My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.
What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.
Purely by hard work, one can become an artist.
In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.
The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.
The creative musician ... is ... the radio receiver, not the broadcasting station. His personal discipline is to improve the quality of the components, the transistors, the speakers, the alloys in the receiver itself, but never to concern himself overmuch with putting out the program. The program is there; all he has to do is receive it as far as possible.
The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry.
The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.
There is a difference between being a timekeeper and keeping the pulse or being in step with the pulse in the band.
I continue to explain that plot inconsistencies in B movies are consistent, and should not be allowed to undermine one's enjoyment of the action, nor the fundamental credibility of the storyline: the good & bad guys are clearly delineated & easily recognizable, the hero duffs over the baddies, things blow up loudly & spectacularly, the good guy wins. Entirely credible.
According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.
Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.
Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.
Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.
Music never goes away. It is always available, but we're not always available for music.
However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.
Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.
If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.
That certain feeling happened to me in a big way quite often with the first King Crimson. Amazing things would happen-I mean, telepathy, qualities of energy, things that I had never experienced before with music. You can't tell whether the music is playing the musician or the musician is playing the music.
The aim is freedom conscience and truth
So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.
Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.
