About the composition of thoughts with the presence of music.

I don't usually go to contemporary music festivals, events or performances. There's something I really do not understand about it...then again, there's a lot about art I don't understand. But for once, I gave it a shot; see what the hell is it all about. See how much fun you can actually have on those types of events that are so foreign to me.

There were two performances, or shows, or whatever: one video with music, and a single person performing. I cannot tell you about both performances because I slept over the first one. There was something with the heat and the images that where showing that I couldn't resist at all the urge to sleep during it. There were images, and music...and it was for some reason very uninteresting for me. So hopefuly you won't mind that I actually omit that part of the story.

Then came the second performance. A performance by Christophe Desjardins, a French Violin player. His performance was not at all conventional. It is extremelly hard for me to explain what happened...but i'll give it my best shot. The audience was surrounded by 5 speakers; and the performer had the ability to choose or direct how the sound was going to circle through the five speakers, and the direction from how the music was going to go through...and all this through a ring in his finger. Also, on the background there was a person, grabbing one or many particular notes or a sequence at one point during the performance and starts to 'add it up' to the music that the performer is currently playing. So it was a complicated way, or a creative one, deppending on which way you look at it, to play and compose music.

At first, I thought: 'This is a nice way, if overtly unnecessary, to complicate things. It should be enough to just to concentrate on the music; just a reinvention of the wheel...this is'. But the more I heard it, the more sensations started to pile up over me. The more the music kept on; the more I went to another place...and then I wrote the following on a piece of paper:

'...feelings that are displaced and spread all over one's mind; going through circles and following cycles that invariably form an uninterpretable abstraction. The sole objective, it seems, of this performance is a form of mental and physical estimulation that lives, or perhaps, resides beyond the technique and execution of the performance.'

'The tension in the chords mimics the tension shown by the audience. The spamodic reflections produced by the performance, are not comprehended by that same audience; as either is the motive or the meaning. The harmony produced by the performer is a secondary element; while the sensations produced and orchestrated through the musical piece are the main factors in the performance'.

'It is not really an improvisation; but you can feel that every performance is different'.

'Like seeing an executioner performing his own art. The technique takes a very secondary meaning. I am far more interested in the experience and feeling themselves during the performance, and also how those sensations build upon my own experience. Like the growing feeling similar to the news of death, being soak wet from the feelings of absense and mourning, as it then goes on and then impregnates the surroundings of those directed involved, and those who live and dwell in it...the way those feelings eventually grow larger than the news or acts themselves. Trully, the emotions brewed on this performance are of much larger interest for me, as I'm currently considering them as the fruits of his will, rather than the way these fruits are produced...isn't this what art is all about?'.

'Any image, either experienced; remembered or imagined at one point in time, either with the presence of music or without, permanently resides in memory, storing it's meaning and experience. A malleable memory, this is. As the image is permanently stored, but it's meaning changes according to the context this memory is recalled; or the musical piece that recalls it'.

'Can it be possible? that these atemporal images, in a large scale and covering huge lapses of time; are able to shape a new personal reality? A reality completely different from the one originally stored in one's memory? Is it similar to the way people change their history according to their needs or the way an actor assumes the life of his character?'

On retrospective. this is one day where I learned more about art and it's purporse, by using experience; than by reading theory.

If you ever have the chance to see Christophe Desjardins. I really recommend his performance. He is on the top of his class.

Here's a video of the technique used in this performance:




Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde