Listening to the Music Within

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. ~Duke Ellington

I often equate listening to myself to listening to and playing music.
When musicians jam they feel it. They know how to listen, when to lead and when to follow. They tune, play and feel. There is a bridge to a common sound and they are in tune with each other. Listening is the biggest hurdle to being in tune with each other in life as it is in music.

My own thing is in my head. I hear sounds and if I don't get them together nobody else will. ~Jimi Hendrix

All of us play our own song and it's through our senses and the direct experience of our bodies where we feel the wisdom of our song. It's not the song, but the source of the song. We play from the inside out. When the mind becomes preoccupied with what the hand is doing, the music is muffled. Sometimes it's easiest to simply do without thinking. Thinking has already preceeded doing, you are flying by instinct now.

Head = Intellect
Hand = Instinct
Heart = Intuition
(I'll get back to the above concepts another day)

The sensual is the source. It isn't the words you're really listening to when you listen to yourself, they only guide you. Your bones have to understand. Play what you hear while hearing what you play. There is a tone, an inflection, and you'll know by feeling where to place the emphasis in a series of movements. You knew what to do by listening to the tone in your mother's voice when she called you, remember? Your bones understood too didn't they?

I've practiced on my tone for almost 50 years, and if I can't hear my tone, I can't play. If I can't play, then I won't get paid. If I don't get paid then I'll lose the house, you know? It's like a chain reaction. If I lose my tone, I can't fuck, can't make love, can't do nuthin'. I'll just walk into the ocean and die, if I lose my tone. ~Miles Davis

Delete needless notes. You're looking for the common sound.
When you play a bad note you'll know it. Your body will feel it. Learn from it. Fall like a cat. If you're in tune with others, they'll help carry the sound through.

Here are a few people I've been listening to:

Spiking creativity deserves a spike in traffic. Henry Baum of Ash Tree has posted an original mp3, Succeed or Fold, with promises of more on the way AND he found a publisher. His wife is in a PKD phase. Somehow that tells me the creativity from his corner will be riding high, clothed in uniqueness, for quite some time. Cool.

Sigh...and Harry... just what can I say about Harry? Demented? Perverse? Absolutely fun. I never know what I'll
find there; music, gorgeous fractals, poetry adapted to music and video, a naked males what? tied in what?? No, I don't always 'get it' and my head gets scratched often. Maybe that's why he calls his blog scratchings. Scroll carefully if you're at work.

Michigan Peaceworks Director Phillis Engelbert has an article in Common Dreams; Torture Endangers the Soul of Our Nation

On a recent, snowy afternoon I watched "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" with my son. Near the end of the film came a scene in which Harry learned that his godfather, wrongly accused of murder, had been captured by prison guards called "dementors." "Do you mean they're going to kill him?" Harry asked his friend Hermione. "No, it's worse, much worse," Hermione replied. "They're going to suck out his soul."

I pondered Hermione's conclusion and found myself in agreement - that losing one's soul would be a fate worse than death. After all, a person without a soul would be capable all sorts of heinous acts - for instance, torture. If one applies the same reasoning to a nation as to an individual, the implications are chilling.

Thanks to Bob for the link.

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