divenire

Divenire

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

So I was in the studio and then I wasn’t and then I was trying to find the studio inside and to get to it I found a studio rhythm and this is indeed helping me to dwell in the reality of the studio inside and even though I have not got to painting yet I am in something, definitely.

And all the time, every possible day, I have been playing Einaudi’s Divenire on the piano that I have been given the keys to in the neighbours’ downstairs apartment.

In the studio week I finally linked, for the first time, the bits I knew with the mysterious bit in the middle, and suddenly I had a whole.

But it was a kind of scratchy, awkward, patched-together whole, because my fingers had not been accustomed to playing music for such a long time, nor my brain for concentrating so continuously on something so precise. The piece is nearly ten minutes long and it is a work to hold my attention in the exact present without having it distract somewhere else – and in fact usually this distraction does not totally affect the flow, but what does affect it is the jolt of realising that you are elsewhere and then trying to relocate yourself in the music, which usually causes a stumble.

So each day of the month since I left the studio I have been playing – of course as part of the studio rhythm – and then often recording myself to hear how the piece is feeling. It has taken time to ease out places of complexity and to smooth the trickier jumps of hand and the release the tension of areas which require more skill and concentration, which is all very well, but until the skill and concentration is mastered, there is anxiety that makes itself felt by the listener.

Over the month, I have become aware that somehow the piece was also taking me somewhere; in losing myself into it, I am finding a self, I am becoming – divenire – a self that I have not been for a long time, perhaps ever.

There are different elements in a journey of allowing music to form you; some are intellectual, some physical, some emotional, some deeper. There is an integration that has to happen which must be then somehow anointed with a grace from somewhere else. It is work and mystery.

Yesterday I had a very important insight: I had been working towards a recording that sounded accurate; each note in place, sounding beautiful. Yesterday it was sounding often beautiful, but still, there were occasional, sometimes jarring errors. But suddenly it came to me, listening, that I’d forgotten the fundamental fact of live performance; that there is a humanity in it that cannot and should not be eradicated, the eradication of which, in fact, would substitute a kind of overworked tension, and anyway would only likely be possible through mechanistic means.

But this insight had a follower, as if hidden behind its back. If it already was (almost) beautiful, and there would always be some humanity left in the beauty, then the moment I had been waiting for might be arriving sooner than I’d expected.

And then yes, this morning, I was there, in a beautiful completion of piece and self. Divenire.

And now I am waiting for what happens next.

la vie suspendue – time

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

In la vie suspendue, time is running through me, or to be more precise times. I can feel them, some of them streaming through with no thought of clinging on, some ferociously disputing ownership, claiming my desires, my thoughts, my imaginations, my frailties.

Perhaps it takes this enforced slowness to truly notice the other forms of speed swirling. I am poised in some kind of eternal time, and despite the continuous risks I feel of slipping off its axis, this eternal time, now that I have returned to it, is steady, more steady than I realise, and I don’t seem to slip off as much as I fear.

And so then the other times are making themselves felt, the slow slipping time of summer tempo days punctuated occasionally by the panic of the end time, when I will have to return to the demands of work. So then business time and the seasons of my clients – holidaying for July or holidaying for August or holidaying for a two week scrap of childcare before swapping with the other partner to return to work, according to culture.

His time, how long will it take him, what is he thinking, does he have a time with me in it, should I reach out time, no probably not, patience, time.

Biological time, googling statistics, pondering depleting likelihoods.

Ageing, in a way the same, but felt differently, eyes, hair, skin just a little bit different from last year’s summer photos.

Divenire time, Andante, one dotted crochet = 60 beats per minute.

Ontological time, such a very very long time it takes to manoeuvre the human psyche into new orders to wholeness, always a shock.

Capitalist time, now, immediately, preferably yesterday although then you didn’t actually knew the offer existed, or the deadline.

Poor pitiful modern time, no depth, no heart, no soul, no allowance for grieving, passion, healing, compassion, renewing, also known as ‘according to my personal convenience time’, and ‘validate me! validate me! Entertain me! Feed me! before I pre-emptively reject you’ time.

Nature time, everything in its season, can’t be cheated, nature of reality time.

Sometimes when my younger friends are fretting about how Long everything is taking, I remind them; remember, you were raised in a culture of timescales for the insubstantial. It is a hard lesson, and I have to learn it again.

The eternal time is helping soothe the pains of this emancipation.

shift, nearer

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I went a little bit silent. Despite the sweet encouragements of the wordpress world (‘you’re on a [insert number here] day streak!’ I got absorbed into another direction.

I have been making a rhythm path into my creativity, but also, I notice now, my living.

As my creative practice is continually also an investigation into the nature of existence, the living and the art are closely intertwined. Deep shifts have been going on in my own deep life, old stories have been moving to take up new positions, new stories may or may not be being born, but they will only be able to be born if space is made for them.

Such a work is one of great tenderness and almost perpetual bewilderment, perseverance yes, and perhaps this is why this has been such a focus.

But now the shift has completed, or is completing, and then a new space is opening up. As usual the space comes with a sense of dizzying exposure alongside the delight. What will fill this space, what discoveries will get made, who will arrive to commune with it, how to protect it? It is a space for tiny flutterings and glimmerings yet as with all tender spaces most likely the giants of the land will be waiting to sneak in forbiddingly.

So I go gently and write and try to inhabit peace and trust. And to soak up and reveal in the creativity of a moment of blossoming freedom that comes rarely in life and is a gift of great power and beauty.

the studio inside, a discovery

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

This morning, at long last after the wild month of June, I recovered my sense of myself and the poetics of my year (my explorations of the poetics of existence and what this means for me will have to wait til another time). It was a moment of delight. I found my other self, the one that I had been severed from by difficulty, demands and distress.

What was it that made me see into it? I am not quite sure but it was something about my July clearing and it made me look back to the last large event in my life (moving home, another longer story). Then I noticed that it was exactly nine months since this moment, a period of time which always speaks to me in a deep way, and lo and behold, yes indeed, as I started to map the timelines of this season, insights and memories emerged that I had completely forgotten and the poetic significance they have in my story suddenly re-emerged.

Perhaps they are not linked but in close proximity to this I made my discovery: There were rhythms in even my short studio week that made a path into my creativity. And what I noticed this morning is that, while the physical studio is not longer mine, and the studio inside is (as I noticed yesterday) somewhat vulnerable, there is this studio of the rhythm.

Perhaps I had already felt this lurking, but to truly alight on it felt splendid. And quickly I recognised: I can live the rhythms of the studio day into my no-studio day, and somehow I will have created some room of my own within the wilds of existence.

Of course I am not so naive as to think a studio rhythm will replicate entirely the emphatic (and political) reality of material space, but there is something in it, and I know it is going to make a space for something. A pathway to and shelter for the studio inside.

divenire

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Something exciting happened this morning.

If you have been following the unfolding of this week in the studio you will know that I have been making artistic works and poetry to the sound of my playing the piano piece ‘divenire’ by Ludvico Einaudi. In a way it was a little surprising that I was drawn to this particular piece. It’s not the one I know the best, nor have practised the most, and after a long absence I might have expected myself to play the piece that sounded most polished, especially once I’d decided to record it.

But somehow I wanted to play this particular piece.

Called ‘Divenire’, which means becoming – all kinds of becoming.

In a way this title has just been hovering as a kind of ‘nice motif’ even though usually I am very sensitive to the poetics of existence. But in a way too it was just obvious and normal and did not require too much attention. I was also somewhat perplexed about the whole matter because I actually could not play the whole piece; it had a middle bit that I had never mastered nor really tried to investigate, partly because it looked a bit intimidating with dotted notes and trills.

Then two days ago the neighbour whose piano I am borrowing was back in her apartment so I could not play it. Then yesterday I had an unexpected client call in the morning so again my playing rhythm was disturbed.

Yesterday was a long and tiring day but at the end of it I managed to coax myself back into the downstairs apartment to at least a bit play the piano. I have recognised it as a place on which I must insist. Something is there.

And, perhaps encouraged by the peace of the hush that descended (and about which I have just written), I found myself looking into this missing section. I was familiar with listening to the piece; and I loved it – perhaps it was not really so difficult, so I pondered.

I tried a bit, and was astonished… it turned out that it was as if somehow my fingers had had ears of their own and knew the tune without me being aware of it.

But both the fingers and myself stopped short at the dotted notes. Also this bit involved playing two regular notes on one hand at the same time as three regular notes on the others; again, intimidation.

I moved on to another piece, and then a friend texted and I gave up for the evening, but already something had shifted. I had found encouragement in my fingers and their apparent readiness for the work.

So this morning, early before my studio arrival, back I went to play.

And something marvellous is happening. My fingers and self have found their way to traverse, at least almost traverse, the middle section of the piece. They have not quite quite made it without falling yet but soon they will, perhaps tonight.

All week my poetics look-out has been on already alert, calling to me about this piece. But I did not want to get distracted, and I’m wary of the risk of false conclusions and too-small stories.

But today as I dwelled within the piece and my own sudden ability to make it from one side to the other (almost!) I felt a deep delight. Something is happening in me in this week and although I still don’t know what it is, it is deep and it is light.