The Woman Behind The Dream: Chopin and the Timeless Tuning

“Because perhaps to my misery, I already have my perfect one whom I have without saying a word, served faithfully for a year now. Of whom I dream and in whose memory the adagio of my concerto has been written.” Chopin, The Women Behind the Music

In the memory of such early genius as Chopin, our cultural continuity glorifies bygone eras with a creative resurgence only known to Western opulence. And looking out from the window of one's own, the sparks of desire light. At first, softly, the Earth burns. Then, the air plumes in a haze of smoke. The bonfire of magic absolves the moon of its light, and the stars become mere smoky display. Inside, and from underneath, the imagination fires the kindling of co-unity with the mind.

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And in such as a bout of unspent night, where slumber is deep and each morning fresh, I woke into dream. The longing test of emotive fire, the blinding seed of passion instilled. To work, and to find solace in worldly accomplishment deceived! The wakeful night spun an inglorious frost, a loosened hold on the sunless firmament. 

The Night with the Genii of Study and Love by Pedro Américo

A summit revealed the greatest of depths as the wounded sky bled rain and ice, brewing over the darkening clouds. We traversed impossible concave stone, sharp as a split mirror, the ice moved our flesh towards the brink. In a vivid flash, I saw memory itself, bear unto the apex of Earth. The stars crowned the lonely top as we gazed into our battered arms with hands of ice and stone. 

Storm in the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt

From the greatest of heights, the shadow of a man fell to die. Scattered in the colourless flush of snow, the piercing rock dashed all hope. Still, with chests full of heart, we climbed on and to the frozen prison. Alone, I emptied my eyes and climbed the last step. The day sped past in a hearse, as a vision of unity stung my heart with its sole truth: alone with the Alone. 

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To close the album, "Evocations: district.Columbia" the track, "Untrained Timeless Tuning" consists of improvisations on piano (keyboard) and xaphoon (bamboo sax). The age-old American sound of piano and woodwind hearkens to the unique sonic fusion that is completely unique and characteristic of the country. Especially in the use of a certain type of improvisation, the classic sounds evince an internal discovery of not only the human soul, but the soul of the land known to Americans as home.

In such a time as today, when war after war knocks at our doorstep, we can be reminded of the cultural heritage that more prominently identifies us as a unified people: music, the one common language of humanity. So, the sound is masked with electronic innovation into the 21st century, where the piano sound is a controller, and the woodwind is a recent invention. The first xaphoon was made only forty years ago on the island of Hawaii.

Further, the title, "Untrained Timeless Tuning" speaks to that harmony that is basic to all regardless of class, education, ethnicity or religious identification. There is a way to shared harmony, and it emerges through a music untrained by the classism and privilege of modern higher education. Whether speech, or instrumentation, the music that is untrained, while in tune with the essence of human life as pain, raw and blunt, is the very timelessness that high art seeks to capture. That timelessness is bred in every interaction and exchange whether within or between us always.

When we speak of Re-Writing our STORY, as in the chapbook wherein this piece is written, this very realization is the voice that carries our experience to such wonderful stretches of the imagination; present and transformational. So, the traditional keyboard and woodwind sound is transformed into an electronic movement of triumph in contemporary sound creativity.  

The following six-poem chapbook, Re-Writing our STORY, is the final series of works from the district.Columbia collection. The pieces reflect the penultimate phase of true revolution as a spiritual transformation of one's narrative. That is, one re-imagines their perspective through a revolutionary act of storytelling. This kind of storytelling reflects personal truths, daily experiences and common points of view with regard to the larger narratives and mythologies that consume unknowing minds through belief, propaganda and pride. The feature piece, Untrained Timeless Tuning, was published with Poydras Review in August of 2012.

Re-Writing Our STORY

The Ascension of Living Myth

Attar of Neishabur

"Yea, ev'n the abstract Forms that Space and Time
Men call, Weal and Woe, Virtue and Crime,
And all the several Creeds like those who fell
Before them, Musulman and Infidel
Shall from the Face of Being melt away,
Cancell'd and swept as Dreams before Day."

- excerpt from "Bird Parliament" by Farid ud-Din Attar (translated by Edward FitzGerald)

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Four massive peaks lift into the untouchable sky with such lofty height. This is the Eastern gateway and riverine border into the Canadian Rockies. In between two strong, unearthly peaks my cousins and I rest, having climbed afoot to the base of a glowing summit ahead in the crystal blue sky, cloudless and serene. Atop a rock-spurned crevasse leading into a valley gorge, we find a curious green-hoop tunnel net. Its loose thread flows welcomingly calm in the whipping winds. Instead of continuing upward I take a chance at descending through the unusual contraption. Leaping into its circular folds with another cousin we are cast into a semi-suspended state, gliding carefully above the chipped stone, shifting boulders and overhanging vegetation. We softly exit the net tunnel from its organic spindly bottom, dusting ourselves off in wishful camaraderie with the mountain prairie gold snow grassland. My oldest cousin decides to descend through the hoop alone and with swift might, overconfident and unthinking. He cascades heavily, knocking against the back of the mountain while encased in the mysterious, protective green netting. With a hard thud, he injures himself upon the ground, weak with delirium. A time after, I ascend, lone to the place where my cousins and I once found the curious organic net. Instead of looking through the downward spiral, I look up towards a distant peak amid the quartet of towering ascension. At the summit, a wild enormity of avian flesh flaps it's wings. The sight sends me into uncontrolled stupefaction, dizzy with groaning delight: a myth comes to life!

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Bird
"Birds are usually considered a very good omen for the dreamer to receive and this is doubly true if the birds are brightly coloured, singing, and flying about." (iDream)
Mountain
"If you ascend a mountain in your dreams, and the way is pleasant and verdant, you will rise swiftly to wealth and prominence...To awaken when you are at a dangerous point in ascending, denotes that you will find affairs taking a flattering turn when they appear gloomy...Mountains can also symbolize a higher realm of consciousness, knowledge, and spiritual truth." (iDream)

______

predicated on human life,
a delicacy, of what worth?

to live the most real dream
inspired and enforced,
to prepare a day and night

ocean's curse praying in public, before the all-knowing tremendous falling
into outer loves and inner minds
born of hearts, and wonders, worrying and dying, striving and being

wake

- excerpt from "human life" 

Dream Poetry from the Scientific Community

"...in graduate school one of my advisers, I spoke to him one morning, he was doing research on star clusters that have these huge orbits around the center of the galaxy, he said he had a dream the night before where he was one of these galaxies and he was orbiting the center of the galaxy...if you start becoming in your cosmic dream, I want to have those dreams because then you think creatively about what remains to be discovered."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson in "The Poetry of Science" presented by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science on September 28, 2010

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I’m climbing the stairs in a long, thin rectangular building. I’ve been trying to follow a friend of mine who is taking a course with a professor of geography. In the college campus, I seek this professor. When I arrive to the group of students situated outside of a classroom at the very top floor of the building, the professor had already left them to an assistant. Curiously, we move out through a glass door and onto the roof. Interestingly enough, we are at a ledge overlooking the plains of Southern Alberta at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. As we look out towards the horizon, strange mountains have formed, quite unusual to the local terrain. The professor’s voice rings as from above, sounding like a loudspeaker overhead. He tells us about the mountains ahead. They are sparsely topped with fluorescent greens and ruddy earth reds and light browns, forming a seemingly endless carpet of medium-tall peaks at about uniform height draped over with the shadows of roaming clouds. “I have known the endurance in traversing beyond the range.” He speaks to us coldly with matured foresight as to the near impossible natural impasse. As the students begin to clear, my searching eyes see traces of industry. Train tracks appear, passing directly into the heart of the range. 

_________

"A mountain dream is used by the subconscious mind to tell us that we have many obstacles to overcome and they will be large ones and almost insurmountable." (iDream)

_________

spiraled dawn fractured by a scintillation

inspiring madness divine on the cemetery backwall laugh

uprisen as a hand, freakish to the crack of lying dreams

prepared, as spilled ash freezes in a line trembling freer than a rocked flash

“oh god entice this sickness to crash on the empires doorstep

last before the carnage to fall quakes in the morning

with a demonesque call to become the jeering weasel

creaking easily as high distance in fright, and lost”

- excerpt from "Sour Mangrove"

Forest Cabin at the Edge of Wild Freedom

Farm by Abraham Bloemaert

Sitting contemplatively, as if with a pipe in hand on a back porch in the midst of the deep greens at the heart of a mountain forest, I rock in a wooden chair.

I sit beside a primitive wooden house. About the edge of the house's property are various other individuals with whom I only interact to partake in uninhibited sexual acts. Within this volatile, untamed crowd on the single home forest settlement is one individual with a huge double-barrel shotgun.

As I veer away from the double-barrel shotgun I find a good portion of the ramshackle wooden deck extends far enough to accommodate a live music band in full swing led by an acoustic bass.

There are people who set off in small groups into the opaque border with wilderness. They charge into obscurity with fierce cries, as if to war, death or a fight for freedom.

Crash on the Mountain traveling to Coastal Vibration

Snowstorm by Jospeh Mallord William Turner

I wake slowly, as if to fade from white, in a crashed helicopter on a snowy mountainside. The mountain is immense, with drifting snow and endless depressions and plateaus that show a premature horizon, not unlike a ski hill. I walk alone, as a sole survivor down to the base of the mountain. At the base, I find a house occupied by an East Indian family who seem active in the military, as a man proceeds from the house in uniform. Though I am hurt, and look foreign to them, they barely notice as I ask for their help next to their low fencing around their estate. The lady within the grounds of the house suddenly notices me, however there is no exchange, I could be invisible. Suddenly I find a small vehicle, similar to a scooter, however powered and able to push through the snow.

Next, I am in what seems as a coastal village in Egypt or Mexico or a place similar. I seem to have lost my powered scooter, however I see them around the village in different forms. The village, in some ways, appears to look like Sayulita, Mexico or Abu-Seer, Egypt. There are children running about and I befriend two young women about my age. These two young women remind me of two young women I met in Mexico City, Mexico. One of them is more fair-skinned and the other with dreadlocks and a bit of a darker character in general. I become somewhat attached to them as they help me around the village to find a powered scooter that is available. I find one within someone’s small yard near to a river and leave the girls behind.

Next, I am in a classroom style room, however without standardized desks, and the front of the room is occupied with a band. The band is very talented, playing mathematically-timed jazz/rock type music. The keyboardist is the front man and leads the band. I enjoy the music. After the show, the keyboardist begins to speak about the music, and the audience opens for questions.

Later, I meet the keyboardist at a bar/restaurant on Stephen Ave. in Calgary, AB. I don’t order any alcohol; however he is drinking and sits beside me. I compliment him on his music and we engage in steady conversation. I ask about the inner dynamics of his music and he accommodates my questions well. I then tell him that I am part of a music project with my wife. I introduce him to her instrument, the Chinese zither, and say that I play an Egyptian doumbek drum.  He is intrigued, however when I say that we only improvise and play spontaneously he says that he can not do that, which I can understand from listening to the highly methodical nature of the music.

Sept. 30, 2011