Music as a Means to a Deeper Understanding of Reality: Part One, Introduction
"[M]usic, like life, consists of the perpetual creation and spinning out of longings on which we are stretched as on a rack, unable ever to accept where we are as a resting place until only the complete cessation of everything - the end of the piece as a whole, or the end of the individual's life - brings with it a cessation of unsatisfiable longing."
-Byran Magee, summarizing Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy of music in "The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy"

    Jimmy here. There is a symbology in music yet to be harnessed and understood fully. We study the art/science theory of it which has been generously handed to us, crafted and exacted to a seeming perfection; yet to one unfamiliar with its workings this mode of thought seems undeniably and unnecessarily obtuse. This is not to say that it is wrong. But it is to music's detriment that our current musical cosmology is so obscure.
    An analogy can be drawn here between the musical novice and the child with a toy. First, imagine a child discovering the intricacy and depth of color in the natural world that surrounds him, the infinite possibility of variation within, for instance, a leaf. Now, consider giving that child, instead, a palette of 6 or 7 colors, limiting his scope and even going farther to say that he ought to only use certain color combinations - that blue and red is the most preferable, even calling it "perfect". By limiting this potential the child views color in a narrow and taboo-ridden way.
    But of course this phenomenon in music is not merely a result of bad parenting, but rather a stagnant adherence to a limiting tradition. Hence it is not considered strange to offer a child the palette of a guitar, based on a primary color combination of perfect fifths, as well as a major third, and ask him to draw a rainbow.
    Again, this mode of thought to which we're accustomed is not wrong, and indeed rainbows can be drawn on a guitar, but the confusion and difficulty resulting from such a limited, blocky outlook is bewildering to a student - the commonality and mundaneness of the western layman's musical output and intake is a testament to this: teach one words and you will get sentences; teach one language and you will get poetry.
    In music, this difference is both subtle and glaringly obvious. In our current scheme, primary colors (such as C major and G major) are constantly in cooperation. The most common and impressive option outside of this is merely a reaction against it (such as too-eager Stravinsky's F#maj/Cmaj histrionics) rather than a development based on a deeper understanding of tonal relationships.
    Without yet investigating "western" music's (arguably) wisest pioneer of this deeper understanding - Richard Wagner - other, more basic examples can be found in venues unfettered by our limited scope. For instance, the tribes of Central Africa and other areas, who freely sing the forest, in intervalic and rhythmic complexity outside of any limitation.



Or, more familiarly, Indian music, whose ragas and polyrhythms have always held a mystical and rainbow-like quality to our tamed ears (to say nothing of their finer subdivision of tone itself). Thus, attempts of Indian music to bend to the limitations of the "western" mode of thought inevitably come out blocky and comical, as if a master painter were displaying his blue and red drawing of a stick figure to his less astute colleagues, awaiting their approval.
    In order to transcend these limitations, we must think of tone and music as more than a set of given variables which we are to learn by rote and then parrot with small variations in style or character. Instead, the task of anyone interested in harnessing the full potential of music is to investigate the deep significance of the relationship between tones. It is a significance which is at the roots of the nature of reality and therefore ought not be exclusively shared in academic circles and concert halls. Once the exclusive, obscure, at times elitist veneer of common music theory is peeled away, we see that music - in its methods and execution - is a door to a deeper understanding of reality.
    One key to this door is to be found in the calendric system of the Mayan civilization. I want to write more about that in a later entry. This will be all for now.

-Jimmy