Watching the lighting designer construct volumes, cages, waterfalls, geometries with light fixtures and haze, my mind is blown that anyone could conceive of containing light this way.
The Audio Engineer moving his hands across the sound board as he listens, I am struck by how clearly he trusts his ability to hear subtleties, to know as sound lands in his body what his hands must do to tune the white noise output. There is no part of me that I trust so much. This is not any different than any other audio engineer, but I am just now able to see the relationship between what needs to be done and its extreme reliance on a sensory function.
The Orchestra breathes together, riding the same roller coaster of feeling and internalized metronome, creating a baseline tension so other sounds can ripple in and out. It is a story. Building and falling, it has an arc, instrumental music may be a more pure, elemental version of a story even. I think as I listen how dance may be an attempt to tell the story of the music through the responses in their bodies, but that seems too simple for the richness of the interactions between instruments taking place.
it feels like a lot of magic and waiting, like waking up and individual moments layered together, with a few places where all of the soloists come to a similar melodic conclusion. Its almost impossible not to attach images in my head to the music - does that distract or enhance my relationship to it?
How do the soloist's voices help tell the story? what are they saying?
This is more dynamic than watching a movie, since we can experience multiple individual stories/reactions unfolding around us all at the same time - true complexity is available here. And suddenly the places where they are tied together melodically become striking, pronounced.
What happens if I let my whole body be available to perceive this experience?
What if I give myself over to the moment, the way I let movies embrace my awareness?
Watching musicians handling their instruments to make the sound caressing my body, at what point is it like there is no air between us, and they are caressing me directly?
Do I hold on to the sounds? Do they accumulate in my body like food or semen?
Do they get metabolized?
Do I bond with or defend against them?
If sound is touch at a distance, how am I allowing myself to be handled?
How is hearing just the beginning of listening? Am I even in the labyrinth, or just lost at the entrance? Maybe, like heisenberg's principle, making a choice about where I am negates the ability to be both places at once.
Fabric of light, fabric of sound waves stitched together. Noticing how it touches me distracts from my ability to discern or make up a story. The light framing the space shifts our sense of where the sounds emanate from and how those sounds respond to the cavernous space around us.
How rare is it that our audiences possess the intimate knowledge of what we are shaping to be able to tell our stories in whatever medium. How does that potentially limit our ability to communicate/be heard/seen/witnessed/understood/validated?
Rhythm of bodies and bows drawn across violins, in tandem, together.
Movies can imply complexity. But they can't give me what I am currently experiencing. Like waves, currents, creatures moving underwater and rain on the surface, everything shifting and swirling and deeply related - opening myself up to my potential capacity to receive in all directions is to perceive all of the movements of the ocean at once with perfect clarity. To feel its various pulls and pushes as it wraps around and through me, I am a bit of flotsam, feeling a million tiny notes/touches without feeling any particular emotions. Or motivations, rather. No frames telling me what to feel or notice.
A sculpture of sounds
Light woven like actual threads
full of circumstances, interactions
if they were composing a drawing, it sounds like thick and thin lines, like a base wash and erratic scribbles, faint touches, soloists like highlights, a singular shocking color, or a perfect patch of light adding dimension, a subtle difference in shadow shapes that rise up to create depth in a form.
How do symbols on a page get translated into motions by the musician's bodies and manifest as sound and rhythm? How many languages do we all translate constantly, in every single subtle moment? How intimate a relationship they must have with their instruments. What if I knew myself intimately enough to trust my tools to express whatever story I am trying to tell?
Like when I was working with machines in a steel shop - at what point does the artist/musician become servants to the medium? Does a violinist wield her violin, or does the violin use the violinist's skill to be heard?
2 comments:
I still love to read your reflections. I forget to look, then I remember, and am always surprised, and impressed.
I miss your postings.
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