In my teaching, I have a habit of having people draw their account of a piece. Since I call virtually everything into question, a natural thought arises: what’s that drawing all about? Drawing asks for an embodiment of a visual sort, which helps a person put the thoughts they may have about a piece into… Continue reading Drawing musical energy
Category: Contemplative practice
In this group you will find essays that relate in some way or other to meditation, or contemplative practices in general.
Grateful for Being Noticed
This spring I was awarded a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to support my workshop, Just Listening. It matters deeply to be noticed, recognized for what one does. I’ve been working on a new venture for several years now, always returning to the idea that I am bringing an experience of value to others.… Continue reading Grateful for Being Noticed
Following the Need
The Just Listening workshop began as an attempt to promote the analytical practice I call the Sound-Energy Aggregate. At a time of great distress about my own future, having had most of my teaching cut one fall, I reached out to a career coach to get help in developing a way to promote the SEA.… Continue reading Following the Need
Music and Community
One of the most important books to have influenced my thinking about music and music-making is Christopher Small’s book, Music, Society, Education. Among the many things it helped clarify for me, one thing that probably drew me into his thinking was that he used Grateful Dead concerts to demonstrate the growth of community in shared… Continue reading Music and Community
The question of energy
The question of energy in music is vexing: easy to say, hard to define. One way of looking at energy is to bring forward traditional concepts from physics and everyday life. In physics, there are a number of categories of energy, some of which directly relate to music, some of which create interesting parallels to… Continue reading The question of energy
“How’s it going?”
How’s it going? It’s a simple question that needs a more complicated answer than “fine”. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that my life is full of opposites, and that both “fine” and “not so well” are credible answers to that familiar question on a given day. And I’m coming… Continue reading “How’s it going?”
Socrates and me
I just read a really great article by Paul Woodruff, “How I learned to heal my soul, with help from love and Socrates”, which describes Socrates’ thoughts on healing the soul. It makes me realize that Socrates has had a long-term effect on my soul, my thinking. His teaching method, the Socratic method, is well… Continue reading Socrates and me
Evolution of a practice
As I’ve begun this blog, I’ve had in mind sharing ideas on music facilitated by experience in meditation, thus the title, Contemplating Music. Regular readers and those who know me well will have noticed that there is a divide in my writing, between technical issues surrounding my SEA analysis technique and the more general, socially… Continue reading Evolution of a practice
Music and Spirit
When you get right down to it, the essential reason I am following a thread deep into the workings of music is that I sense the connection between music and spirit. I have even said in recent memory that music is spirit. Before the pandemic, my spouse (Vivian Montgomery) and I had a conference all… Continue reading Music and Spirit
Contradiction as a Path to Truth
Some years ago, at a conference of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE), I got excited about an idea brainstormed with a group, and the thought keeps popping up in various ways to this day. The idea, of how contradiction is a pathway to truth, may seem strange to some, so it’s… Continue reading Contradiction as a Path to Truth