Sacred River: Six hours of continuous sacred music Sunday 26 November

[Serial_Apologist]

I don’t see how we or anyone can explore a subject matter without use of language. And who is ‘we’?

Trappist observants in a monastery or convent? Weekend Buddhists on an awayday Mindfulness course? There's a Mindfulness walk around the grounds of Crystal Palace Park coming up next month. I've just been on a free outdoor spiritual subject auto-broadcast of my own, a multimedia one, distance approximately 3 miles, which, among the omnipresent audiovisual and olfactory, included fresh soil-scented air, the wind, trees shedding their last leaves in many colours, children playing, passing family groups well wrapped up and smiling at other passers-by, a herring gull squawking, several parakeets swooping in groups, and a closing scene of a sun setting behind encroaching clouds on three levels, outlined by a lacey tracery of bare branches. These experiences, attended to with minimal inner commentary, strike me as more spiritual than anything deliberately laid on as per somebody else's agenda because in combination they happen of themselves, freely, unintentionally, harmlessly (mostly), and cannot be caught in any conceptual net or verbalisation, which would by definition mean division.

The contradiction in all of this is that language is implicit in the very idea, let alone any specifics, of subject matter, per se.

[jean]

Trappist observants in a monastery or convent?...

They may not speak much, but they aren't completely averbal!

[MrGongGong]

I hate you!

[MrGongGong]

If I set a text I'd expect my setting to have something to say about the text I was setting, otherwise I wouldn't bother to set it.

And if I listen to someone else's setting, I want to be able to understand the text they've set.

That's interesting
One of the performances i'm involved with at the moment is with a singer from South India.
I don't understand most of the texts she sings (when there are texts) but I do "understand" the whole thing.
Also I listen to lots of music with texts that I don't understand at all, i'm not so interested in words but sometimes the sounds of the language is enough

How about pieces like Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds ?

[Serial_Apologist]

If I set a text I'd expect my setting to have something to say about the text I was setting, otherwise I wouldn't bother to set it.

And if I listen to someone else's setting, I want to be able to understand the text they've set.

But that amounts to "understanding" in terms of conceptualisation, which as I understand it is not what "the spiritual" is "about", which is the direct experience as opposed to the its description, which the verbal or textualised can only point to but never actually BE, unless divested of its own terms,and at best can only be recollection in tranquillity if it is successfully to be communicated. This is what I understand ritual to be all about invoking, and seems to be common to most religions or at least spiritual observances which either bring people together to experience their togetherness or "unlonely aloneness" - or did so once: the loss of ego sense arising from what modern commentators describe as immersivity.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's interesting
One of the performances i'm involved with at the moment is with a singer from South India.
I don't understand most of the texts she sings (when there are texts) but I do "understand" the whole thing.
Also I listen to lots of music with texts that I don't understand at all, i'm not so interested in words but sometimes the sounds of the language is enough

How about pieces like Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds ?

The improvising pianist Keith Tippett speaks of wanting to remove listeners from chronological time in his performances. I myself think this may have something to do with allowing music to take its course with a minimum of pre-compositional planning - a "reversal" if you will, of the narrative forms evolved by Western art music which give an account in musical directions analogous to story telling in which opposed forces have their fates worked out by the composer, leading to an eventual outcome which is expressed as a final resolution.

Whether or not there ever is a final resolution is the conundrum all entertainment, from films to plays to symphonies to religion, exists to remove us from the stresses of life and offer expressive means that enable personal identification - namely that we're all human, we can all empathise with another's happiness or its opposite, and not feel we are diffeernt and have nothing in common - mediated through whatever the sensory signals are making up music in the forms specific to particular cultures and eras - in meaningfully, which is to say conventionally encoded forms.

[french frank]

Thought-provoking:

"We may be able to think without language, but language lets us know that we are thinking."

Is it just language that does that?

Arguably, yes. On a superficial level, we can perceive, feel and react without words, but when we want to go deeper - analysis, criticism, understanding - we need words.

What did the word 'explore' imply? I suspect it was a bit like journalism where in fact the word 'say' is most appropriate but there has to be a constant variation: insist, suggest, explain &c., even though they aren't quite accurate. I doubt the word 'explore' really meant anything here.

[Serial_Apologist]

Arguably, yes. On a superficial level, we can perceive, feel and react without words, but when we want to go deeper - analysis, criticism, understanding - we need words.

If I understand Mr GG correctly, "going deeper" need not involve words. Words can actually "get in the way" of experience, as I have tried to get across above. Words and the rules governing their function are the social intermediaries of belonging; but they can never encompass the totality of being, to which the spiritual disciplines seek access.

[french frank]

If I understand Mr GG correctly, "going deeper" need not involve words. Words can actually "get in the way" of experience, as I have tried to get across above. Words and the rules governing their function are the social intermediaries of belonging; but they can never encompass the totality of being, to which the spiritual disciplines seek access.

My mother would have replied to that, "If you say so." But unless you can be more explicit about what you intend by "going deeper" I shall remain sceptical

[MrGongGong]

If I understand Mr GG correctly, "going deeper" need not involve words. Words can actually "get in the way" of experience, as I have tried to get across above. Words and the rules governing their function are the social intermediaries of belonging; but they can never encompass the totality of being, to which the spiritual disciplines seek access.

From what I remember from when I was a student there is (was ??) a fundamental disagreement about these things amongst philosophers

In my experience I don't think this is true (but i'm forever ranting at people who quote "music is a universal language")
I don't think in words

but when we want to go deeper - analysis, criticism, understanding - we need words.

[eighthobstruction]

Yeah, but...yeah but....yeah but....the closer you looked at the selection of music, the more baffling it got to a 'sacred river'. Erm...........??

What on earth is going on?

yeah but....certainly better than the weekday cough ahem Meex-tapes....but i can understand your "What the hells happening"....but hey I just let it happen....

[eighthobstruction]

Trappist observants in a monastery or convent? Weekend Buddhists on an awayday Mindfulness course? There's a Mindfulness walk around the grounds of Crystal Palace Park coming up next month. I've just been on a free outdoor spiritual subject auto-broadcast of my own, a multimedia one, distance approximately 3 miles, which, among the omnipresent audiovisual and olfactory, included fresh soil-scented air, the wind, trees shedding their last leaves in many colours, children playing, passing family groups well wrapped up and smiling at other passers-by, a herring gull squawking, several parakeets swooping in groups, and a closing scene of a sun setting behind encroaching clouds on three levels, outlined by a lacey tracery of bare branches. These experiences, attended to with minimal inner commentary, strike me as more spiritual than anything deliberately laid on as per somebody else's agenda because in combination they happen of themselves, freely, unintentionally, harmlessly (mostly), and cannot be caught in any conceptual net or verbalisation, which would by definition mean division.

The contradiction in all of this is that language is implicit in the very idea, let alone any specifics, of subject matter, per se.

....so are you meaning it is good, bad, or indifferent....??

ED....Ah I've read the rest of your replies now....I suss it now.... (just using 'suss' to annoy folks)

[french frank]

From what I remember from when I was a student there is (was ??) a fundamental disagreement about these things amongst philosophers

There is: at what point do we need words, and for what purpose?

I don't think in words

And I don't see why you would need to, any more than an artist sitting down in front of his easel needs words. But we go back to the original query: what are we exploring when listening to a ceaselessly changing stream of music? What was meant by the word 'explore' in this context?

[eighthobstruction]

....Zeeeesh, you lot and your words....think I'll put on a cd and forget you all....

[eighthobstruction]

....I venture explore could be heard as with 99% of language in a script of W1A....