<<  -- 3 --  Jennifer I Paull    'SKY POETS PAINT THE SHELTERED CURVE TO FIND'

Awareness is the key. I don't think it matters which language, art or spiritual path one uses or rejects, so long as one gives and receives, does not abuse, but rather advances along the curve.

The highest of my oft'-recalled rainbows was so violently intense, it screamed at me fluorescently. The middle, shone perfect and bold with less blaring neon. The lowest, well formed and completely present, seemed gently projected upon a screen of celestial muslin.

'After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.' -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist.

As a musician, some deeply ingested logic automatically pivoted the vision before me to a tangible translation of a triad's triple arch in heavenly suspension. This technicality is ingrained within the theories of my discipline, music.

'I call architecture frozen music'. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher.

The same beauty perceived through a different Art could surely split into an alternative prism of techniques and inherent reflexes? A painter gazing at that seemingly surreal skyscape would surely draw parallels of colour and familiar or longed-for canvasses; created, or inspired to come? A dancer would trigger a memorial archive of choreography and movement, or dream of expressions awaiting their earthly transition to sauts de chat and tours jetés? A writer would be flooded by words and poetry of texts long-since read, or inspired by thoughts unleashed to flow? What of the Monk, the Rabbi and the Lama? Wouldn't their inspiration be as stimulatingly poignant (although inevitably diverse) upon the earthly plane, if not the Celestial Terminus?

Or is this all too obvious, too separate? I think it is. When I listen to a piece of music, unless I can see its choreography and inner architecture in my mind, the shape and colour of its modulations and harmony, I cannot bring it to life in performance. To do that, it must touch my soul. For me, music also equates to the rhythmical ebbs and flows of the linguistic expression belonging to the mind that originally conceived it. Why else does French music sound French, Italian music Italian, American music, American? So much is influenced by the cadence of the spoken word, a jigsaw puzzle brilliantly illustrated by Leonard Bernstein in his children's concerts many years ago.

Is spoken language really necessary to communication?

'Music and silence ... combine strongly because music is made with silence, and silence is full of music.' -- Marcel Marceau (born 1923) French mime.

Obviously artists disagree. Of course, some composers have deliberately made abstraction of such elements and use other tonal disciplines or graphic notations negating any possible linguistic influence. Inevitably nationalistic, folkloric influences such as those Grieg, Janácek and Bartók (amongst others) sought diligently to preserve, inspire some and remain rejected by others.

'All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.'

'Nature does nothing uselessly'. -- Aristotle (BC 384-322)

The inter-weavings of the Arts, communication and language, form a magical tapestry. Nature, that magnificent marionette of The Power of Creation, captivates the heart and nourishes them all.

'Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.' -- Martha Graham (1894-1991) American dancer, choreographer. Quoted in ib 5 August 1986.

Many artists pivot through several exhibition rooms in the Art Gallery of Muses. Some do so with more ease, grace, and success than others. Rainbows can be of thought, mood, feelings, and mixed tenses of time and talent. Every Art practises them all to some degree in the face of myriad obstacles, thus becoming its own desired amalgam. Perhaps the multiplicity of pivot pins is what makes Art the immeasurable, great? The spirit has its own prismatic palette, which lies beyond the confines of the conventional, yet breathtaking colour curves of my Rotterdam stained-glass skyscape.

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