-Shunryu Suzuki
Reading that line concerning posture in practice this morning, I immediately thought back to a tweet I'd posted an hour or so before describing my set last night as pretty good. Though the mistakes were few, they were there and each one of them could have easily been avoided with a little more preparation.
Parallels have been drawn between experimental music and meditation since the days of Cage (with varying degrees of surface-glossing and racial profiling) but one comparison that is rarely made is the amount of personal, unseen work each take to do properly. Neither comes as simply or intuitively as the first glance would have you believe.
It isn't just closing your eyes. It isn't just plugging in pedals.
Eventually I'll find that right place and I look forward to it. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order.
Nice, Mike.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't already, do read Crooked Cucumber, my pal David Chadwick's excellent bio of Roshi. They were close, and Chadwick will supply you with enough pith anecdotes and potent quotes to hold you awhile.
Like,
Fool others, this can be helped.
Fool yourself, no more medicine.
~ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
All my best,
J