The Tolerable Ear.

Hello everybody! I'm feeling particularly good this morning. Sitting here with my friend Coffee. Had a good night last night. John stayed over again on account of his working in the morning. We had a good talk last night about some things. I'll try to relay them as best as possible.

Thoughts are strange things if you approach them in a certain way. Unlike me, John has the mind to carry itself away on what seems to be a near unlimited amount of paths through which to think of anything really. When these paths are observed and picked through, they can start to become a haze. But these are not necessarily new thoughts. They could be re-heated old thoughts in which his brain tries to find some other little nugget of crazy whipwaps. When consciousness is abandon and subconscious takes the reign, things can get muddled. BUT, as muddled as they may seem, the subconscious could be trying to arrive at some conclusion that he is not aware of until it is done. When this happens, even he, the thinker, is taken aback by the magnitude of the full circle his mind went in to arrive at a conclusion of whatever he may or may have been thinking of. Now, for him, this can happen, at least compared to others, pretty often. Me being a person that only feels I can add anything to a conversation if I ask a question or have experienced the topic at hand personally, couldn't relate a whole bunch on that level. With my depression being cured, I no longer have the ability (at least the way it used to be even if I didnt want it to be) to let my mind wander to places that I have a hard time recovering from. But, in in a different, yet strangely similiar way, I had plenty to add from another viewpoint.

The effects that improvisation in music can have are very similiar to his train of thought in those times. At once being completely conscious and aware of your surroundings, you can be entirely sucked out of if there is a sort of "meeting of the minds" situation you find yourself in. I have been so blessed to find myself in many experiences like this with other musicians that can understand the importance of the melding of multiple spirits through music. When one "improvises", the person should take under great consideration the communication between the other musicians, or else the conversation is lost, never to be recovered in the same path it once was. Some of these paths can seem really strange or interesting, yet, like John's thoughts, could be re-heated old ones from past experiences. Alot of the time in improvistation, the person/group is still aware subconsciously of what he or she is doing. The mind conveys to the fingers what it already knows, so as to fit in some way with whatever the other people are trying to say with theirs.

This can be taken as improvisation, but to drift into completely uncharted territory is a different ballgame. Now with John's thoughts, the conclusions he reaches can be completely different from anything he's thought before, but sometimes they could be very different ways to look at what he already knows. This is the same situation I find with nearly all improvisational music, myself included when I'm a part of it.

Now to reach a different level of musical communication in a moment is when I believe true improvisation occurs. The moments when even you suprise yourself with a conclusion, or a new way of saying something, is when the real improvising happens. This is a rare occurence, and is not to be taken lightly, whether in thought, music, painting, poetry, math, or whatever. It is a glimpse at another level with which your mind realizes it can function. If you keep at it, or try to attain it again, consciously or not, the next stage in whatever you are doing it in will be reached. When you get to a point where you think, "Well, I've done so much (in whatever it is you do), it really doesn't seem like I can get any better", that is when your mind could be thinking, without you knowing, that it is time to move to another stage. It's happened to me a few times now, which I am eternally grateful for, but I know I really havn't even passed my first level. I may have in some aspects, but to me I have an infinite amount to learn about myself in what I love, as John can have an infinite amount of paths to lead to new or old ways of thinking. And as, I'm sure, all of you have at some point as well. Probably multiple times.

And I leave you with this.

"When we hear two men speaking in a foreign language, if we don't happen to know that language, everything they say sounds like gibberish. Only after we have begun to grasp their language can we decide whether they are talking wisdom or nonsense. Composers today are experimenting with a new musical language. There is as yet no dictionary for it, and no way of studying it except to listen to it without panic and without mental reservations. And the more we listen, the better able shall we be to weigh and estimate the value of what present-day composers are saying. Some of them are just talking pig-Latin; but others may be saying something that we may all, some day, be grateful to hear."
Deems Taylor
Of Men and Music