Music as a Spiritual Practice

Michael Waters: Music as a Spiritual Practice from Jordan Stratford on Vimeo.

 

“… it is completely, irrevocably clear to me that all improvising is composing. There is no difference between them, none at all.”

“… the difference between approaching any creative art, not just music, but it could be poetry or painting, writing; the difference between approaching it as a spiritual practice and approach it as a craft is that with a craft the issue is “How good can I get in my lifetime?” And, that’s what you work on. Nothing else really matters. But when you approach something as a spiritual practice, what you’re doing is, personally you are approaching in the context of from before you were born until after you are gone. And those place count. In other words, you’re whole trajectory in life, whatever you’ve encountered, is on the table when you approach that art. All of your questions and answers, challenges, accomplishments, they are all involved when you put your finger to string or your pen to paper or your foot to the dance floor. And this changes everything to approach it that way, it’s not like a craft at all.”

Consider also:

  1. The Unknown Skulls Big Grin Out of the Coffin
  2. “In the last two paragraphs there is a justification of a practice which might be called sacred prostitution.”
  3. “The ‘music of decline’ had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universities, in melancholia and insanity among those artists and critics who could still be taken seriously; it raged as untrammeled and amateurish overproduction in all the arts.”
  4. determination+persistance AV_ritual to thee H∴G∴A∴ 2004
  5. “We receive no formal training in emotional regulation, ability to focus, healthy forms of relaxation, nor in a dozen or so skills that would be invaluable to ourselves and society.”