Field Communiqué of Last Night’s Music

TSK

Assignment for 23-mar-2014

Philip Gold

Note: This text was written shortly before today’s class (23-mar) but there was some problem in this system that impeded me from posting it before the class.

The “Field Communiqué” of Last Night’s Music

Last night four people played music at a double birthday party of two friends in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Double bass, guitar/violin, keyboard (myself), and a singer. All four are directly connected to Buddhist ways of living but all through different connections and different lineages. Something apparently magic happened with the music during this event, with all four musicians and all party participants in awe of what was happening.

I am trying to avoid calling this collection of musicians a “group” because this would immediately bring up associations, images and fixed, but wrong ideas. These are my favourite musicians to play with, and have been for many years. This “group” comes together very infrequently and yesterday was the first time in about two years. The “group” has no name and never has had. It has never rehearsed. It/we has/have never defined what music we specialize in. The repertoire includes jazz, blues, Brazilian music, Beatles, Rock-and-Roll etc.

We never really decide beforehand what or how we will play, although the selection has a core collection of themes. It all depends on how things go, who the audience/participators are, how they react, if they dance, if they sing along. We have a definite, stated, feeling that we play not only the instruments but the people as well, as if they were musical instruments.

During the event we suddenly “found” that we were playing known themes as if they were pieces of classical music – something entirely “new” in the history of this evolving “something”. In other songs and tunes we found ourselves interplaying and interacting at an astounding, dizzying level of improvisation and integration. We just look at other in amazement and warm feelings of “this is it!” and carry on playing. The faces of the other party participants are like mirrors, reflecting what we are feeling, but they are more than this because they inspire us to go on, opening up even more to the field. Our performances of each song or theme are always very different from all preceding versions, often with surprising and exhilarating things coming up, all constantly available within the “field”, although we rarely have this sort of opportunity to come into contact with them, to open to these “colleagues” that are always around.

What clicked me into writing this text was the recommend reading of DTS pages 16-22, chock full of sparkling, bubbling, surprising ideas that illuminated for me, in some way, how this non-existent existent group operates. My basic feelings after such sessions include rejuvenation, sudden disappearance of tiredness and sluggishness, openness and, most of all, freedom!

Even the food at the party reflected this “fieldness” at work: the party was organized only days before it happened; several of the organizers prepared and brought delicious and different food contributions, providing stimulating mixtures of tastes, textures and smells that non-field-conscious experiencing would normally anticipate as potentially unsuccessful combinations.

The whole thing seems to have been the result of somehow extraordinarily opening up the “field of being”, allowing everyone involved to release themselves in some way from the normal non-field expectations that we live through most of the time.