Dream Music and the Creative Breath

Hear my beginnings on Xaphoon, a modern woodwind instrument.

Also, listen to Vi An's ambient, new single, "Souls of Flightless Birds" to hear my initial touches on Shakuhachi

To hear my more percussive beginnings see my earlier posts Busker's Gamble 1 & 2

________

My elementary school music teacher begins the session with an arcane eye, emitting positively unintelligible sentiment into the classroom. The entirety of the students’ awareness is razed in a moment of ineluctable meditation at the front of the room. The teacher is absorbed in trance, unable to begin the lesson. Then, she takes up an oboe, and begins a hypnotic hum, playing without her fingers. She bends her lips to the visionary yonder, bespeaking a ghostly insight into the sonic membrane of harmonious mystery. 

Three Black Women (1912) by Nicholas Kalamakoff 

As the hum begins to rise, a crack in the doorway spells fear in the eyes of my fellow students, watching as a three nude black women gracefully dance their way to the front of the room. Their light steps are unmatched in delicate beauty. The warmth of their presence is charming as the teacher begins to lather up and down immense, powerful scales. The dance heats with inner vivacity. Without fully recognizing, I have been completely entranced, alone in another room, seduced by the mad eyes of the superhuman subtleties emerging of the dance of sprites. The unity of music and dance is embodied in the untouchable, ebony enigmas. 

________

Sculpting our Music

to empathize with space,
emptied learning
devoid of causality,

to exist in nonsense happily,
with or without means to find the light to continue
and realize that meaning prevails in the ability to emancipate need into desire
and transform desire into being,

to see you,
in the flap of a wave thickening
in a sky filled with stars aglow
in the insect's wing,
eaten then,
raw in the toothless humanity
forming on the tip and base of the tongue
with each word-stopped breath of compassion

stating,
"subsist without things,
yet do not merge one with sheer being,
there is no escape from right,
take time to see,
play aloud to the soft distance
in each touch
on the eternal book
resting coolly
on the back of every pulse
moving through fingertips pressed over reality."

simply unlearn doing
by giving into the peace already;
know your surroundings,
truth does not move,
yet there is mystery in sound's effortless becoming
around and within the hand that pulls time into the heart
and plays breath
in tune to the sun's round birth canal of thoughtless entry
into an orbital law,

a return to archaic wisdom
in ancient instruments
and the rare music of inward listening
that shares all in the act of creative wondering

to explore the mind without friction
against the beat of our one heart,
drained now by love's unknown pleasures
offered to the inescapable friend,
who appears as death at the beginning of night,
freezing time
for a moment's celebration of temporal freedoms
grinning out of sight

As a Child of Light, Embraced by Thoth in Dreamland

Ramses III. in front of god Thoth in tomb of Khaemwaset, 12th Century BC. by Ancient Egyptian Painter

"Thoth, the Atlantean, at the 26,000 year ago beginning of the Cosmic Cycle now ending, aided in the building of the Great Pyramid and secreted within it records and instruments of the Motherland Mu and Atlantis explaining how the 'Children of Light' dwelt amongst the Ancients and are not as sons of men, except when they are in physical bodies. Thoth incarnated again in the Third Dynasty of Imhotep as architect under King Zoser, was Socrates and Simon Peter among seven incarnations. He knew that all men were essentially Spiritual Beings, for he said, 'Man is a 'star' bound to a body! Man is space born, a Child of the Stars(a Starchild!). Man is a flame bound to a mountain!'"

Source

For More Mysteries: Where the Lines that Divide Science and Myth Intersect 


"Dreamland" refers to the areas in and around Nevada and New Mexico where extraterrestrial mysteries intersect with government security, arcane science and high technology. This is the setting of my dream.

_______

After this series of dreams passed through my consciousness, upon waking, I had intended to discard the activity of recording this night of dream substance, as the sketches of dream memory seemed to be far-fetched, or too far removed from my daily, waking reality. Then, upon waking, I was forwarded the above message from an old friend. I thought this was a sign that I should indeed record this dream.

I seemed to be returning from the West Coast, driving across the United States, when I passed through the Southwest. I feel as though I’ve ended a part of my life where I was deeply embroiled in study. As I traverse beyond the coastal horizon into the desert landscape, I am somehow drawn into one final “course” if you will. I stop in an area of absolute desolation somewhere deep in the deserts of the American Southwest. The only nearby city is way far off beyond the horizon. We are in pure desert. I see a familiar face in a crowd of indiscernible human shapes and activity. Suddenly, though curiously expected, there is a presence above, a directing mysterious light, leading us to raise our arms in recognition. I feel we are being taught something, as my entire body begins radiating with harmless visible electricity. There is a pulse coursing through my limbs with a vibrant white glow.

Suddenly, I find myself, in the state of a child. I perceive myself as a small, minute entity, like a small child version of myself, however, somehow smaller, as my surroundings are proportionately more massive than I’ve ever experienced. I feel as if dropped into the middle of the desert, with only a couple companions, equally disoriented. We begin stumbling through the desert brush in an unknown direction, thoughtless and with a daze of incredulity and stubborn introspection strong enough to leave us careless and at once convinced as to the security of an optimistic fate. As we continue our walk, we soon happen upon an open cliff, leading into a canyon of vegetation and water. This source of life is our destination, we can feel it. As two children, however, we fall headlong down the cliff, without heed to caution or ability to properly maneuver the descent, and find ourselves plunging into the cool stream below. This is refreshing, however disconcerting, as we feel we have lost things of importance. There are beings upon a hillock above us, so we slowly collect ourselves and find our way to the top. We are welcomed by a towering figure, an alien body, whose shape and features remind us of an insect, although this being commands great respect. There is an exasperatingly strong resemblance to the living Thoth, Egyptian God of Knowledge and Writing! We are comforted in the presence of Thoth, and he sees to it that we are taken care of, while being independent as ever to splash about for our things in the water and climb the forested canyon hills.

Now that I reflect, I believe more and more this was the figure of Thoth as we know from Egyptian mythology in the flesh. In the dream, Thoth was of certain humility and held an unassuming air, embracing me and simply allowing my inner Child to explore (with personal neuroses intact) under the beautifully humane security of his nearby presence. 

__________

Watch about another incarnation of THOTH in New York City!

_________

"there's an old saying,

that goes something like;

‘a person that knows their place is a demi-god,

and the place of a person,

is a god,

and the One who has no personality

and is everywhere,

is the God’

a really old saying,

no one knows where from"

- excerpt from "An Old Saying"

Busker's Gamble (2)

Busker's Gamble (1)

Busking, Gambling and Escape from the Assured Life

Peasants Playing Cards in a Tavern by Adriaen Brouwer

A dream of two days ago will not escape me. It is ever pertinent, because it lingers still in my memory, and its narrative, symbology and emotional meanings are carried through into my dreams today:

Dream 1

I am running, as a fugitive would run, I run with everything that I am. I seem to be escaping the watch of some unknown authoritative holding. The police, FBI, it could be any of these, or it could be something more abstract. I am unsure, yet I am running.

Next, I find myself busking with a guitar beside a Fire Station in the town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. This is an odd place to find one's self busking, however I am in the eye of governmental authority. My change bowl clinks with a Canadian loonie and a few pennies. I am enjoying playing the guitar, then I feel as if I am being chased again, the firefighters seem to all glare and approach as if from above, and my whole environment around me seems to do the same.

Dream 2

I at New York University. My step-father is guiding me to sign up for a set of classes with a Master's program as he had always wished for me. I comply with passive-aggressive remarks and actions, thinking in my head one thing while doing another. I sign up for some classes in his presence. Next, he buys me a cheap guitar out on the street. I see him speed off with an unforgivably strange partner, however he is happy, and so I am content.

I visit a friend, we are in a small space, inside what seems to be a bedroom of a trailer. I show the people there the guitar and it seems to be entirely unplayable. It is a cheap piece of trash. We sit awkwardly around the television, wasting time.

I then go down an alleyway which appears similar to the alleyways in and around Cairo, Egypt's downtown midan or squares. In the alleway, I see people busking. They are bringing such authentic vibrations of strength, persistence and genuine enjoyment to an otherwise dull and dreary atmosphere of biological decay and mental stagnance. The street performers are still not well-recognized nor respected well by passerby onlookers. I cheerfully greet these buskers and enjoy their drumming.

Next, I am in what seems to be the inside of a warehouse, it is a filled with the stereotypical busker of the public mind. A recurring dream-character, tall, stout, blonde-haired, bearded with bad complexion. Within the warehouse there is homelessness, deprivation, madness, poverty. I walk through unaffected yet witnessing, somehow removed by unique experience. I have returned to a world filled with inequalities and cheap resolve for a way of life which transforms peoples minds into that of a fugitive.

                                                                    ____________

One day, while reflecting on the act of street performing/busking, I was taken with the notion that busking is in many respects like gambling. And from a crude perspective, the art of pure improvisation is in a way a form of gambling, wherein you anticipate, based on one's knowledge of the variables at hand, the outcome of a certain action. The fact that my experience as a street performer/busker has been through performing completely improvised music further emphasizes my notion that improvised street performing is a kind of gambling, however with the due sophistication of musicianship and the wealth of experiential confidence in playing one's instrument. For further understanding seek: myspace.com/vian and youtube.com/nivsha