Psychological Context
Psychologically, my artistic research embraces an umwelt of liminal qualitative states including those that may be hypnagogic or hypnopompic. These are states between wakefulness and dreaming and they allow for a plethora of psychological experiences ranging from archetypal symbolism, phantasmagorical visions, to cerebral constructions and deconstructions. As such, I resonate with the aesthetics of disorientation, ambiguity and disintegration of expected gestalt principles. I dialogue with my dreams and subconscious and how it relates to psychology, literature, anthropology, mythology and symbolic visual art. I tend to find meaning in the Jungian terms archetype, individuation and collective unconscious. "
“I use the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘individual’, that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole." (1)
Liminal reveries ~ My psychological context in 2020
Entering this research period some two years ago now, I was fascinated by my liminal experiences relating to sleep deprivation, insomnia and the dreams that would visit me in my light, and brief pockets of sleep. Based on these enigmatic experiences, fantasies, sensorial distortions and visions - for instance archetypal motifs and the visits from creatures and beings - I found a need to document my creativity through dream journals, and later by way of musical compositions. Reflecting on this process in relation to creativity I wrote the following lines.
The convergence, intertwining and blurring of past experience combine with the seemingly infinite sequence of “nows.”
Residual streaks of fragmented experience ceaselessly dance in a theatre of the mind’s contemplative, yet continually shifting, present. One might imagine it as a Parajanov-like cinematography.
Smells from every corner of lived memories and experience shade, colour, illuminate and illustrate.
Insomnia’s imagined sounds can disorientate but also combine meaningfully with the senses. Real or perceived sounds combine with imagined sounds in beautiful ways.
Perceptual completion invites itself into foregrounds of experience as a bent piece of driftwood may be mistaken for a familiar reclining figure on a twilight beachscape. A distant beckoning ambulance siren may transform into the ondes martenot found in Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony.
Past and present experiences continuously dialogue with future potentials. In insomnia, space and time distortions firmly grip. The lines and boundaries separating order and chaos whimsically wash away in the sand.
It requires some stubbornness to find purpose for these experiences. It requires acceptance of the dulling and slowness of language, logic and decision-making. But the creative and experiential trade-offs can be very rewarding within brief pockets of time. At least these have been my experiences…(written in 2020, revised in 2022)
In reflection upon this, I quote C.G Jung.
“As I worked with my fantasies, I became aware that the unconscious undergoes or produces change. Only after I had familiarized myself with alchemy did I realize that the unconscious is a process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious. In individual cases that transformation can be read from dreams and fantasies. In collective life it has left its deposit principally in the various religious systems and their changing symbols. Through the study of the collective transformations processes and through understanding of alchemical symbolism I arrived at the central concept of my psychology: the process of individuation. (2)
Inspired by Jung, I now see the unconscious as a process which is transformed by its relation to the ego. My recollection and reflection on dreams, fantasies and sleep abnormalities have led to a deepened ‘individuality’ and further integration of the psyche’s conscious and subconscious elements.
My psychological reflections at present are without such strong links to insomnia and sleep deprivation and rather offer insights through word and sound of a more reflective and objective liminality. This objective liminal plane is much less consumed and controlled by subconscious whims. I’ve slowly regained equilibrium from the disorientation, ambiguity and illusion that has permeated my being. I find myself emerging with new perspectives on mental health, my personal subconscious and the collective unconscious.
Relating to planet-wide human mental health, I believe it crucial that we learn again to nurture and give greater value to healthy and balanced subconscious experiences on an every-day cultural level. Poet, Clayton Eshleman reminds us of this forgotten need.
“For it is in the deep mind that wilderness and the unconsciousness become one, and in some half-understood but very profound way, our relation to the outer ecologies seems conditioned by our inner ecologies.” (3)
Clayton spent the last thirty years of his life studying and breathing the upper-palaeolithic cave art of Souther France. He invites us to account for these astounding creative expressions as “postcards of nostalgia.” By this, he meant an original attempt, through ritual, to rekindle a connection that had been irrevocably lost. For at some point, we were of an animal nature and at another point, we weren’t. Viewed in this light, the upper palaeolithic cave paintings represent a pivotal moment in human consciousness, creativity and orientation in the subconscious world. Fast forwarding to our current technological and socio-politically unstable world, we face similar new questions, experiences, and habits of actions that could ultimately change how we view ourselves as “humans.”
Towards a new “being in the world”
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense— he is "collective man"— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind. (4)
One may be struck by this quote in its confrontation or negation of the idea of an individual or “personal sound” in which, in the western music world, we seem to nurture as an ideal. Living with this quote, in contemplation, the past two years, I’ve found some kind of gradual catharsis toward this non-individual, existential orientation within my creative, artistic work. I’m also struck by the ambiguous last line, “one who caries and shapes the unconscious” in that it opens the door, a jar, into direct personal agency. To me this points to Jung’s “individuation” process as a means for generating meaningful experiences as artists and human beings.
A formative teacher to me, Karaikudi S. Subramanian - 9th generation veena master and pedagogue - also describes music-making beyond the mere individual.
“When we perceive order in the multiplicity of sounds we hear, or when we are able to order the sounds into inspiring musical compositions or improvisations those are only the manifestations of the divine beauty within.” He later goes on to say that this philosophy “leads us to discover our own voice.” (Subramanian 2014)
A collaborator of Subramanian, legendary jazz trumpeter Woody Shaw further elaborates this philosophy which is known as COMET (5).
"COMET leads us through a synonymous discovery of non-self through the truth which is reflected in sound, and that exists within us, the origins of which are not in the human body or at any one given point; much like the dual existence of a sub-atomic particle, sound exists whether musical execution is made or not, the expression of sound is our only ability; that sound already exists and we all carry it within us; it is everywhere at once, ready to be expressed and molded, it is malleable like space and time. In that discovery is the realization that there really IS no "self." The self is not real, is it? What is innate in each of us is innate in all of us. Self-realization for the purpose of liberation.” (Woody Shaw, 2014)
From these three diverse contexts emerges a catharsis towards fundamental reshaping of one’s direct relationship to the creative process. It’s ontological, and offers a new way of being in the world.
Musical Context
I have a growing need of moving beyond equal temperaments. I’ve chosen to work with an un-equal Balinese Gamelan tuning in combination with “perfect” sounding intervals found in the harmonic series (Just Intonation). Just intonation composers like Ben Johnston, La Monte Young, Catherine Lamb and Craig Grady enthuse me. There is a beauty in hearing a ratio with “no” beating and to realize its direct relation to resonant objects and spaces of the natural environment. A proponent of Kebyar Gamelan music, Dewa Alit’s compositions capture my sonic imagination. Relating to his music, I’m particularly interested in achieving ombak which involves tuning pairs of instruments 6-10 hertz from each other thereby creating a beating or shimmering effect. I’m interested in his handling of tuning and timbre and how he deviates from Gamelan norms. For instance, the degree to which he intertwines several tunings simultaneously and how he creates extended techniques for his ensembles.
As a metaphor for my own tuning system, how can Just Intonation in the context of the well tuned piano (LaMonte Young) merge with contemporary Balinese Kebyar tuning as in the case of Dewa Alit? How do these tuning considerations relate to a contemporary classical world, or post-jazz improvisation aesthetic, for instance the music of Benoît Delbecq? To electronic music? To sound art installations?
In preparing the piano I draw inspiration from Balinese Gamelan ensembles, the tampura of South Indian classical music, composer John Cage and improviser Benoît Delbecq. I abstract upon a resonant metallic and shimmering aesthetic found in Gamelan music. It’s particularly the metallophones (in overlapping group formations) and their timbral inharmonicities and beatings which capture my curiosity. I’m interested in evoking the Indian tampura for its twangy drone based function, but also for the sympathetic vibrations. Insights into generating percussiveness, rhythmic illusion and a sense of spontaneous composition (improvisation) issue from Delbecq as well as Cage.
Relating to rhythmic study and composition, I draw heavily from Karnatik - South India Classical - Music and its fundamental principles and conceptual outlook. In 2015, I self-funded karnatik rhythm studies in Chennai, South India. Since, I’ve taken an interest in its patterns of recession and growth, nuanced polyrhythm, cadence concepts and stretched and extended time cycles. Together with ideas from Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, I extrapolate a kind of personal contrapuntal vocabulary. Threadgill’s music evokes disjunct, illusive, yet groovy melody. Other compositional insights relate to: György Ligeti and especially his three volumes of piano etudes; Morten Feldman’s large-ensemble music, for instance, Coptic Light; Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphony; the music of Steve Coleman and five elements; Tim Berne’s Snakeoil; the music of composer guitarists Ben Monder and Miles Okazaki.
My context for improvisation takes primary inspiration from: Lotte Anker, Benoît Delbecq, Craig Taborn, Andrea Neumann’s inside piano, Thelonious Monk and Peter Bruun, to name only a few.
In a growing interest towards re-imagining and modifying instruments I continually think of composers Harry Partch and Craig Grady and the sonic characteristics of metallophones and gongs found in Gamelan ensembles. This project is a beginning toward a long term goal of building an ensemble of novel and modified instruments. Instruments can easily become sound objects for installations and contemporary concerts.
(3) Eshleman, Clayton. Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld. Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 2003. (pg. 244)
(5) "COMET is an acronym for Correlated Objective Music Eduation and Training, a system of music education developed by Prof. Karaikudi S. Subramanian towards a solution in addressing the problems in institutionalizing the style oriented traditional music (gurukula) and in complementing creative endeavors in musical performance and education in the contemporary context." (Dr. Karaikudi S. Subramanian, 2014, online pdf)