LUKE GULLICKSON

Vision

11/26/2016

0 Comments

 
We’re all experiencing cycles—all the time, all the time—but lately they seem to carry especially complex patterns of overlapping troughs and apexes, with some dramatic amplitudes.
Picture
Here is something I told a friend in an email the other day: “I’m having a hard time marshaling a long-term vision for myself as a musician right now, which is something I could always count on over the last 5-6 years, even when the specifics were (quite) hazy.”

To make sense of the present we look for hints of the future, for secret threads connecting things, for invisible resonances barely heard.

Quoth Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective, “She articulated a personal vision. Vision is meaning. Meaning is historical.” I’m not sure what that means, if anything, but let’s hazard an analysis:

Vision is the ability, or the proclivity, to see patterns and connect information—even if the patterns don’t really exist outside your personal imagination. In this sense vision is related to, perhaps inextricable from, some notion of faith. 

Meaning is also about connection, the connection of events to other events. Meaning is about believing in narratives: after all, you can’t tell a story without one thing leading to another.

History is, of course, the connection of events in succession, is about seeing correlations and positing causal relationships among them.

So maybe vision is the desire, the struggle, the attempt to situate ourselves historically. It’s not about literally believing your music is going to be in the history books. All that’s required is the sense of a connection between your work and the music that IS in the history books, and the belief that your work may open a way to the music of the future—even if it’s only your personal future and no one else’s.

Ned Rorem said (and I’ve been quoting this since my first round of grad school admissions essays): “I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need.”

The idea is, there’s this thing you want to hear. You can almost see it, sometimes. But you don’t totally know what it’s going to sound like. Not until you try to write it down.

For this reason, the most exciting thing in the world is when you catch some glimpse of your ideal music like a flash in the corner of your eye. I’ve had this revelation over and over again, in small hints and breathtaking waves: doing theater as a kid; hearing for the first time Miles Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, the Cavatina from Beethoven opus 130, Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet; cliff diving into the Colorado River, climbing my first fourteener, standing in a New Mexico ponderosa forest at midnight and hearing the wind in the trees and the horn of a distant train.

Just the other day I saw or heard a few shreds of it, whatever it is. It’s always just fragments, but these are the reminders that allow us to keep working. I was working on a piece of music, entering notes from a pencil draft into Sibelius. I was listening to Danny Fisher-Lochhead’s album On Ceremony. And then I clicked through his record label, Fishkill Records, to another recent album, Arktikos by Ross Gallagher.

These albums were both inspiring in the way I’ve described, dropping hints of what I’m looking for in the piece I’ve been writing. Actually the two are in some ways in opposition, as they relate to my project. Danny’s album exemplifies the big beautiful mess theory of which I am an enthusiast. It’s sprawling, oblique, mysterious. The band is called “Danny Fisher-Lochhead Large Ensemble,” which implies genre indeterminacy as well as a possibly democratic sense of pluralism and participation.

Arktikos, on the other hand, is terse, focused, and simple—a probably contradictory ideal I’ve also expressed in my own music. Question: are these values actually contradictory?

I’m reminded of the notion, which I wrote about in 2013, about certain musicians or pieces or recordings as “keys to the church.”

Speaking of musicians in honor of whom churches were literally later established, I really encourage everyone this week to listen to some Coltrane. It seems to help.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    A Selection

    • Gone Walkabout
    • Migration
    • Music as Drama
    • Crossroads II
    • 10 Best of 2014
    • January: Wyoming and the Open
    • ​February: New Mexico and the Holes
    • Coming Up
    • Notes on The Accounts
    • Crossroad Blues
    • Labyrinths

    Archives

    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010

    RSS Feed