MYSTICAL MUSIC THEORY, Part 3: Music Is More Than Notes.
“Do you really want to bring him here?” she asked me. She was a prominent and amazing Blues guitar player, formerly played Speed Metal. I’d heard her play a song called, “THAT GUY,” or “THIS GUY”–she hadn’t settled on a title–and I liked the song very much.
We were enjoying each other’s company, over a week-end visit. I think she meant that if she played the song, that guy would be a third wheel in our enjoyment of two.
What could that possibly mean?
One explanation is her mind would go to that guy. Playing “THAT GUY,” she would be thinking about that guy, her mind would be on him, and not me. Not only her mind, music is primarily emotion, not thinking. She would be bringing her feelings about him into the room, into her. She was asking me if I wanted her to have feelings for him in her heart, sitting with me.
It gets deeper. Yes, the composer’s life experience goes into a song. In my poem, SOMETIMES IT COMES DOWN TO SCALES, I write:
“talking about soloing, or composing, or writing a poem
Then you’ll want considerations, the examined life, self-awareness
The struggle to outgrow the script childhood wrote for you–
These are to poiesis as scales are to a musician
I would say a good song or poem sings out of, sings out the human condition
Audiences don’t like a poem or a song they can’t hear
That doesn’t bespeak the human condition, their own condition
(LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man, available on Indigo Books online, and NOA Gallery, Bonnie Doon Mall).
My poem also brings in the audience. Music mystically connects the hearts of audiences with only Air. I think that the Air is alive. But science says air is Nitrogen and Oxygen gas.
People are returning to vinyl albums. You take a piece of plastic, and that plastic sends you into tears or ecstasy. A diamond needle sends electrical signals into speakers; speakers make air move in waves, and air waves hit your eardrums and you are joyful. Or cry. Or are transported to God if it is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 4th movement. Plastic, Nitrogen, and Oxygen.
Part 4 will be about the relationship between performer and audience, as well as the way this figures into the “business of music,” or club management and Artist.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED
Those pedals and the amplifier back in front of them, makes it all happen!
When I was a Swedenborgian Pastor, I emailed my musician friend Darryl Dybka about theology and metaphysics. I was not mystical, then. I was not a musician, then. I was looking in AT music from the outside, as a Pastor who forgot all about my life as a musician, 44 years ago. Music was dead to me as a participant. So, as a learned scholar and theologian, I was telling Darryl what I saw the essence of music to be, and how music is woven into the structure of Reality.
I told Darryl something I’d been believing for some time. When a musician plays music, they are connecting with forces of the whole universe. A vibrating string or sound wave, is physics. Physics is the physical, material universe. All the notes in a scale, and all the chords you make out of those notes, are contained in a vibrating string or standing air wave in a flute or organ pipe.
I am not a physicist, so I don’t know how much of the universe vibrates. I do know that an electron can be a wave, and that electron shells around an atom’s nucleus act like musical harmonics. (Atoms have lower and higher shells around them.)
Ocean waves are waves.
But the point isn’t how much of Reality vibrates like a guitar string or standing wave. The point is that music is physics and built into the fabric of matter. Musicians do not stop to think that what they do is participating in what the universe is made out of.
There is powerful Philosophy and Myth that speak to this: Pythagoras and The Muses are only 2.
Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean Theory; for right triangles. But in a Harvard course called THE THOUGHT WORLD OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY, we learned about the Pythagorean Number Mystery Religion. That course was not about the Bible. It was about the thought world that Christianity took root in. We learned about the way Myths functioned in daily life. We learned about how Romans made offerings to the Spirits who governed the intersections of Roman roads. How when Cyrus the Mede liberated the Jews from Babylon, he told his priests to learn how to honour the God Who governed their land.
Pythagoras was thought to be divine. His Number Mysticism was based on a triangle arrangement of numbers, with 1 at the top: 1, 2, 3, 4. My interest is the number 3.
Pythagoras discovered that a string vibrating in half makes an octave. That is the same musical note next up: C to the C above it.
He discovered that a string vibrating in 3rds makes the 5th tone up. In C, that would be the note G.
And what blew my mind was the discovery of the 4th tone. Pythagoras discovered that 3/4 of a vibrating string is the 4th tone up; in C, that would be F.
This is astounding. The other tones, or harmonics, of a vibrating string do not have the 4th tone. But it’s there, anyway. Push down a string at 1/4 of its length, and let the remaining 3/4 of the string vibrate, and you have the 4th.
Why this is important is the I, the IV, and the V are the foundations of Western music: from Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven; Robert Johnson, Z Z Top and beyond.
The Numerology Mysteries of Pythagoras found the essence of Western music.
The Three Muses inspire Artists. Later traditions add more than 3; but originally, it was 3.
And the Three Muses all relate to music. They reside near a Sacred well at the foot of Mount Helicon. It is The Hippocrene Well, or Spring, because the winged, flying horse Pegasus touched Earth with his hooves and the well gushed forth.
There are 3 Muses: Nete, Mese, and Hypate. Their names mean, “Lowest, Middle, Highest.” They refer to the three strings on an Ancient Greek lyre.
I had to fight search engines because they kept telling me that Nete was lowest and Hypate was lowest. The root “hyp” doesn’t help. It can mean “hypo”–under, as in hypodermic–or it can be “hyper”–hyper which is “above.” My question was, is Hypate from hypo or hyper? The Proto-Indo-European root, “UPER” goes to Hype. “UPO” goes to hypo and its root means “under,” and a lot of other words so far from hyper that hypo isn’t what I went with.
Nete, has “NED” as its PIE root, which means “contain, hold together, a net.” That’s what bass notes do.
The origins of Western music are the 3-stringed Lyre. Each string corresponds to one of the 3 Muses. The Muses are the Goddesses who inspire all Art.
The 3 Muses are in Delphi, and connected to the Oracle of Delphi–the greatest source of Wisdom known in the Ancient World. The origins of Wisdom are the origins of Music.
I can’t wrap up this exploration. Other than to say that music is in the bowels of Creation. Maybe I should say the heart. Musicians involve themselves in the Creation of the Universe when they play a Blues song. Blues is based on the I, IV, V tones in the scale.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED
Safari detected unusual activity coming from my “research phone” when I was looking into all this, and wanted me to verify that I’m human. Whether I’m human is debatable; and, no, I did not let them know if I’m a human.
Most people use the word, “idiot,” and do not know it is a compliment. It means “self,” in Latin. An idiot is someone who is so totally unique that no one has ever seen the likes of them before. I call that a compliment!
I hope that people see me as an idiot. And if you, yourself, have ever felt like an idiot, The Dave says, “Good for you!”
When I paid my bill, Friday night, my server asked me, 1) “What are you DOING here, if I may ask” and 2) “May I?” look at THE FOUR ELEMENTS: Seasons Bleeding into Existence.
I was stupefied that they read more than the first three sentences; my writing style is quite idiomatic to only me.
Then, I asked them what they were doing for the remainder of the night. What followed was a stupendous, spectacular free-style slam verbal improvisation that riffed off of my story, mentioned tv by pixels and being pixilated (The Ghost and Mr Chicken, Don Knots), in short, going home and chilling. Chilling never sounded so stupendous.
I was stupefied, again, and sat silent with a stupid look on my face trying to process it all. I hope they felt idiotic, in a good way, because I assure you, I’d met a Realized Man, in the generic use of man, as German Mensch, which is a non-gendered noun. Girls can be Menschen.
Unfortunately, I did not have my poetry book on hand, LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man. But my server took the flyer for THE FOUR ELEMENTS, so they know how to reach me.
No way to work Jack Reacher into this.
For us, it’s not a matter of fitting in. It would do us damage to be the commodity that fits in–damage our oddity. We need to be Ionic, in the sense of Plato’s Ion, the artist. We need to be Ionic magnets and attract the likes of us to our own society, social structure. Let THEM fit in with US; if us and them is what it comes to.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED–Sole Proprietorship.
DEVI AND SHINING WORDS, Part 1: Poetry as an Aberrant Enterprise.
Ensconced pretty good at Remedy 124 Street but I’m writing without my glasses. I won’t see misspellings.
Right when I was fixing to write about poetry as an aberrant enterprise, my Sikh cab driver told me about “shining words.” The word for “shining” is “Devi” and that is what Hindus call Goddesses. For the very first time ever, I learned of the connection between Devi and Diwali. We’re pretty close to Diwali, if we’re not actually in it.
It’s a Festival of Light; it’s the Cosmic War of Light over Darkness. Those themes are in Christmas and Chanukah. In the darkest day of the year, we pray for Light to ultimately win.
My driver told me of a Vice Prime Minister of India whose words shined so brightly that Queen Elizabeth listened when he spoke. His words shone so brightly that they attracted people’s attention. It was all I could do to keep quiet and listen. He spoke slowly. But that wasn’t it. I am a teacher and a Shayari-Poet. I’m in the business of generating and expressing words. It’s my bread and butter. Without words, you wouldn’t have a poem. Without a whole lot of words, I wouldn’t have a dissertation or a book.
But it can be an occupational hazard for us to tend to do all the talking, or to dominate the discourse in a conversation. You want us to, when you are reading our literature, or when you are in our class. But not in a social setting. We have to be shape-shifters.
So I reined myself in and listened to this soft-spoken, slow speaking elder Sikh, because I knew he had something I wanted to know, maybe needed to hear.
POETRY AS AN ABERRANT ENTERPRISE
The trouble with poetry is it’s writing. Writing is a form of saying. So to write, you have to say something. Probably, my readers, right about now, are going, “Duh–uh, of course.”
But think about it. A poet is always walking around everywhere trying to think up things to say. I call that a pretty aberrant way to go about your life.
This is going to wrap up Part 1. I have some teasers about Part 2, and Parts beyond.
1) When you’re thinking up things to say, there’s always the question, “What do I want to say.” When I see Bill on Whyte Avenue, my script is written for me: “Hi, Bill.” Not with Poetry. Do I want to say something about art and the creative process, itself? Writing about playing scales is like that:
SOMETIMES IT COMES DOWN TO SCALES.
Do I want to say something about life? Narrowing that, maybe about life when you’re broke ass? Running with that, maybe finding heartfelt glory in living when you’re broke ass? If that theme works, maybe Hemingway living broke ass in Paris as an early writer, saving up his money for an annual ski trip with his wife Hadley to Schruns would he a good way to get at that idea. In fact, it becomes
SCHRUNS AND ALL IT MEANS,
which is a published poem in AWAKENINGS REVIEW. But before it is published, Sky Custer reads it in JT’s Bar and Grill at 1 am, they make a fist and goes, “YES!” takes a pic of my face with the poem next to it, asks me to dance, but I’m too shy, and through Sky Custer’s chain of connections, I meet Professor Blair Stonechild, at Indigenous University and author of “LOSS OF INDIGENOUS EDEN and the Fall of Spirituality,” and that book transformed my life! So thanks for liking my poem, Sky Custer, and sorry about the dance.
2) It is true that Robert Frost said, “Poetry begins in a pang.” And Wordsworth calls poetry, “The still, sad music of humanity.” That’s fine and all except for any of those things to be a poem, it needs words. If it stayed a pang, and a pang only, it would not be a poem–it would be a hug. If it stayed the still, sad music of humanity, it would be an instrumental–maybe a symphony or ALL BLUES by Miles Davis. A poem qua poem (sorry) needs words. Words are all artificial and made up to mean this or that. There are no naturally-occurring words. That’s what makes poetry an aberrant undertaking: we are forever thinking up things to say, and we gotta say them in words someone wants to read.
Rintrah slept most of their lives. Incarnated as The Dave for the last remembered time, The Dave never knew what to grow up to be–despite, at 18, asking everyone.
He is an Artist at 70, and 20th-Century America didn’t have aptitude tests for that career choice. Still doesn’t.
I came to Canada in 2006 to begin a new career as a Swedenborgian Christian Minister. I was un the middle of a drawing that I asked a female bass player to pose for, while I took some stills to work from. I loved the way she played upright, acoustic bass with her eyes half closed. I approached her after the show and she thought I was a musician (I was a memory of a musician, then), who wanted to jam out on her bass. “Our policy is to refuse . . .” she started to say.
When I explained myself more fully, she graciously stood and began to play, eyes half-closed. I snapped some stills with a disposable camera I bought at a drug store: there were no cell phones back then.
Among all my worldly goods, I brought my portfolio to Canada for a “real job” called Swedenborgian Christian Minister. After 3 years of never drawing, before Canada I had drawn THE BEST SKETCH I EVER MADE ALL MY LIFE. I do not understand it. No practice drawings. Must be my Muse awakened. I took the Drawing to an art shop to have an Artist frame it. “Please take care! I don’t think I can draw like his again!” I exclaimed! It’s on a stand on the floor, next to my piano keyboards, in my temporary Government-Housing, man cave. No big-screen tv in my man cave, although I like movies.
MY FRIENDS, WHY DID I STOP DRAWING???!!! Tell me because I don’t know.
I quit Swedenborgian Christian Ministry June 18, 2023 and I believe believers resent me quitting, resent me. I still believe, won’t stop believing. Just don’t want the job of professional believing. The pay is bad.
THE UNIVERSE awoke me from my slumber with one eye awake. Probably because it was sick, sick and tired of the Art spectre I was haunting Artists I wasn’t.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED
I am 70 years old. I quit Christian Ministry at 68 years old. But that’s just me.
Isn’t it remarkable how free-flowing this narrative is, without systematic development, like my sermons or published Articles in University Journals. Artistic–eh? We say “eh” in Canada.
TOUCHED WITH FIRE: ART AND MANIA–Too Hot To Handle
Why do people read a story? They want something bigger and more than average. An ordinary woman hooks up with and marries a Scottish Laird. They all live in a magnificent castle and enjoy boundless wealth--eh?
No one wants to read a story,
"Yah, I went grocery shopping and bought some carrots. Potatoes were on sale, so I bought some potatoes. I needed toilet paper."
Consider this quote from the Swedenborgian Poet, William Blake. It’s a little bigger than grocery shopping. Blake is writing about Artistic Creation in an extended metaphor of giving birth. The character “Los” symbolizes the creator, Artist. Blake isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I like him:
"8. The globe of life blood trembled
Branching out into roots:
Fibrous, writhing upon the winds:
Fibres of blood, milk and tears:
In pangs, eternity on eternity.
At length in tears and cries imbodied
A female form trembling and pale
Waves before his deathy face
9. All Eternity shuddered at sight
Of the first female now separate
Pale as a cloud of snow
Waving before the face of Los
10. Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment
Petrify the eternal myriads."
Wow, eh!? That Poet is hot, literally.
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison wrote a research book whose title I use in my fb post: TOUCHED WITH FIRE. In her book, Dr Redfield-Jamison found that there is a higher incidence of mental illnesses in the arts community, than in the general population. Everybody always thought Artists are half-baked; Dr. Jamison gave it clinical validation.
I said that the Poet is hot. Blake lets us into just how hot he is. Again, talking about his own character, Los. Blake compares Artistic Creation to a blacksmith amid the Fiery Forge. William Blake also draws on Alchemical Imagery:
I dropped off my Poetry book, LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man, with a major bookstore national chain in my city. It is already in the online system, but this particular store in a big mall does not have it on their shelves. If they accept it, I will do a 2-day book signing.
I have my head on straight. The bookstore will be making a BUSINESS DECISION, only. They will decide if their customers would likely buy it–WHETHER IT WOULD SELL THERE.
I have confidence in the Literary value of my Art. I hope you do. I hope that you labor hard at Los’ Anvil–William Blake’s fictitious mythic giant symbolizing the Creative process. I hope you do not settle for less than as perfect as you can make your Art. That’s how I work.
So far, however, I’m about the only one who believes that my Art has significant meaning. It’s a hard place to be. Maybe it’s where you are, too?
It puts us in a hard place. The same place F. Scott Fitzgerald was in, and died in. THE GREAT GATSBY did not even sell out the first edition. Fitzgerald died thinking he was a failure as a serious writer. He WAS popular. He WAS rich. But he made most of his money writing comic short stories in magazines like our VANITY FAIR; or VOGUE. Not “great literature.”
Hemingway, his friend sold millions of books, was rich and famous, AND was considered a great Literary figure in his own lifetime. THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA won Hemingway a Nobel Prize. Fitzgerald had none of this. He was like most of us.
I don’t think I need to say that now, THE GREAT GATSBY is considered one of the great Literary works of the 20th Century. Equal with Hemingway’s best.
Too bad he didn’t know it. He was like most of us. With one difference:
I know that what I’m writing is a significant contribution to English literature. I’m the only one who knows it.
“The notes are the same in E”–Dr. Dave Fekete; “Rintrah.”
As an unemployed Elder, I have finally arrived at a position in life I’ve always wanted: I am free to do my art, in possession of some cultivated “skill,” and I have the will and motivation to do it.
I hope younger Artists are able to find their way here; I never thought I could when I was younger. Certain unreliable factors blocked me:
GREATNESS: I wanted to “make it,” “make a name for myself,” in fact, to be “great.” Now, I want to make art. I have the luxury of it being too late in my life to “arrive.” What a load off! I’m writing a poem about it: JUST HAVING FUN; but it’s not on today’s Agenda.
EMPLOYMENT: I thought I had to have a good and successful job. WHAT A CROCK. When you get to Senior Citizen status, nobody wants to hire you. It will happen to you. EMBRACE IT AS THE BLESSING IT IS! My wish for you is that you find a way to bypass all that. Say you can’t get a job so now you are free to devote yourself to your one true love in your life: your Art.
The only essential thing, is I have Canadian CPP and US Social Security to live on, even if it’s not really enough. It works.
2. Practice Piano–My own song, PANIC STATE (I wrote a blog about it a little while ago). Get familiar with the E-Minor Pentatonic Scale; also the chords associated with that Scale–the Dominant Chord is B7 or B Minor 7; the IV Chord is A-Minor; the “blues note,” or flat 5, is Bb (B flat). These are the things I need to know and play without thinking–in every key. Today it is E-Minor Pentatonic.
3. MALL WALKING: It’s too cold to walk outside, and walking is a different kind of exercise than Chen Taiji, which I also do (Grandmaster Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Taiji).
PANIC STATE: The Lead Vocalist for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND likes it! They told me in Charlottesville, in 1992 when I wrote it. I was playing through it, in a piano rehearsal room in the U Virginia Music School. DAVE MATTHEWS was trying out different configurations for his band: word was, "Something big is in the works."
Playing through it, tonight, I LOVE it. I'm astounded.
My bass teacher in Florida is a Berkeley School of Music graduate. He said the chord changes were too hard for him. They were for me, too--almost. I can play them now, and soon will make a recording.
When you write a note three bars down from the staff, it can get hard to count. I thought it is an Fb, but it's an Eb, below the third bar line down. It doesn't make me smart or anything: it means it has to be written down. So, you figure out how to write it, and there isn't any other way.
My Music Partner in Charlottesville always respected my musicianship--some other players did, too. But but I didn't realize it, and didn't have a strong profile. I was a Ph.D. Religious Studies Major.
I asked the singer for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, because I wrote it just before my psychotic hospitalization. I had lost my perspective. I couldn't evaluate anything--was an author's point a solid argument I could rely on to quote? Why does everything look like a cartoon of reality? My close friend told me I'd list my gift for poetry. He'd read my poems at Harvard, and said my poems as a Ph.D. Candidate lost it. Now, 34 years later, I'm astounded. Can a composer say that about their own compositions?
It hurts, which makes me bitter and I can lash out that Edmonton does nor not credit me as someone who can write PANIC STATE.
The Internet world changes what "local" means. I consider a poet in Portugal my brother. An Architect in Transylvania, my sister. I have a colleague who is an Art Professor in Italy who travels and posts photographs of Temples and Statues in India, and orher places in Asia. When PANIC STATE gets a good recording, "locals" on the Internet will give me a listen. Maybe a friend I knew in 1992 in THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND will hear it, and then it doesn't matter if someone on Edmonton's streets listens, or knows who I am. Edmonton favours its own. I like a lot of Edmonton Players.
David Fekete 