I read carefully what was expressed here, and I very much disagree with it. This has nothing to do with being “right” or “wrong”; I am absolutely not thinking in those categories. What you suggest is that an audio experience adds consciousness to a person, or that experiencing art or music is an acquisitional event for the individual.
My present convictions are the opposite.
I recognize that a musical event — whether live or recorded — is a subtractive experience. We spend an enormous amount of effort trying to make music serve us with realizations, and suddenly we begin to feel that the effort itself becomes the means of Truth. We worship talent and breakthrough, but we fail to recognize that these are merely ingredients of the soup — and we worship the soup instead of truly appreciating the peace that consuming the soup provides.
The purpose of music and audio is not to create new consciousness, but to destroy existing consciousness. The observation and destruction of the existent, the known, and the comfortable consciousness is, in my current view, the true strategic objective of musical experience.
It is as if I were a sculptor: when I see a granite block, I already see the delicate sculpture that my consciousness wants to reveal. The amount of material that must be removed from that granite block in order for the internal sculpture to materialize — that is what music and audio are really about.
I know this is a very different concept than what most people would feel comfortable with, but I do not seek to convince anyone of anything. To understand this properly, we must do exactly what quantum mechanics has taught us to do: learn to enjoy ambiguity.
I will probably make an effort to explain how I understand audio today, but I must first consider how to present it, because it is not easily accessible.
To be an irreverent and prolific asshole I will give you a very cryptic but possibly indicative key: In all my studies, I have discovered a musical work that holds encrypted keys to everything. It is BWV 582, specifically the second part — the fugue. There are many great interpretations, but I am particularly fond of Simon Preston’s performance on the gorgeously sounding organ of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Waltrop, Germany.
In my view, this music encodes something that even poor cables and bad elevators cannot compromise — if the entire listening ritual is properly organized, not from the standpoint of audible quality, but from the standpoint of conscious readiness. |
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