Robert walks to the venue. April 16th. 2007. Zaragoza, Spain
On the DGM Live Guestbook...
May 25 Diary:: Posted by TheMarkedMan on May 26, 2006
“When you hear music, it’s gone... lost in the air... you can never capture it again.” Eric Dolphy circa 1964
As a player who has long argued against recording live music, there is much here that resonates with me.
The very attempt to capture a quality, as if it were a thing & material object, prevents it being “captured”. A quality escapes our attempts to pin it down. Rather, when we abandon the attempt, and enter the moment, the situation has just changed: the moment becomes available to us. The question is then, are we available to the moment? This is a practical question, and available to practical answers.
A moment may be transitory, brief if measured by the clock; but a qualitative experience takes us into the eternal. Like, do we remember the first embrace with our Love? Do we recall the opening notes of ... (enter a title of your choice). Even, how can we forget a passing smile of a Mother’s love?
So, what do we do to remember a moment which is, in its nature, ephemeral? There are techniques, and forms of practice, to help us develop a deeper relationship with transitory events. Exceptional events, which present themselves unbidden, impress themselves upon us, regardless of our practice or experience. A qualitative experience, an entry into creative time, by definition puts us into a different relationship-in-time with the moment.
The fragility of the creative moment, its delicacy & vulnerablility, its richness only- to-be-held by letting it go, is a tragedy of the creative life; and also what makes it real. So, a reformation of the statement...
When you hear music, it’s arrived, and present in the air... you can never capture this moment, and it will never return. But the quality of this moment is eternal: you may embrace it & carry it with you, as it is also embracing & carrying you.
[Excerpt from RF’s Diary - Saturday 27th. May, 2006]
As Blake said:
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
But why cannot one both enjoy and live in the moment while it’s happening, and then also enjoy it later, in a different way, when listening to a recording that had been made with the permission of the performers?