ALL IS THE ONE AND ONLY BLUES

 

O yes, as before, here it is, although with appearance notably altered: simply each repetition brings it into greater harmony with itself. All is the one and only blues; to it there is no end, because it is our thoughts’ blues; it is life’s music — forever the one and only life for all ages, on all continents. Paper absorbs only a humble fragment of the present reality, takes an arbitrary shear of a limitless whole. This is a tiny shaving, a scrap of a holograph: in it the past, in it the future, in it the timeless NOW, and we all are within it, because life’s plenitude exists in all of us.

Here it is a newspaper. Here a magazine. Here a letter, and there a painting. A PAINTING HAS NO COLOR. Color is just in the head. It takes ears to hear. Foresight needs no loftspace. Grand horizons don’t have to open from upper floors.

Seek the actual Olympus on the side turned inward.

 

THE BLUES AS A NATURAL FORCE

 

Sometimes the boldest dreams come true. Coming true is for NAMELY the boldest dreams.

Why be surprised? After all, we are the master builders, crafters of this reality. This means all lies in our hands.

We are musicians; we are the shapers; and we may see our world made without falseness. In it, the commonplace turns poetic, and an artistic metaphor wields the material persuasiveness of a household object.

We call this “BLUES” (Apraksin Blues #1), or “FUGUE” (Apraksin Blues #2), or “BEETHOVEN” (Apraksin Blues #3). Today, I am proposing to assess the universality of the PENTATONIC CIRCLE.

HOLY SCRIPTURE, THE BOOK OF CHANGES, and THEORY OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS await their turn.

Existence has but one element. One impulse, one strength, one substance. The law is universal, and has not changed (for war, for love, for the marketplace).

Proust says “There is no room for sounds”? Ask Jericho’s walls: I am not certain they share this opinion. Small comfort for them, brought down not by flame, not by the sword, not by a wave from the sea.

(Absorbing, that fits of spiritual arousal or, more generally, sharp, inner changes in condition are often crowned by blown fuses and light bulbs, problems with the car’s electrical wiring, and also the unprompted fall to the floor of objects that till then hung peaceably on walls. All of these delightful effects of the mental’s intersection with the material are tediously simple to explain —there is no mental, no material, nor any intersection —nothing is there to intersect with. There is one, only one, single, physical space, unified, shared, plain, of sackcloth.)

 

THE VIOLINIST AS A NATURAL PHENOMENON

 

ALL ORIGINATES IN MUSIC. All leads to philosophy. ONE LAW governs all.

An impulse: a conductor’s baton’s, an emotion’s, a thought’s first move. Some name it the will to power; some, sexuality; some, the inner imperative. And creative strength lifts the bow, and the only need is that the hand prove keen, able, and enlightened: the right bow-hand. An answer to the question, “How?” The question, “What?” is for the left hand.

(It must be noted how many artists feel compelled to deal willfully with musicians’ hands —they just have to swap the hands’ positions. Does this not show ill intent? Could artists simply fear music? Or undervalue it? Armed troops or hammering workers, for them, as a rule, command more conscientious treatment.

Or could it seem to them that musicians have hearts on a different side?)

 

THE SIMPLE, SACKCLOTH SPACE OF THE BLUES

 

In ages’ search for truth, the form they choose makes them distinct. By this method, meaning is found.

The way to mastery of spaces makes them distinct. By this method, too, meaning is found.

I present the theory of BLUES in the form of artistic metaphor (a better-known area), though I save my preference for the scientific: precise and unambiguous, it eliminates misreading.

Art uses form to assess; science, a mathematical relation. A graph gives no less a metaphor than any “Dove of Peace”: one thing is conditionally equated with another.

The more exact a science, the more its abstraction leaves representation for the field of pure relations… If I may, is this not already music?

Is the relation an image, or is the relation digits? Love or analysis? Bend closed the line whose ends balance extremes, and they unite at one point. Perfect as a work of art, a formula = a masterpiece, impressive as a mathematical postulate. There is no emotion without thought, no algebra without music, no creativity without philosophy. Physics, for metaphysics, is exactly the same “meta.”

Science is a metaphor for art, art a metaphor for science. Algebra by ear, and harmony, by calculation, yields “The Art of the Fugue,” yields the Quatrocento, yields the BLUES —the one and only, simple, sackcloth space, native to all.

 

A FERMATA…

 

OUTSIDE OF MUSIC IS ONLY BAD MUSIC…