Open Time: Closing Statement

The first step for the journey, requires the player to come to grips with himself as a living entity, most especially, a Human entity, which exists through one point of time, as each occurrence, in a continuity we call life; and that, secondly, whether the piece is 2 hours long or 17 minutes long, the player is to play from his own being, and more to himself than to any Other. This does not mean that the player is to ignore the presence of an audience, be it one or more people - not at all - (for what the player creates and recreates is given to himself and to the audience) rather, the player is sounding himself, as though he were himself the strings that are vibrating. The path and the destination are set by the composed music; it is the resulting view of a landscape which the player always must find, and necessarily finds new and changing; for nowhere on the path is the player to stand still - that is an impossibility, for albeit a figure (let us call it a chord, or a near-simultaneously sounding combination of pitches) may be held for some time, and always IS held, even if momentarily) - let us say, by chance, 14 seconds - the sound of his creation is constantly shifting, the overtones consistently climbing over one another, changing place, in time, as the fingers touch each of the notes with an ever varying force, which as weight, is constant, yet constantly life-changed; and moreover, the player's sound, his life itself, is moving, as we all live in time, and spirit itself is moving, time is moving, all things are moving in their way - though we are static in the face of Existence. Just so, though it is possible to stop one's journey in the middle of the road, and look at the field of vision offered there, what one sees is always changing, either by movement in the line of vision, or the motion inherent on this earth. Because motion, the power to change, to perceive change - are gifts, the precious subcurrents of being alive. In one dimension of our being, we are perfectly static; in another dimension, we are totally changing, eternally. All dimensions flow through one another.

Now, once the player can understand that he hast taken this period of time, and given himself over to recreating the path of the music and its adjacent scenery, not only that others may share the road with him, but that the player himself shall travel the road as his own leader and follower at once, then the process of laying one's hands to the road and guiding, steering, manipulating not only himself along the road as traveller, but also the very road itself - for throughout the action, though the road, by existence of the score, will itself come to the destination, the turns, left or right, the hills, the valleys, the steepness of ascent, or the velocity of descent, and vice versa (since in music we can feel somewhat as weightless runners) and the shape of the soaring wind within, all these rest at the hands of the player and must perform his will.

Two things that seem to contradict each other : (1) the road is set by the composer, with a destination, and (2) the player is there to create the turnings, the rises and lowerings of the road, and hence, what we normally call 'the path'; how are these two statements compatible? There are two different things spoken of here: one is the path of the road, i.e. the deviations, the turns, etc. of a road, that is not, in one of its dimensions, a straight line, from the point of view within the set of dimensions in which the road is activated, acted out, or made real, and secondly there is the road itself; the fibre of the road, its bricks. It is the road itself which the composer has set out and made possible for the player to walk on - so that the player does not drift through that which is under his feet, and that the road be simply the material he has at-hand, where though he guides it, directs it, propels it, rushes headlong over it, still, it remains beneath his feet, and not only to buoy him up, but to give him pleasure at the walk and feel the texture beneath his feet.

Is the first step then done? Does the player now feel ready to take himself on the journey presented by a piece of music? Must we not now relearn to hear again the sounds of the music written two hundred years ago? The form which mankind thought he understood, because he was able to project it as past history and was able to analyse as a tangible structure, after the fact of creation, what it was that he was listening to - this form must be re-looked at, not from a historical perspective, but from a living context - that what one is hearing today, though it be the same run of pitches on heard yesterday, is being alongside one at the same time in now, and as one has changed, so the others ache for a fresh reconnoitring, for a new inspection, a clean investigation, to see again the love in its beholder's face.

And why? Because that which is Beautiful demands this of us - it demands it in such a way that if we ignore its calls, we are left stranded and waiting, for the next train, for the next ship, for the next gust of wind to carry us to the top of the mountain... And how much we yearn, how much! To get over to the next act, to cross the channel, and sit atop the mountain view... All because in our striving to do so, we come closer to that unspeakable growth which to our soul is the crowning spread to all dimensions.

Therefore, come and see again the road made by our fathers in the music long ago. If we search this heart to its core, we arrive at one same thing: presence; or let us call it 'the present'. The road which now exists, this 'present', enables us to walk it, to live it, to be on it; likewise, the road of the Beautiful exists that we may walk it, and be present to it; it is neither an old road, nor one just new; only it exists, and is by that itself, extemporal, unhistorical and unknown, in its most vital aspects. It is not the historical analysis of the music that is its vital essence: no, we must look to the cause, the source, of its form, to find what has given rise to the Beauty, that which defines the Beauty, for therein is its true creation... The shaping of the soul's eyes to witness that Beauty. Only the soul sees it, and only the soul can speak it. So we arrive at the expression of the soul of man - the yearning of our soul to speak itself.

This road of 'speaking Itself' which we are given as the goal of our soul's work, is not in Time as we are in Time; for the time wherein we move is only the means to reach the time of Speaking-itself; once the time of this road of Speaking-Itself is not running like this time which is passing while you read or listen, this time of 'speak-tone' is ever present, and given to reality flowing through it in the transmigration of dimension, as a model that we may shape this matter of passing temporality into the next and more perfect time of speaking-itself. In doing this, we touch the Speaking-Itself, and whether we create by performance or by setting the road, we are made happy to feel the peace of this time of Speaking-Itself.

More than any other music you have been given, this music must give you the voice to speak of yourself with yourself speaking. You shall discover new vocal chords for this action.

Then from the investigation of the 'old' music, do we not begin to see the nature of this 'new' music, which is already growing old before we have had time to digest it? For we shall respect all words from the soul, all speeches, all languages from it. It is to find that door that releases open the voice of our soul. So that its wind can rush through our bodies. And make all the passageways clean and alive. Is not the time of all of this the same as that which came before? The same question in a different way: is not that which gave form to the man long ago, which enabled him to build the road rightly, the same form to which we apply ourselves this day? And that form, that source of rightness, is it not simply Speaking-Itself, which is eternally present, lying underneath Time, and breathing to it its pulsations of beingness - eternally present, yet eternally out of reach of fulfilment by flesh, yet has already been granted a taste of that which is yet possible. Whoever seeks the goodness of music shall find it, for in the yearning is already the knowledge of it.. All we seek is the clarification for the eyes.

Now the player has begun to reach back into the present and prepare for motion, prepare to move onward, because as in time, one does not pass into the next moment without drawing with him the living continuity of the passing moment, so too, here, in our age of musical education, as we begin with that which is long past, we cannot properly step into the present until we accept with us the living facticity of those men who wrote their words for us long ago. This form which we continue to discover will never be recognisable until it is accepted as the voice of the human spirit evoking the voice of Being.

We have been taught music history with secret innuendo: that unison, polyphony, consonance, dissonance, etc. are composer's twisting and reshaping of a singular entity: harmony. This is untrue. Creation is not concerned with changing anything that exists as the rule of what came before or after. Because there is no rule which lies as the summit of any work. What has been put together has not been done to fit anything, any rule, any 'form'... It has simply been put together, because it is speech. No one can retouch or alter the 'put-togetherness' of anything. One speaks today; it is a different speaking tomorrow; let what has been put together to speak differently at each speaking; it is your voice, and the voice always comes to say differently each time it is used.

The technique will provide you with the apparatus of releasing the voice. In time, you will discover that the voice itself is the technique. The energy and action are one in the mind.