Calligraphy — Cacography

A friend, who studied Japanese but struggling to write in Japanese asked me about the sample

New Year’s card design I’ve posted here few days ago —– ” Writing  of those card looks terrible.

Is Japanese these days couldn’t write properly because they no longer hand-write but use key-board ?”

” I don’t think so.  Some of them sending me beautifully hand-written letters.  And the writing on the sample

cards may be done by a good professional calligrapher” —— ” What, are they done by professional ?”

” Yes, I’m sure this person can write in  pretty square formal style as well though, —— think,

receiving  New Year’s Greeting from close friends, do they  want to see a card looks like a formal notice

from officials ? —– How relaxed or polite and formal, the commonsense is the same to western culture.

The choice of a birthday card to your friend or to company boss would be different here isn’t it ? ”

———- Give a close look to the sample cards, top one and the bottom card,  you  may realized that

the first three lines on top card and the four lines on the bottom card, the writing is identical.

( By the way, the writing starts from the right to left.  Hence I meant, three vertical lines on the right )

Its indicates, the graphic designer used the same resource of the writing and composed those two

cards —— its mean,  it was not his own casual writing, but it was there as the special resources.

And the calligrapher who did the assignment treated this as an art, hence he did rather funny writing.

It’s not for a solemn occasion but joyful one.  It’s a Happy New Year.  😀

—

Doing artistic calligraphy is a very special skill of the art.  While writing the same letter, the movement

of the blush and the force to push on the paper makes different boldness, etc etc,  million of resulting

differences on the line, hence the written letter gives different impression, on top of the letter’s own

meaning.  When the impression enhancing the meaning of the letter itself,  it makes the art.

A letter of the Grace written in smooth flowing line, or the Power written with bold, and blunt movement

of the blush, will give distinctive impression and it would strike the viewer’s subconsciousness.

———- Around my life, strangely there were many calligrapher. (Though, I was called Kana-kugi  😀  )

My grand father was a calligrapher and having its line of blood, my father and sister had pretty good

hand.  And an  AD / POP planing company where I worked for short time had started by the group of the

calligrapher as a lettering, font design studio , hence I had plenty opportunities to see them at work.

” The requirement of the assignment, the concept in mind, then just face a blank sheet of paper and put

blush on it.  The blush start to run as if he got his own mind.  My hand is just giving a support for his

movement.  And the letter prevailed as if it was there before hand ” —— m m m ?  What an explanation.

I was young (!) and hate irrational magic or mambo-jumbo like my father’s Buddhism then.  It was out of

my comprehension, though after learned what is the structure of the mind and the Zen —— now I know.

The meaning of the letter will be read by the brain, but the style of writing can hit the guts straight.

———- If you have seen a Chinese film ” Hero” you might remember, a master calligrapher wrote

one huge red-letter SWORD which was then hanged behind of the king (who became the Emperor)

the letter  was in the ancient form,  so that the Chinese calligrapher has even more choice to express

the meaning.  It was a very impressive powerful calligraphy. (—- I want to have a poster.   🙂 )

—-

You may feel strange though,  I found the psyche or deep psychology in the Calligraphy and the

Haiku, even the Art of Pablo Picasso are all having the common factor —– Zen.

—– Once Picasso said, art is easy but to stay in the mind of child is not easy.

An episode of Picasso —– One day he asked a carpenter to make a small structure and he drawn a

sketch with each dimensions on it.  When the carpenter measured the sketch, he found the drawing has

the exact dimension down to the mm accuracy.  —— and the Picasso’s blue period paintings are

well-known with its accurate realism.

How the same painter, who got such exact eyes and the skill, could produce notoriously deformed

paintings and especially such as like his last series Las Meninous —– almost like a child’s doodling.

—– Haiku master Basho taught the way to create Haiku, is to capture ” Wabi and Sabi” though,

in his later life, he reached and created the Haiku in ” Karomi ” ( light-heartedness ).

It is exactly the same in calligraphy.  All down to the same matter, liberation of the mind —- freedom

without the impediment of the thinking, mind = Mushin ( mind of no-mind ) in  Zen term.

( In Zen, this freedom of creation was called in the state of Jizai )

Of cause, not all of them even know the Zen, and the creativity is not the monopoly of the Zen.

Zen is only using  the inherent state of the mind or subconscious, common to all the human being.

( Zen is the one who elucidated and established the methodology.  Like a phenomenon of fire —– the

science elucidated the oxidizing mechanism, hence we are able to know how to use and control it now)

—-

Starting with exacting discipline, then free the mind and free the hand to write the letters inspired

by the occasion or the meaning of the letter —– freedom like a child’s imagination.  So, it looks almost

like a scribble of a child —— on the thin line between Calligraphy and the Cacography. 😀

This is the Art.

( Yet, distinguish them, you may need to have seen million letters of good and bad one beforehand )

___/\___

—

Japanese NEW YEAR Greetings

———

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

—– Well, well,  I found a free program designed by Japan Post

—– ( Nippon Yuubin ) to create own New Year’s Card, and

—– the images here are ready-made components.

—– I found its rather fun.

—– For those who can’t read Japanese, the message written on

—– there are all ” HAPPY NEW YEAR “ except the one which

—– looks no letter ( right middle ) is a Hiragana character  Wu,

—– which mean Rabbit. ( the guardian of the year 2011, according

—– to the ancient Chinese mythology but nobody knows why )

——

For those, who want to have a fun ——- print-out or save and send to your friends as a card etc.

( But it supposed to be received on the morning of the New Year’s day )

HAPPY NEW YEAR  2011 —— Keep well and keep warm.

___/\___ Yoshizen

_____

GREETING

——-

——————————————————— Parties started week ago

—————————————————— and I saw beautiful full moon

——————————————————— but missed lunar eclipse.

—————————————————— Still we passed Winter solstice.

——————————————————– Shining sun will come back.

—————————————————————— as usual  😀

———————————————–No big issue here, just enjoy the season. —————————————- No big issue here.

———————————————————————- ___/\___

—–

Cyber Space / BLOG-SPHERE

To see is its OK there,  I’ve Googled and clicked  [ kinetorori ] , —— in my amazement,

I found there are 200 items under this key-word. —— What ? — How come ?

There are only 2  kinetorori in the whole Syber Space.  One is my Youtube name.  And other is in a post

of this blog where I’ve talked about an image I had put into Youtube.

Out of two how  those 200 items  bore out ?   ( I haven’t clicked  those, I don’t know what they are  😀 )

Another funny finding was, the collection of the comments I had put to the other blog-site, such as

[ tokyo 1000 ]—— Yah, I remember certainly I did. —– After many months, and reading back those,

I found its rather fun  😀  ( It’s in the [ backtype.com ]—– in the first page of [ yoshizen blog ] at Google )

( Of cause, the original exchange of comments with reference photo has more fun at [ Tokyo 1000 ]. )

—

We are in a strange false environment or utterly artificial communication sphere.

I have virtually no idea who this  Tokyo 1000 is.  If I bumped him on the street or even in an exhibition space,

I don’t think I ever exchanged single word with him.  Nor, even if I saw a notice of his photo exhibition

in an art listings,  I don’t think I ever attempt to go there.  Simply, because I don’t know him.

Since when we are in our far ancestor’s time ( kind of animal then 🙂 ) we keep so-called Psychological

distance to each other, —– closer relations to alien.  Distance is proportional.

So far I picked up some clue about this man  Tokyo 1000, he lives in Tokyo, 24 years old University student,

a mountain trekker, ex(?)- graffiti artist,  etc. ( Of cause I can read a bit more between the lines and able

to guess something from his photos though ) —– Yet, two people who are having totally different life,

still able to share a topics and freely exchange opinions in equal ground —— How democratic !

—– What intrigued me about this  Tokyo 1000 was, a  man who didn’t have any knowledge about

photography,  just started to take picture and blogging. —— rather successfully  🙂

thanks to a pretty well designed small camera.

To be naive, often exposes the truth, true nature and the true self.  Because there was no prerequisite

thoughts or pretense which clouding the eyes.  ( But rest of time, the picture is utterly dreadful.  😀 )

All about photography is, —– how to see the subject. 90% of How is the reflection of the personality

of the photographer / author.  ( And rest of  10% is the limitation of both subject and the camera ).

——- Yet still, regardless who he is, I could make quite funny comments,  thanks to this Cyber Space.

( rather ilresponsively  😀 —— hence, it is fun to read )

After all,  both of us are anonymous,  neither photos or scripts having such as copyright issue, and able to

make fun of each other —— then somebody else also came into the game, and made fun of us using

our materials and created yet another space for AD.

Whats so ever,  if there wasn’t WordPress  ( and they ( accidentally ) created Blog-site of mine ) there was

no Yoshizen ever appeared in this world. —— and I might have remained silent ( So, the world could

have kept its peace. — Ha ha ha  😀  )

Only a drawback to do Blogging is,  it consume a bit of time,  especially for a non native English speaker,

typing by one finger while making funny mis-spelling —– is not easy business.  Though, one reader said

funny mis-spelling is a part of fun here.—– m m m ?   Thank you very much.  Quite an encouragement.

Life having quite unexpected twist and turn and above all, a fun hidden in its sleeve.

—– Incidentally,  Tokyo 1000 suddenly stopped to post new photo, and its happened when it got

158th post —– m m m ? ? ?  ( Please refer to 8150 Story ) —– was this a halt by the Dharma ?

( I hope, he is still alive and kicking, expecting to have fun-full festive season with his girl friend —–

question is which one ?  🙂  )

___/\___ Ha ha ha  😀

—-

Sound of BACH

One of the reader left a comment, ” the post should have more media ” —– Yes, I’m well aware of it.

And the post shouldn’t be longer than 140 words otherwise no one would read  😀

In fact I got many plan to put a photo or video image into the post, such as ” I should put my Ancient Yoga

dancing video image into  Most Bizarre Story in Zen :-D”  or a photo of frosted leaves

into  Cold Blow — ( I’ve seen the frost in the night ) but  when I went to the same place next day,

frost wasn’t there. 😀 — It’s a bad tendency of ex-photographer, don’t want to settle with casual photo or

somebody else’s photo found in the Net.  😉

Anyhow,  while searching a music sample to talk about with my friend,  I stumbled a Youtube

image which I should have put into my BACH post —— ;

This is a part of J.S.Bach’s  Art of Fugue which I’ve talked about, but not from the beginning yet still

it may give some idea.  This musician / programmer, SMALIN having 200 or more music videos there.

And I found his graphical representation of the music is very effective as we can see the structure

of it in one glance.  Especially, the graphical patterns are much easier to distinguish than hear in sound.

To make the image,  may be the Midi cord is directly triggering the position and the length of each note,

therefore it is rather simple but very clear.  Same tonal information is in the music score, graphically

though, I found this is the simplest and more effective demonstration.

t—–

Then what I found the next to above clip was —— jaw dropping funny music video.

As a matter of fact this (yet another ) Japanese phenomena [ Miku Hatsune ] was totally new to me

until only few weeks ago.  This music animation program was created by YAMAHA as an open-source.

Anybody input the phonetic note, it will be played in synthesized voice, and the character Miku Hatsune

will sing as the user programmed, so that, anybody can produce a music anime of female singer, free.

There said to be half million Miku Hatsune video clip in the Net. ( search them, if you are interested in )

——- In 60~70th, there were two memorable musicians played BACH in new sounds.

One was the Swingle Singers. They played Bach’s polyphonic music purely by a jazz scat like voices.

And another was a French pianist Jacque Lucie and he played or improvised  Bach in Jazz.

Both sound are still in the bottom of my music memories, alongside the more traditional classic musician,

Jazz musician and they formed the music culture of my life.

Between Jazz and Baroque music, there is a common character of the improvisation —– spontaneous

on the spot creation.

Very interesting fact is, when musician is improvising the phrase, frontal lobe of the brain

became inactive. Frontal robe is the place, where rational thinking or process of causation is taking place.

This is the exact parallel to the Buddhism teaching  Mushin.— To be creative, don’t think.

Open mind mean, don’t impose a preconceived idea or judgement —– or Thinking.

You may wonder, ” Without knowing the passage, how musician can improvise ?  With the intelligence

shut down, how musician can control music making ?” —— may be you are not a musician.  That’s why

you ask this question.  If you still need to think about This Music, you can not improvise it on the spot.

When you became This Music or This Music became You, and you can play it without reading score,

without thinking —– then you can improvise it in total freedom.  Zen Buddhism call it Ichijo / Oneness.

So, with open mind, see and listen this  BACH sang by  Miku Hatsune —– It’s not too bad 😀  Ha ha ha.

Did you enjoyed ?  Or is it gone too far you think ?

Some irritating noise and instability of the sound there, still, considering it was created by an ordinary

person, using freely available open source, —— it is pretty impressive.  I like it. Thanks to the creator.

___/\___

—-

Unconscious ~ Subconscious ?

“There must be an unlimited possibility beyond the boundary of human consciousness”.

But there is a strange myth ” We human is only using 20% (?) of our brain,  hence to develop its hidden

potential is limitless,  blah blah ” —— according to the Guru. —- What a beautiful dream.

( With the observation by the PET Scanner, no such hidden or inactive region of brain exists)

Since it is a myth, nobody know who said it or where its original research has come from.

And such myth has been used by ignorant youth to justify the experiment to the drugs and even many

grown ups is using it as an excuse to smoke cannabis,  saying ” This is to touch my Spirituality ”

I know a lots of 19 century poets, novelists and artists were the addict of opium when it was not a banned

substance and quite a lot of their works were said to be contributed by its influence etc etc. — THOUGH,

—– Really ?  The question is even though their poems, stories were written when they were under

the influence of the drugs, their works and the imaginations couldn’t be existed without it ?

And the drugs DID OPEN any unknown horizon ?

Did, LSD actually created anything new, unknown to human culture, other than colorful

so-called psychedelic paintings or rather dull monotonous, endless music ?

——

The surrealism poet / artists, Andre Burton, Poul Eluard tried the mescaline, alkaloid  from cactus

to have a hallucinated state of the mind and produced  poetries or so-called  Automatism scripts.

I spent quite a money to buy this expensive book and looked their creation or the description of

unknown ! (?)  when I was a poor student of the Uni’.   Though, there was nothing in it.

Just the meaningless, endless continuation of the words and words —– yet more words.

( Still, it was better than  Dadaism poetry  ( Ha ha ha  😀  ) as they are at least the words ).

—-

We, some times, speak or utter a word without conscious.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the word came out of the mouth disappear at once.

What ?  What did you say ? —– What ? Did I say anything ?   I don’t know,  I don’t remember.

( It could have been a Truth ! )

Though, it is almost impossible to write unconsciously.  Yet, in the written words, our subconscious

may show up without our intention, so the skillful writer could write hidden meaning using utterly different

description —– lots of poetry, especially  Symbolism Poetry is using this technique. ( Since, it is stronger )

Our vague inspiration would take a form of concept and then converted into the word or words, using

the notion or meaning of the word to carry and to express what was the original feelings or inspiration.

Therefore, it is often the process of the compromise.  Just borrow the meaning of the word which is likely

fit to the original inspiration, but not necessary exact.  (—– Some time, a  rigid meaning of the particular

word itself may give the inspiration as a trigger )

Unlike the spoken words, the writing leaves visible evidence, which can be objectively read

again and again.  As the written letters has to be visually read and its pattern has to be configured

as the word, then converted to the notion or meaning,  it is impossible to avoid the thinking process.

So, no unconscious writing could exist, hence  Automatism couldn’t produce anything significant to

the human creativity at all. —– ( finger itself may move unconsciously though, it would be hard to create

legible letter without having visual feedback of the graphic positioning ).

_____

So,  there is a funny misconception,  lots of people thinking as if there is a secret garden in our brain where

the treasure was hidden. And suddenly its door would be opened by the drug or meditation,  and make

us a genius or superman. 😀 —– Though as I wrote in many of my early posts, there is no such magic, but

we are living with unconscious / subconsciousness as a part of our life in every moment.

We are thinking unconsciously, —— and  when we converted  its result to visible or noticeable form as in

the last process in the brain, we start to feel ” Thinking “.

Our eyes are seeing the scenery mostly  without noticing anything —– until something trigger the attention.

Then, conscious process of  WATCHING starts.  Still, during this unconscious seeing, some of the images go

to unconscious memory and  its data process is taking place. ( Some of them may come back in a dream )

So, all about the matters of unconscious / subconsciousness are how to deal with those invisible animals. 😀

How to know or see its tendency,  and to know how to control them.

—— and this is what all about the Buddhism.

—–

When I was in my junior school,  we were taught to keep the school tidy and clean.

So too, pick up the trash on the floor.  Teachers told us ” Picking it up, while you are thinking ” This is a trash,

I have to pick up” is not good enough yet.  Pick it up without thinking is what you have to do “.

In fact, effectively  we were taught Zen practice in the junior school. ( Whether a teacher was

aware, this is the Zen Practice or not —– such Ethos has been  so deeply embedded in the Japanese culture,

people are no longer bother to distinguish its origin )

Picking up a trash without thinking ( ie; in Mushin )and put it into a bin,  how many second does it need ?

And living in a clean environment all day without bothered by dirt ( ie; in Peace of Mind ). Who needs more ?

So,  we were taught and learned the way to live in the clean environment.

And this Ethos and the Practice has been  embedded into our deep subconsciousness as a habit.

—— therefore one’s room would be clean,  not mention his (her) own life.  ( Well, ideally  😀  )

You may say ” What ?  Is this All about the Buddhism ?”—–Yes it is. It’s a Dog shit isn’t it.  😀

Yet this Dog Shit would clean up your life and give you a Peace of Mind and the Nirvana.  That’s

why ” Every body was born with Dharma and anybody can get Nirvana “

( Of cause, Buddhism and the Zen practice will not end with picking up a trash.

It is a start and it is a metaphor  😀 )

And how to utilize those mechanism of subconsciousness to more proactive situations, such as

in the creative front is what I wrote before —– ( Please refer to Category / Art )

___/\___

—-

Standard VIEW

You may know there is the camera lens called standard lens (and the wide-angle lens, tele-photo lens etc).

Is it a kind of lens, camera manufacturer arbitrarily named it, just for a convenience ?

Or, is there any standard of vision exists ?

Whether you aware or not, you are looking an image, photo or painting  with standard view.

You may not believe it —— so, just try, and find it.

Look at a cover photo on the magazine and a poster on the wall ——- have you done ?

Do you noticed,  when you see a cover photo of a magazine,  with  what distance did you look at it.

The distance from your eyes to the magazine was about 12″~14″ (30cm ~ 35cm) as this distance gives

the most clear vision. (unless you got short or far eye-sighted)

Closer than this, you can’t see whole picture. Further than this, it’s too far to see the details.

And if the image you looked at was about A4, the diagonal size was 14″, and the eyes to cover this size

of image, the angle of view  was about 45 degrees.

When you see a big poster, you don’t look at in this distance, unless you need to see the detail. —– you

step back and see it from a distance.  Then you may realized, in fact you are looking the image always

in the same scale —— if it was small, you give a close look, and see a big image from the distance.

The reason is, our vision in our eyes can see this size of image most clear and reasonably in detail.

If the image spread much wider, like a land-scape,  to see the whole detail we have to look around.

And if we need to see more detail such as to read the letters, we need to capture the image, in the

center of eyes,  within the angle of about 18 degrees.

So that, to see the image of 14″ size, in distance of 14″  which is about 45 degree of vision, gives best image.

Best image is in the vision of not too wide or narrowly concentrated just in the middle.  Middle way in vision.

Therefore the photographic lens which can produce this angle of view  has been  named ” Standard Lens “.

Before the digital revolution, the camera meant 35mm camera.  And the lens which gives this angle of

view was happened to be about 50mm, hence 50mm lens was accustomed to call, Standard Lens.

A photo image taken by a standard lens and printed to about 9″x 12″, viewed from 14″ away,  it looks

most natural and having the same perspective. (If the same photo was enlarged to twice big, then look it

from the twice distance, it will give the same perspective —– angle of view is still 45 degree)

—— With this reason, the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was using only standard lens

(wide angle lens was for land scape only ) saying ” My lens is my eyes ” and only shot

from the normal eye level.  Because, to do his photography, he didn’t want to rely on the optical

effect but the natural way to see the life, just as an ordinary man.

So, the standard view is not only with a camera lens but our eyes having the same standard.

And this standard view, not too wide, not too narrow, just in the middle was what

the Dharma gave us.—— Therefore, this is the visual equivalent of the Middle Way.

—— Though, I hate standard lens. 😀

___/\___

—

Fantasy WORLD

In my life, I was asked to give the technical advice or help to build a Perpetual Motion Mechanism or

the device to create an energy out of nothing ( or that kind  😀  ) three times.

The person who asked me were not an idiot or uneducated at all,  they are well aware of

the Fundamental Principle of Preservation of Energy —— yet still, strangely they  were convinced,

their invention can defy the popular belief and able to create or achieve ultra efficiency hence

able to harvests far grater energy which would benefits the human being.( is what they said, not me  😀  )

The first one which I encountered 30 years or so ago, was a design of Ultra Efficient Bicycle Mechanism

which can produce more power than a rider’s muscle-power, utilizing the earth’s gravity,  by

” Cleverly positioned the center of gravity of the rider and synchronizing its movement to an oval-shaped

pedal gear etc brah, brah ——- “.

Second invention was (yet another) ,Anti-Gravity Device of which the person got the idea from Internet.

A man himself was a qualified architect and got enough knowledge of the engineering, and many

knowledgable friends and having a taste of posh life —— .

I guess, it is a (Masonic) belief of some architects,  which is a certain kind of mythical numerology such as,

what mathematical proportion was used for the Old Temple’s design etc, which connect to the cosmic power.

It was not my business to argue with his belief,  I was asked to deal with electronic control of the motor etc.

The third invention was an idea to extract 3.5 times more power from a battery using fancy transformer.

I explained many fundamental rules and physical, electrical limitations, not only the Principle of Energy

Preservation but the limitation of efficiency in an electro-magnetic device etc. ( Even with best designed

electric generator, the efficiency to convert force to electric energy is less than 30 % )

A guy’s explanation was, “Because of those FREE ENERGY idea is a threat to this Oil based

Socio-Economical System of the establishment, the development has been hindered and kept the people

ignorant” —— m m m ?—- Kind of tongue, sound familiar. I’ve heard many times !

A guy who was expecting to become millionaire with his invention, was very secretive on the beginning

though, in order to argue with my explanation  “This is based on the respectable scientific research,

published in the Internet” and revealed the Net-site ——- It was an Anarchist’s propaganda site.

( So, the site was successfully brain washed a man to become anti-establishment  😀  )

Idea itself was based on 10 years old experiment and done by not a scientist ( I’m even dubious whether

an inventor used decent electronic measuring instrument) and I could not believe any of its data. Bollocks.

Just take a common sense, —— in past 10 years, thousand of the people may have seen the article and

some of them must have built the device and tested —— If the claim has any shred of truth, why it didn’t

make a news, or fancy Chinese device didn’t appear on the market — or iPod with 1/3 battery size.? ? ?

To make and sell highly crowded competitive market, such as ATX computer power supply, many

manufacturers spending so much money and effort to develop more efficient design or higher power

from the same size of foot-print,  therefore if any good idea is there, they are the first people to test

the theory, as they got all the necessary materials and the expertise, not an amateur on the street.

——

Yet still, even in Japan,  there said to be about 1,000 new Patent application of Perpetual Movement in year.

It may be an exercise of creativity and to make (at least on the paper) beautiful drawing and description,

it needs a dedication and mindful attention —— though, what went wrong ? ? ?

Not all the applicant were blinded by their greed, some enthusiasts are having fun with their joke.

One of the very famous comedian  Kingorou Yanagiya  had 3,000 patents granted, and one of the best idea

was actually made to a commercial product called  Laughing Head-band  which has tail-dropped eyebrows

printed on it, and make the people to laugh, while singing comic song  for Karaoke  😀

—— Instead of clinging own obsession and blaming the company, other people who didn’t believe and

take their idea, look into a mirror, pull the eyes-tail drop, make a smile —– and make a joke, may make

one’s life much easier and happier.  😀

___/\___

___

PS :

Following the previous Post, there was some exchange of opinion in Emails.

And this is the extract  in which,  I found,  it is highlighting the point of

” How to make a perfect music piece which will hit the guts of others “

————-

Though, important point is, —- What  are the guts.

Everybody got more or less the same guts, having it

tens of thousands of years.

Its mean, what will hit it, has been tried and sorted out

spending thousands of years of time, by millions of people.

That is how most of the culture in the world came to

have pentatonic —– same conclusion.

The reason is, it was written in the Dharma. ( Ref; Harmony

in Dharma )

And the guts is ruled by the Dharma, not by one’s brain.

Deviate from the Dharma, yet make perfect one is hard,

if not impossible. ——–

—–

Equidistant Tonal system was perfected in the time of  J.S. Bach, though it has been only utilized for

the convenience of key-tone change.   And its use became universal, despite of the existence of some

discord (which has been simply avoided to occur as Taboo, by the composer.)

So that,  Arnold  Schoenberg is the first one to fully explore the musical possibility of its system.

But, big but, do you or anybody on the street, ever listen, let alone remember his music ?

Some (very rare person, may be a student / ex-student in classic music) may say

“How about his organ music [ The Ascension ] it is spiritually very striking isn’t it ?”.

I can agree, its sound very spiritual though,  as I wrote in ” Blank Space ” it is because of slow-moving,

continuous high tone, which is vague and undefinable,  hence our brain abandon to define its

meanings,  then start to feel  ” Something Unknown there”.

This very feeling, “abandon to impose own thinking, and leave the Mind open” is happen to be

the same to Buddhist’s Mushin —— we describe it  Spiritual.——- All of us share more or less

the same perception and the same guts.  Simple  😀

—– So, departing  from the tradition, and explore complete freedom in sound making,  is a good attempt,

though,  better not forget, we and yourself are still within the Dharma’s  rule.

Other’s guts is under this Dharma too, so that better chose the direction accordingly.

( The Expression —– which is also common with others, mean Communicable, has to be

emanated from own guts” Blank Space ” too —— not from the thinking or technical possibility )

Please read the Post ” Freedom in Restriction “. (Under a category [Music] )

___/\___

—

Life to be Artists

I’ve received a question from a keen reader of this blog / Jaganathan, who is

creating / developing  fancy program of creating even fancier sound, out of computer.

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anyway id like your thoughts or a blog post 🙂 Why do many artists end

up depressed, do drugs, kill themselves.  And how to keep doing good

work irrespective of whether it is a success or failure.  How do

continue doing sincere work even if nobody gives a sit.

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In anyone’s life,  to see what is the success, having many facets —— Financial ?, Social recognition ?,

Historical importance ?, Personal Pride and Confidence ?, Made people happy and became local Hero ?

All those may satisfy the ego.  But in reality, before think about success, most acute needs are to survive.

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When I finished hi-school and chose the direction and Uni’, I hated to go to science and technology side

as I didn’t want to be enslaved by the technology —– I’ve applied to Art College.  Though I was told by

the member of  Alpine Club in that College  “Want to become Sculptor ?  Oh no, even studied in here,

its impossible to live on the sculpture.  You may end-up an art teacher in a junior school or a craftsman

making dummy for the shop” —– What a hopeless situation. I gave up and next year I went to a Uni’

where we don’t need to fix the direction / Faculty / Major  for the first year —– then end up to take

Sociology by accident.  Before apply the Art College, an art teacher told me ” The success rate of

top Art College ( Where I wanted to go) is about 50%, and the other would be less than 10% ”  here

success mean, able to live / survive on the skill or the art which was studied in the college.

This was the time, Art was the traditional Art, long before such as Conceptual  Art became main stream.

Art is a very subjective commodity.   Commodity mean, the objects which can be sold and owned.

Though, when the type of art, and the educational direction has changed to the Pure Art and a theory

of Conceptual Art, sellable art became the dirty word as it is Commercial / Crafty, to live on

the Art become even harder. Who want to buy a pile of dung / (said to be) conceptual art installation. 😀

——- So, the question of Jaganathan is a little bit out of time or not a kind of the matter to rise a question.

Depressed, infested by Drug, kill oneself or even kill others —– may not be anything unusual.  😀

Even worse, as the art education is aiming to the concept, not the skill, actually no skilled useless persons

were flooded to the labour market ( it include the Media study as well).

Under such situation, if any artist want to have satisfying life should better take Buddhist’s paradox.

Forget success, forget recognition, forget financial reward and just make own art —– but perfect one.

Perfect Art would hit the guts feeling of the others. It impress the people and make their mouth shut.

——- so-called success will follow. ( But, as long as the one is hoping and expecting the day will come, with

ego and greed there will be no perfect art or success. —— in this aspects, Dharma is very harsh )

So that, so-called  Positive thinking, or Keep your hope live etc etc are all but just the sweet words.

The Buddhist Mushin is the very strict term, if not perfect, it would be all in vain.

If Jaganathan is developing new program, if it is exciting enough, he could be absorbed into its work,

he couldn’t be disturbed by useless thought —— its mean, he needs to make his work interesting,

important enough —– here, crucial inspiration, key idea which he may get it in the Blank Space

may become decisive factor.  So, to see its new idea, in complete open mind / Mushin holding the key.

( Here, chicken and the egg,  Exciting project absorbs person’s mind and make him into Mushin, though

to get exciting idea need to have Mushin —– shut up, just start.    Ha ha ha. 😀 )

——- So, how about, take a walk, —— Do a Walking Zen and get Mushin first  🙂

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