The following are my notes from meetings I had with the students a VMC and SCI:
Before we get started I want to express how incredibly honoured and thankful I am to be invited into your space both today and last week. Thank you so much for having me here today.
I’m really looking forward to having a great sharing session with some great musical minds today, however, I want you to know that some moments could have the potential to get heavy and feel free to excuse yourself if you need to. Know that I consider this a safe place to be vulnerable, I will not judge you at all, of course, but also know I respect the fact that you may need to step out.
I’m also going to get vulnerable with you today. I’ll let you know that I have been nervous to have his meeting b/c of that, but I have learned in the past that the feeling of nerves is usually the precursor to something wonderful - like our concert last Thursday.
So, I have an idea for what I would like to write and I’d love for you to help me flush it out. So I’ll share my idea with you and then turn it over to you - you may want to jot a few things down as I go to help organize your thoughts and prepare questions or suggestions.
I want to ask you a question that you will only answer in your head - it’s kind of the fundamental idea for the piece I would like to write for the ensemble, so I want it to be the thing you let float around in your head as we discuss today. Again, I don’t want you to share it, but just hold the idea in your head as we work through our time together today. So here is the question:
“Is there a thing that you know, that you wish you didn’t know; that you wish you could unknow…” (Let that sit for a moment….)
So now, I want to back this up for a moment and explain the genesis for our meeting here today, which goes back to last February and the MBA band festival. It’s no secret that your school’s music program and its teachers have an amazing reputation that is well known not only throughout the province, but also the country. I wanted to be sure to be in the front row for your festival performance last February. After the performance I was at the director’s reception and had the pleasure of chatting with your director and my good friend Mr. Abraham where he posed the question to me “would I like to write something for the WE.” I was reticent, for sure, I am not a seasoned composer and I normally write for jazz bands. However, I was super flattered by the offer and in my heart-of-hearts I really wanted to do it.
Almost in the same breath, he said “I’ve always wanted to ask you what your tattoo means.”
"As a blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, O Arjuna, so does the fire of knowledge burn to ashes all reactions to material activities."
Often when people ask me what it means, it’s usually followed by “Well, what does that mean to you?” As a teacher, I am kind of in the business of knowing and passing on to others - —one of my composition teachers, Ron Paley told me something in our first lesson that I will never forget. He said, “The more you know, the more you will realize that you don’t know. It’s the grand paradox.” I thought that was a very powerful thing for a teacher to say to a brand new student and I have never forgotten that.
I have made a lifetime of mistakes. However, mistakes are where the learning takes place. As in your music studies, so too in life do we realize that the mistakes are the place where we figure things out. Where we get our knowing.
Also on the subject of “knowing things,” I knew this guy from University - his name was Mike and he posed this question to me once, he said, “would you rather spend your life learned and miserable or ignorant and happy.” It is a bleak outlook to be sure, but there is something in that idea. As a teacher, I have a pretty big thirst for knowledge and knowing things (as the quote says “fire of knowledge”), but there’s some truth in that , isn’t there? That the more I know about the world around me, the more it can weigh on my mind.
There are some things that I know, that I kind of wish I didn’t know - because they weigh on my mind.
Has anyone ever seen that movie Robocop (2014)?
I went through a period of time in my 20s where I stopped watching the news - i felt there was a great filtering of information, a diluting of what was true, a blurring of facts - motivated by corporate interests that were more interested in showing whatever was needed to bring in viewers and ultimately advertising dollars in prime commercial time. Are the things that are supposed to keep us informed and educated about the world dictated by Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola or Manitoba Lotteries? So I shut it off.
My good friend Geoff, who’s never been afraid to be blunt with me said, “So you just CHOSE to be ignorant of the world?” That gave me reason to think and I thought sheltering myself from the media can’t be healthy either. I had to ask myself “how can I sharpen my critical thinking if I don’t give myself the opportunity?” Maybe there was a better way? Maybe there is a balance in knowing the things that we know. Perhaps I could find balance and happiness through knowing things that truly matter and focusing on that. In 2002 I went through a pretty difficult time in my life. Multiple problems descended on me at once. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by some great people who helped me - some of them gave me some books to read to help me through. One of those books was the Bhagavad Gita - it was there that I found this quote and changed the way I understood knowing things and how to respond to them. It’s been fundamental to my life ever since.
I believe in “the coincidence.”
So when Mr. Abraham asked me to write a piece and asked about the quote in almost the same breath, I took it as a sign of perfection.
So - how did this quote change my ideas of “knowing” things. Well, a big part of it was that the Bhagavad Gita talks at length about knowing what you truly are and what you truly aren’t. The most poignant comment on that is that “We are not our bodies.” We are not our bodies. No more than you are the shirt on your back or the car that you drive - “Nobody puts on a shirt….” “What are the 5 senses? They’re imperfect….” The true essence of ourselves is not in the physical body, but my goodness, society really wants us to believe that that is the case. Every time you turn on the TV, open a magazine, what to speak of social media. We are not the body, we are spiritual beings. Very quickly I have to qualify this, because it’s starting to sound religious-i.e., but it’s not! And we as musicians NEED to talk about our spiritual selves. What does the word “Spirit” really mean? [explain where it comes from]. When is the last time you got through a rehearsal where you didn’t hear Mr. Abraham me say “breath”, “breathe” or talk about the breath?” it is actually the true essence of what we do, isn’t it?
When we talk about inspiration, which artists often do, what do we really mean? We are in-spirit (in-spired). We are connected to our true selves - our spirit.
I tell my students - Your bodies play your instrument, but your spirit plays the music. How do you want to communicate to an audience? Not just to their ears, but to their truest self- their spirit.
I hear the VMC director say in one of their rehearsals “this is where the piece breathes.” What does that mean? It’s the part of the piece where the spirit of the music lives! Not in the body - the notes, but in the spaces in between the notes.
There are so many spiritual moments around the breath:
Exercise can be a spiritual experience
“Take my breath away”
A gasp (in beauty, fear, sunrise) - the activation of breath
When we cry - we breathe differently b/c our spirit is stirred
So what is the opposite of ‘spiritual’ ….material.
Back to the quote. When I first read this, it leapt off the page at me - it was transformative - the “knowing” of so many things over the years was a “material knowing.” What if I could engage in a “spiritual knowing?” That is a fire of knowledge that could burn down all the reactions I get from MATERIAL activities. Because in the end, the material activities don’t really matter that much.
I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this fire of knowledge and I have so much yet to learn. I want you to know as well - I talk a good game, but I am deeply ensconced in the material world. I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do, but only do it a small portion of time being engaged with music certainly helps. So what spiritual things have I learned in the past 21 years - not as much as one should have but here's two:
1) a good purpose in life is to serve.
2) love is the greatest power in both material and spiritual platforms.
Service leads to love so I want this music I write to focus on service. [come back to the original question “knowing a thing"] chances are, that thing is a material thing. How do we spiritualize it? Head to Heart to Hand.
It's not an artist's job to change the world but we can't provide perspective that can bring about that change.
We, as musicians, can serve with our spirit in the truest form of the word because we render service with our breath - that is our esprit - that is our spirit.
So, What do you want in this piece of music? What should our music say? What are your ideas? and how can I best be of service to you - to realize your desires for creating a platform where you can express your spiritual selves?
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