Right Hearing cannot even be transmitted by a teacher. A teacher can help us identify the seed of Right Hearing that is already in our ear’s garden, and help us have the confidence to practice, to entrust that seed to the soil of our daily performance creation. But the apprentice is the gardener. Each apprentice must learn how to water the wholesome seeds that are in themselves, so that the sonorities are sung of generous Right Hearing.
The instruments for watering wholesome seeds is Mindful Listening, Mindful Breathing, Mindful Practice, Mindful Performing; living each moment Hearing in Mindfulness.
Image teaching uses words and ideas. Substance teaching communicates performance through the art form. When you are caught in your perceptions and ideas, you loose the reality of creation from within the art form. To practice is to go beyond ideas so that you can be present to the such-ness of music’s evocations within you in every moment.
Artists… just take the plunge. Not a soul can go with you, nor follow you: this is precisely why YOU are here.
The problems cannot be solved politically, the problems cannot be solved religiously, the problems cannot be solved militarily, the problems cannot be solved scientifically.
The problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created the the problems in the first place.
Stop. Calm. Rest.
You may only hope to confront the treachery of the problems, artistically. The opposite of entropy, is the creative act. The arts as a means to an end is a hogwash lie.
Any discipline claiming to have the order of consciousness understood can be dismissed. No conscious being can ever explain the consciousness that which manifested it into existence.
Do not bastardize the artistic action degrading it to the cessation of the senses; nor the self aggrandizement of the intellect.
I don’t believe in the subconscious or the unconscious; only the conscious. Art lives at the edge of conception; that which manifests in the psyche of the child, immediately.
There is so much talent; very little awareness and discipline.
So depressing.
The Arts are not a business. Entertainment is a business.
The Arts survive by way of patronage. This is a completely different commitment to the creation of artifacts and aesthetic.
I am not here to entertain.
I am here to offer clear, honest, and genuine artistic communication in order to enter into an aesthetic relationship with a community so as to be challenged, to celebrate, and respectfully respond to life.
Art is communicated and understood through a particular discipline of precepts and limitations specific to the practices of a creative form.
Art is communicated, and understood by way of its own literary intelligence; imbued with the potentiality to transcend knowledge and experience.
The greatest teachers I have had are the ones that knew when they were speaking technically in a way that fostered curiosity, trial and error, and insisted that I think deeply independent; as they were adamant that I was critically aware of my own experiences of playing the instrument.
They rarely gave me dogmatic solutions and they afforded me a severe amount of freedom that forced me to rely on and develop my own awareness, instincts, and judgments. This was a massive gift, and a horrific indictment; to take full and complete responsibility for all of my foolishness, liabilities, and ignorance.
I am grateful now, to have been so singularly challenged with this type of apprenticeship. It gave me the chance to develop an autonomous; independent and un-coerced encounter with history and repertoire: to be fully formed in the music. Profound artifactual creation occurs within a time and space where the most serious and personal part of one’s ontology is manifested.
In a letter to a friend, he advised: “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” – Thomas Merton
Two monks are arguing about a flag. One says, “The flag is moving.” The other, “The wind is moving.” A third walks by and says, “Not the wind, not the flag; the mind is moving.”
“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves.” – Thomas Merton
“(Practice) does not have to be hard labor. Just allow your body and mind to rest, like an animal in the forest. Don’t struggle. There is no need to attain anything. I am writing a book, but I am not struggling; I am resting also. Please read in a joyful yet restful way.”
“Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest. Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.”
“Stopping, Calming, and Resting, are preconditions for healing.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
In the beginning, the Quality of your Intention Objectifies your Developing Technique.
Impartial Observation affords the opportunity to collect data from countless repetitions.
Is it easier? Is my Vivid Aural Imagination Coherently Arresting my performance?
Once an accurate technique is coordinated, then Practice May Commence.
The body must only respond to the stimuli of the musician’s inner ear. The depth of intent and clarity of expression solely depend on one’s ability to respond to the solitary stimulus that actually matters; that is the creation and manifestation of music from within, before any note is ever played.
Therefore developing the inner ear through refining the skills of musicianship is the artist’s truest, urgent, and most necessary work. It is in this way that technique is coordinated and maintained, freeing aesthetic to imbue.
Did you know the entirety of twelve-tone chromaticism is not represented within the harmonic series until the 25th ratio? This pitch is identified diatonically as the submediant, la’, or the relative minor in relation to the fundamental.
This is, of course, if you consider the harmonic series’ seventh ratio to be a lowered 7th (not a raised 6th). There are some special melodies within this celestial hierarchy, resonating physic’s laws.
“I think you can’t be afraid when you go on stage. If you’re afraid that you’re not going to do well enough, then you’ll just be trying to replicate what you think other people want you to do; and replicating is never the way to convince people that you know what you are doing.” – Hilary Hahn
