[Proposal] Cosmos Café - Music Edition

Indeed!

Reflecting on what one resonates with musically, especially at particular times, can tell us a lot about where we might be cosmically even … well, if pursued long and deep enough. Berendt’s book, which I added to the Reading/Watching/Listening section above (and which I happen to be reading at the moment), deals with that notion specifically. (He’s a jazz professor who is familiar with both Kayser and Gebser.) 'Twould be a fascinating, and I think, multidimensional, chat.

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Quick note: in an effort to reduce the mechanical footprint flattening my life, I am not participating in tech. use on weekends or after the sun goes down on weekdays. If I seem aloof or unresponsive, this is likely the reason. As a result…I have been listening to more music and developing a bit more soul.


Much to add to this thread. I will begin with direct intergenerational connection thorugh music. I introduced Miles, my five year old son, to Tortoise’s TNT album two years ago. I was searching for audio that was relevant to my life and went beyond the radio, which is tuned to the classical station in the car and hardly used in the house. Tortoise is considered post-rock. Though I could launch into Tortoise’s history and style(s)…I am focusing on this particular album and its story in my life.

TNT has been on a nightly loop since I placed the old CD (now 20 years old!!) into the player, after an evening spent rummaging through my not-so-compact teenage disc collection. Miles and I have listened to this album nightly…if we travel, the music is the missing blanket that can luckily be replaced with a quick search on YouTube for “Tortoise TNT full album” (though if you choose to listen via YouTube, you will miss the infinite subtleties of the artists’ instrumentation).

We camp with this album, roasting marshmallows with the marimba on “Ten Day Interval,” a song influenced by Steve Reich’s signature style; we swim into the depths of dark nights and angry outbursts of young male misunderstandings, treading silent speech as we contemplate the song “Four-Day Interval.” Miles does not fall asleep until he reaches track 4, “I Set My Face to the Hillside” which begins with a dubbing of kids playing while a Spaghetti Western riff enters the scene. I have spent many nights laying beside his bed as we read our books, soaking in the complex rhythms of the two drummers and the various other layers of instrumentation. I have noticed on multiple occasions his humming and hand drumming reflect the complex rhythms of Tortoise. My personal favorite is “Swung from the Gutters;” It gets more elusive with each listen…even after 2 years of passive and active listening, I still do not know how they put this song (and album) together.

My first experience listening to the album is engraved in memory. I was playing chess with a high school friend. Engrossed in the game and in our heightened state of awareness, the wordless music generated a zone. The game was not just a game of chess in that moment. We were playing the game of life. There was no intention of winning the game. Only the complexity revealed itself and we proceeded in a creative dance until the pieces were in the exact spot that they needed to be in.


I like this quote from John McEntire (a member of the band who edited and engineered this album)…I think it reflects what we do here, especially in this thread:

“I don’t think we played anything simultaneously: every single element was overdubbed. Somebody would put down an idea, loop it, or whatever, somebody would come in and lay something else down and then go back and work on the arrangement some more, and then somebody else would come in… it was this sort of piecemeal, forward-then-back-a-little approach.”

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I am agog with anticipation for this topic to unfurl. Rhythm is the pulse of life, and music is words is mathematics. Perhaps music is one of the more elegant ways to try to describe the multi-layered vibratory undulations that animate our moment-to-moment lives, which we normally digest unconsciously. A method of processing that resonates far even beyond words or culture. I look for the music, the coordinated rhythms, in the pulsing, living, dynamic organizations for whom I consult professionally. I am engaged, consciously or not, in this study daily, upon reflection. Intuitive pattern-seeking processes are a big part of how I grow professionally and artistically. For these reasons enumerated and all unspeakable tones on a scale of sheer delight, I would be ears wide open for this undertaking. Thank you all for your creative geniuses, for playing your melody on your instrument :violin::drum::trumpet: The Cafes seem to always be murmuring nearby, like a kindly brook, supporting, whether directly or indirectly at points, the stream of my life. :pray: :musical_note: :blush: :musical_note:

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Thank you kindly, for expanding the focus here.

In consonance with what I hear you saying, let me remind our motley crew of our engagement with the Meru material, there and then … and that Stan Tenen (and others) are fairly certain that Creation itself has its own musical expression.

And let us not forget, Kepler’s (and others’) music of the spheres, and maybe even the “music of DNA”.

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Good for you, for limiting the god of tech to serve YOU! I am trying to do that same thing, Almost got into a “fight” with someone insisting i break my vow not to use tech in the morning hours, they kept saying, “but it’s only once, it’s only turning on computer for a minute to…blah blah”. Only? It makes all the difference…
It helps to have co-conspirators-- breathing together, ha! around this de-tech-tive work, finding out what works and what doesn’t. And sticking with it, in spite of endless"onlys".

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Here is a song for St. Patty’s day, via the Instagram feed—which I visit for official editorial research purposes (even on a Sunday, this is how hard I work!)—of a poet I am (slowly) interviewing for a Metapsychosis feature, @karinabush. A searing song by Sinead O’Connor, which she posted along with this literary note:

Some of the lyrics inspired by a W.B. Yeats poem from 1916, ‘No Second Troy’, written for his longtime love Maud Gonne, the actress-turned-revolutionary who fought for the Irish nationalist cause and for women’s rights:

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

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This is haunting, keep replaying it, thanks, Marco.

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It was a little spooky for me to see it, because I have been working on a poem that’s set upon “the shores of Illium.”

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I so prize that kind of “spooky”, it’s a gift! I look for it, always, whatever I’m doing.
Can you say more about what you’re doing? Or if you feel the time is not right
because you’re in the midst, I’ll just look forward to finding out more.

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A little math back-up. I found this a pleasant little piece.

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That’s awesome.

Next, let’s try a twelve-tone scale… :smiling_imp:

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I thought this might be inspirational to get Musical Edition Cafe’ enacted,not just across the table…across cyberspace.Please anybody that has possibilities,especially those who have brought forward some great music examples & ideas on music.My desire is to bring forward the musicality of voices on Cosmos Cafe’ in ensemble expression,let the experiment begin!

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Well you have “caught” my attention! Let’s talk it out across the Café table . . .

. . . as mentioned the Café is closed this week, but that doesn’t mean we cannot go dancin’ in the street. Who ever is feeling the beat can show up on the patio, daddy-o, and lay down grooves in the concrete jungle. As @Mark_Jabbour is the guy that often starts the session with some muzak, it would be great if he could attend. I know I said I wouldn’t be showing up, got work to do, but if I hear outdoor sounds from within the office doldrums, I might be lured to sit for a spell. Take note, too, that even if music is the focus of this discussion, we still have an infinite array of musical conversations to be had in future weeks; from cosmic rhythms and black hole blues to the sounds that ground us in who we are and have become, or something like that. :comet:

If you wish to be present for the Zoom line, follow the thread below. If it ends up just being one soul on the line, belt out your own tune. I had fun singing “Everybody is a Star” sometime last year. Let it all hang down!

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An after-thought, one-hit wonder … but one of my favorites:

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This a Gathering of Artists of an Era , Jamming for a Vision!

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Love that song!

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That one, too! yeah!

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Heard that in 1996 when we were here in the Fatherland exploring our options for maybe returning.

The last time I had bought a “single” (remember those? 45s?) was probably back in 1965, but I bought that one (yes, you get get CDs of singles here then. Go figure. (The last time before that was in 1995, on a business trip to Bothell (near Seattle … the little company I worked for had been acquired by a major medical-instrument manufacturer there, so I spent a lot of time “up north”, training sales personal and fighting with engineering over documentation) when Sinead O’Connor’s rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” lilted out of the rental-car radio, and had to pull off the road to listen to it to the end … whoda thunk it was about quitting smoking? Another case of music works wonders.

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