In den at dusk, he lays his wings, against the icy stone - and in his dreams, a solemn song, the Gryphon doth intone.

But lo, the dawn with argent crest awakens slumbered flame; The feathers shake, the breast takes air, And he recalls his name.

The wind takes hold, the sky unseams; the sun becomes his lyre - through cloud and cry, he cleaves the light, in fury vast with fire.

Through skies above, though soaring strong, that song begins to say: “Gryphon, now you’ve soared enough. It’s time to fly away.”

- Daniel Zarb-Cousin (1999-2026)

I think that the old pianists were able to read the score in the profound sense of the word, much better than many piano players of today. In the sense that they were not satisfied with just seeing the P in piano, or where the C in the word crescendo was written. It’s basically the relativity - piano in relation to what? What comes before and what comes afterwards. Well, all this is not in the score. And it is all of that area, which is actually the area of music making. This was a totally natural phenomenon for all of these pianists, regardless of where they came from and what school they came from. The Bible for them was the sound, not the printed page.

- Daniel Barenboim in discussion of Claudio Arrau and the Golden Age of pianism.

Vanity… Vanity is the most terrible, the most broken of things for an interpreter. If you are sure that what you have to say is unique, then you are not out to please or not to please, or out to impress or not to impress. You have your message, and that’s it! If they like it, it’s alright, if they don’t, I don’t know if it is clear.

- Claudio Arrau

This is our duty: to bring what we are convinced about to other people so that everybody can enjoy it. And, you know, people come to visit someone, and they bring a bottle of wine or flowers for the lady. I come to a concert and bring the piece which is touching my heart, and I want to share it with these people. I don’t want to impose it on them. I’m just convinced that since I love it so much, they might too.

- Krystian Zimerman

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

- Ansel Adams

For the one who gazes lucidly upon life, the truth exhumed is that existence ceases not in its generosity of silent counsel, through which dust is distilled into heavenly song.

- J.W. Marks

Je n’ai pas à enseigner Emile (Naoumoff), j’épluche seulement l’orange…

I do not have to teach Emile, I only peel the orange…

- Nadia Boulanger

My wish is that when others receive my work, they feel it with as much excitement as I do in realizing it. Not to see the same way, an impossibility, but to feel it as strongly as I.

- J.W. Marks

I want to emphasize the importance of impressing upon every pupil from the very beginning just how precious is the stuff with which he will be dealing all his life if he really devotes himself to the service of art. I never fail to feel that I am in the presence of a miracle as I explain to my pupils the works of genius of the great musicians, and we strive together to the best of our abilities to fathom their depth, probe their mysteries, understand their structure and raise ourselves to their lofty heights. I know that it is this awareness of the miracle and the joy it brings - the joy of sensing it and knowing it for what it is - which gives a meaning to my life, which forces me as a teacher to work much harder than “staff regulations” require and to give of myself without stinting.

- Heinrich Neuhaus 

Es waltet in jeder Zeit ein geheimes Bündnis verwandter Geister. Schließt, die Ihr zusammengehört, den Kreis fester, daß die Wahrheit der Kunst immer klarer leuchte, überall Freude und Segen verbreitend.

Every age has a secret society of congenial spirits - draw the circle tighter, you who belong to one another, that the truth of art may shine ever more clearly, spreading joy and blessings everywhere.

- Robert Schumann, “Neue Bahnen," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 1853.

I cannot think, at this moment, of any one who has done this better than a Silesian country gentle-man, who lately wrote to a music dealer as follows:

’Dear sir, — My cabinet for music will soon be arranged. You should see how handsome it is. Alabaster pillars, glasses with silk curtains, busts of composers; in short, spendid. But its most precious ornament is still wanting, so pray send me the complete works of Beethoven, as I like that composer much.’

I had more to say; but contempt has put it all out of my head.

- Robert Schumann, “Shrovetide Speech by Florestan," NZfM, 1835.

French music is rich in allusion to nature, representing rigor before freedom. Any artist must know the points of canonical departure before taking liberties. We must know our musical lineage - our superposition. What is a sentence without its antecedent? What is a phrase? What is music theory? Everything is made known only after the fact. Nature observes a certain truth: survival precedes beauty, and the enduring becomes beautiful.

When life unfolds splendidly, it affirms us through its signals. These signals are often whispered, seldom shouted, but always within the mind. The adult world in which we joust is one that does not speak to us directly of what need be done; others will not tell us. This is a duty of the parent. In this age, others often emote in the face what they might think, but are so hastily ambivalent to speak! This is when the higher order sends to us its signals; one must be willing to use their “third ear.” When we are out of line, life equally sends reminders - some harsher than others. If needed, it will remind us ever more drastically. “Musicality” or something “musical” might just be a term given to the practice of music. It has nothing to do with the music itself, as music is everything contained and otherwise. Rather, it is all-knowing, all-telling, and more privy than we are to ourselves. The third ear listens for the “Leiser Ton.”

Life is often an irony, especially when the world demands that we act a farce. But so it stands - the coincidentia oppositorum.

This before that.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

- Søren Kierkegaard

The Devout Heresy - words of Stravinsky’s lifelong honing of the elusive aphorism, much at the prodding of Robert Craft:

For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention - in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.

- Igor Stravinsky (Chroniques de ma vie)

Perhaps that which Stravinsky might touch on so aptly is the space between what one defines as “reality or illusion.” As this quote might cause a stir at its core, it was also my first immediate response. A colleague of mine at Northwestern lived by these words, but I fear, by the words themselves. May I continue…

My reason in bringing this to light has very little to do with how one might receive this crass statement as it pertains to the most beautiful medium of art, but rather with how a poet may see, through its wroughtly pragmatic, mortal, and prodding stance, a convergence with the values of even the most lofty of creative minds. Demonstrably, Stravinsky was a thinker and artist all at once, so equally does it stand as a great coincidental irony the duality of his remarks. His quote touches equally upon the objective, cosmic, and outrightly contrarian (academic) spheres. We embody our own state, and this state alone. One might argue that reality is an illusion to others as strongly as it is our own guiding principle. As it is, by mandate, only a state we know for ourselves. In such a vein, the following words bear their weight:

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better.

- T.S. Eliot

This is our duty: to bring what we are convinced about to other people so that everybody can enjoy it. And, you know, people come to visit someone, and they bring a bottle of wine or flowers for the lady. I come to a concert and bring the piece which is touching my heart, and I want to share it with these people. I don’t want to impose it on them. I’m just convinced that since I love it so much, they might too.

- Krystian Zimerman

Do not over or underseason your victuals!

There are few composers with whom I see eye to eye as much as Robert Schumann. He is a composer whose music demands that you become a part of his spirit. Perhaps it demands that you have equally-lived experiences on either pole of the emotional gamut; from the most anxious of darks, to the most exuberant, even manic highs. His spirit is profoundly woven into his music, surpassing that of any other composer I have encountered; it tells a story of an entire inner world, of an entire lifetime. No doubt, his counterparts, Clara and Brahms, and the Davidsbündler at large, exist within this shared universe.

Schumann’s stories are told via the inward and outward as personalities at play with one another. Eusebius speaks via Florestan and vice versa. They may only exist alongside one another; there is no other way they could hold their respective fortitudes. I have never encountered another composer who speaks through a sonic medium in near-literal poetry and prose. Late Beethoven may come close, but even so, the linguistics differ in their idiom, and I thoroughly believe that all great art expresses sentiments akin to one another via different media. In the practice of Schumann’s music, one encounters imagery: a countryside never visited yet intimately familiar, where a lone tree stands against a naked, liminal hillside. One can travel in time to different places with no limitation whatsoever, so long as the hands are free from his discombobulous metrics.

R.S’ music sounds and registers as speech in the most artful, well-crafted oratory; he plays with form, often small structures, that can be itemized and subsequently rebuilt into large-scale commonplace classical schema. Carnaval is one such piece demonstrative of a large ternary form comprised of many small constituents.

His world is a private and confusing one when taken at face value. I remember hearing a few of his large-scale works as a young person, not understanding exactly what it was my ears were taking in. It was not until my late undergraduate years that I heard something ringing true in his music, a soundscape of sorts. I heard something important being said, but I was not exactly sure what that was. I can only think further back to my musical catalysts: the Bach Cello Suites of Zuill Bailey and in this case, Simone Dinnerstein’s album of Bach and Schubert: Something almost being said.

In this innigkeit, it first manifests as only a soundworld, a whisper asking you to draw yourself nearer. One can loosely perceive an important sentiment, but it is only within direct study and confrontation with this world that one can truly begin to come to terms with the inexplicable weight of Schumann’s emotions and alter-egos.

This deep world of Schumann’s holds true and exists in everything I feel as an individual. I feel a general discontentment with modern society, and music is the sustenance and the balm to these woes. No composer delivers a remedy such as Schumann. In the Davidsbündler, this stands as directly representative: this society of the League of David stood for the appreciation and philanthropic interests of art, chiefly the musical and literary. Schumann writes from his heart and soul. He writes out his love for C.W, for the beauties of the world, and in equal measure, his anxieties about love, the world, and nearest the compositional date of this particular work, his proximally secret marriage to Clara. He leaves absolutely no leaf unturned in his oeuvre.

A microcosm of this sentiment exists in the Ungeduldig of his Davidsbündler(tänze). The German “Geduldig” suggests a maturity, tolerance, and enduring character. The counterpart, Ungeduldig, suggests the precise opposite. (E.F.)

This “Tanz” speaks to the unwillingness and restlessness of Florestan. The character piece encapsulates both worlds, even though it is spoken outwardly in anxious, even fearful fashion; it leaves one limp. Music of this type often suggests both the violently anxious and deeply sorrowful. One may, in experimentation, take the Ungeduldig at a lento and find that it is equally moving, where the sentiment shifts from angst to deep tragedy and nostalgia. Both of these manifestations are sprung about from the characteristics, becoming and unbecoming, that love arouses within a person. Particularly, the circle of fifths progression in mm. 29-36 holds true to this duality. The progression never fails to be ever-so-powerful across all periods of music. It can be interpreted in so many different ways, each saying something slightly different - in possession of a different accent, if you will, but never at odds with the intensity of emotion on either extreme. In tempo, the sequence smolders with passion and worry. When played slowly, it becomes absolutely tragic, particularly the alto voice; the most definitive in this case. What I mean to articulate is just how fear, anxiety, and love are, at their core, birthed from the same wellspring. Love can incite fury or deep empathy - every emotion is spun from the same thread. It is the tone in which something is articulated that rings true to its reception, not what is said. As tempi are to a phrase, tone is to a sentence.

I can’t imagine a composer for whom this proverb is more befitting.

This is why I adore the large-scale works of Schumann’s that are comprised of many constituents - they suggest a whole built upon atomization. It is not dissimilar to how our universe functions via quantum mechanics - everything is built from small pieces, and what we often see is only what we can see. As many know, it was Einstein who spoke of his love for the violin. Science, philosophy, and well, everything is never removed from the other - all is connected. One can only think of the beloved Leon Fleisher when it comes to “cosmically-informed” pedagogy. It is people like these who kiss the ontological. May they rest ever-so-peacefully.

It is with R.S’ music that you can only know it truly from the groundwork and atoms themselves. There is simply too much being articulated to just “hear and understand.” This stands true of all great art.

Schumann stands for every aspect of our human condition. Unfortunately and fortunately, most people do not experience both sides equally as strongly as he did. It is for this that he suffered so profoundly. I guess he truly took one for the team. Be well in the great beyond, Robert.

The practice of music is a great catharsis, no matter the subject matter. It is food for the soul, and one will always emerge more alive than before.

As Brahms wrote in retort to “Frei aber einsam” (FAE):

“FREI ABER FROH!”

May we all see and bask in the life-affirming, though again, it would not be so without the other. It is what we choose that creates definition.

—

Alter Spruch
In all und jeder Zeit
Verknüpft sich Lust und Leid:
Bleibt fromm in Lust und seid
Dem Leid mit Mut bereit

Old saying
In each and every age
joy and sorrow are mingled:
Remain pious in joy,
and be ready for sorrow with courage.

This evening, I was listening to the classical station between students, and I heard something ubiquitous, yet uncannily striking. Perhaps this reaction was prompted by my perceptions of how contemporary culture has evidently lost its bearings with what it means to notice and appreciate beauty. We hear what we know and feel inside, and we see ourselves in others.

The host on the radio station expressed something to the likes of: “If not yet fully realized, our popular culture is at a precipice, a crossroads, where classical music is ‘soon’ to be fully novel again.” It was heard by my ears, though perhaps not his direct intent, that what he spoke of did not explicitly comment on contemporary music, Western art music, nor classical antiquity. Instead, he spoke of a colloquial classicism, the word “classicism” that is loosely strewn about with little grasp of its precision, and firmly misconstrued through contemporary lenses. What I wish to extrapolate pertains to our collective understanding of where we are in time, the adjacent counterparts of classicism, and how we interpolate ourselves into this lofty art form via study and education. The misconceptions of today’s youth are but only a product of the falling acid rain of the superpositioned and monetarily-driven; it all just seems to hastily cascade from the “top.” I heard from this host what is currently absent in this culture: how one’s position in time is made fully realized only by a deliberate understanding of where we are by the virtues of the crusades to reach this point, or rather, to find ourselves in such a predicament! Purportedly, he was not alluding to classicism firmly as it is known in a Greco-Roman sublimation, in antiquity, but via the more ardent qualities of what classicism is to us presently, after a bygone era. The “classical” definition to which he alluded underpinned the appreciation of music’s beauty at large, free of academic precision, and existing transculturally - it made room for the collective. With this spaciousness, however, was equally acknowledged what we have lost in classical music: the heady tapestries of the beautiful, moral, and ornate.

He went on to articulate this duality. Today’s youth, in particular, no longer get to absorb classical music as others once did. Classical music is now only latent in the rapid digestion of material and offered as mere extremity to ostensibly more “prudent” noise. The host went on to express how the creatives of the past, in all of their glory, at the absolute limits of human creation, are now close to completely and desolately removed from all things in life. Classical music today purports to be but a mere disjunct foil to what it truly is, and is often heard and accepted as background to ridiculous skits on social media, used as study noise, or the like. Insinuated was not only how our culture fails to see these qualities as problematic, but also how we lack but an inkling of thirst to extricate ourselves from the utterly banal and mundane. I maintain that there are exceptions. I like to think to myself that for every backward step a society takes into its aesthetics, so shall there equally be that outlier on the other side who stands to challenge such a circumstance. This person wishes not to make an ass of themselves for the sake of it, a devil’s advocate, but rather to stand up for what they hold to be true. Such is the artist - a beacon of truth, no matter the circumstances. Everything is shoveled into our stupid faces, and people seem to be complacent with this gluttony. There is an overarching apathy in America, and especially in midwestern culture. No, not everything is happy-go-lucky, and we must have the wits about us to face difficult truths. We may be seeing changes in this zeitgeist, given the happenstances of the last lustrum, but still, the tone remains. This is “midwestern nice.” I maintain that these words are my very own.

The host kept speaking into this Fata Morgana, the mirage persisting only insofar as the other was equally true.

Where there is little hope that today’s youth and people at large do not know the depths of beauty in most things because of their self-professed unwillingness to seek it out, it also stands as valiantly erect as an obelisk, that because of this current misfortune, we are presented with an immense gift. This gift comes into complete fruition only if one may realize that their time here is so very finite; that one’s decisions, philanthropy, and love persist timelessly. This gift is such that in our future, near or far, we may be oncemore presented with the chance to find the beauty of old as entirely new once again. In h(I)s tone rang an intrepid whisper, a notion of a Renaissance. When something is completely forgotten, as rotten a state of Denmark may it be, presented to us is the powerful and probable chance that it will be found again. Without complete remission, so shall there never be full actualization.

Such is politics, such is art, such are people, such is death, such is life, such are cycles, such is time. Such is everything. Such is the coincidentia oppositorum.

Birth and death - without either, there stands nothing meaningful. If we lived forever, nothing would be salient. I fear that an indignation for life and its circumstances may blunt the quality of life itself. Life is simple, and we must not think too deeply as to just live it, but when we fail to put words to our problems, to our shadow, so shall that shadow grow ever so dark.

Just as in a Baroque painting, when light quarrels with dark, the chiaroscuro maintains balance, and so shall we in our daily lives, for without it, a Baroque painting not.

Is his voice a potent, painful truth, but with that truth, immense hope. And in that hope, a fervent drive to continue and to push forth with what we hold to be true.

—

What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind.

- Carl Jung

This is the secret of great art. The creative process activates an archetypal image in the unconscious, which the artist shapes into a work that speaks to the present. By drawing a primordial image up from the unconscious and transforming it into a form the present can accept, the artist compensates for the one-sidedness of the age. In this way, art becomes a process of self-regulation in the life of individuals, nations, and epochs. We tend to assume that strange archetypal visions come from deeply personal experiences, as if the artist were hiding their source. This easily leads to the idea that such art is pathological or neurotic, especially since visionary material can resemble the fantasies of the mentally ill. Yet, at the same time, psychotic works often contain a depth of meaning usually found only in the creations of a genius.

Reducing a vision to a personal experience makes it seem unreal and inauthentic, turning it into a mere symptom rather than a true creation. The chaos is reduced to a psychological disturbance, which reassures us, and we turn back to our picture of a well-ordered cosmos. The truth is that it deflects our attention from the psychology of the work of art and focuses it on the psychology of the artist. While the artist’s psychology matters, the work of art exists in its own right as an autonomous complex and cannot be dismissed as just a personal association. At times, we must even defend the seriousness of the visionary experience against the artist’s personal resistance to it.

Artists who have fallen out of fashion are often rediscovered when our consciousness has evolved enough to understand them in a new way. Their meaning was always in the work, hidden in symbols, but only a renewal of the spirit of the age allows us to perceive it.

Fresh eyes are needed because the old ones could see only what they were used to seeing.

-Eternalised (pseudonym)

—

Written in deep gratitude to Dr. Nikolaus Hohmann, and the timeless words of Carl Gustav Jung.

Truth and beauty emanate from inclement weather. These things are achieved via the obstruction of the commonplace. Frequently in artmaking, there are nodal points at which statements are made and equally received; the moments after which a once-in-a-generation artist is heard in concert, one is left completely limp and without clause. In some works of visual or musical art, it is the obstruction of absolute clarity that emerges as its most salient communicative essence; through visual haze, or varying gradations of phrasal coloratura. This is where the conscious decision of the artist is to obstruct the written page, should it serve the thesis of the work. In a period where clarity is looked upon admirably, it may come down to the inflection of timing, while in others, it may reside in the choices to blur certain textures. Humans emote via two primary modes: the songful and syllabic, and often in tandem. In early Germanic repertoire, it is the punctuation of sentential moments that provides their heft. In romantic works, it is the coloration of sustain and the interjection of the ego that emboldens meaning. In the impressionist musical works, it is the unbridled natural atmosphere devoid of man’s presence that dominates the communicative landscape. What I have discovered in my time with music is that while all of these mechanisms may vary in their modus operandi, they ultimately spellbind in similar ways.

Half of the battle of playing the piano is reaching a point where the infinity of worldly sounds can be produced - none of these sounds should be of the piano itself. I first truly “heard” Schumann’s Op. 17 in San Francisco at Alamo Square. Karl the Fog was rolling overhead, and these were the ideal conditions to realize this masterpiece for later study. This work served as a vehicle to realize many further things - what music is and can be. My dearest friends from my high school years nicknamed me the weatherman. It took time, but it eventually became a title I wore facetiously. Upon reflection, my remarks about the weather were only brought forth by the boundless palette of human emotions tied to the seasons, and their vesture that aroused me. My observations were never about the meteorology outside. The rain was objectively grim, but it was my psychological landscape I was attempting to share.

In an era saturated with clinical perfection, we find ourselves fighting a certain sterility. From the intrusion of artificial intelligence into photography to self-professed and non-exclusive musical success timelines, the contemporary landscape suffers from a singular ailment: it has been scrubbed clean of its humanity and honesty. Our musical institutions have attempted to disembowel art, repackaging it as a predictable commodity. There is no one-size-fits-all. Every pupil is driven by different catalysts, and it is the teacher who must adapt in order to provide them with the highest chances of success. Driven by a culture and an economic framework that mistake uniform optimization for success, we systematically discard the very elements that make expression so vital. The tragedy of these structures is that young students, and all too often the pedagogues working under their umbrellas, fail to grasp the gravity of how these systems may be altering long-term student outcomes.

True artistry exists only because of a sensitive proclivity innately expressed by nature. For a child, healthy technique cannot be mandated outright but only developed through time. Technique tends to blossom when a sense of wonder and a genuine love for the sound are first inculcated - this serves as groundwork for interest in development from the perspective of a pupil. What student who fails to adore their instrument ever develops? Nature is our teacher, our sense of wonder, and when that is first realized, it is not uncommon that everything else after tends to fall more tolerantly into place. The contemporary “warranty box” of early music education can prove equally dangerous for the trifecta critical to the success of a student: the parents, teacher, and student coexisting as a unit with a unified purpose.

Human life is felt through the blurred edges of our deepest emotions - through the moments of transition. The sweeping grief of a breakup or the sudden gravity of a career shift are never those defined by the decisive moments alone. These undulations are identifiable in time, though their actual effects tend to perpetually saturate the periphery long after the fact. Any photographer worth their salt will tell you that detail is pervasive in the grain and the mysteries within the shadows. In music, if every single note is enunciated with a blinding luminosity, accompanied by extraneous motions engineered for none other than vapid showmanship and parental awe, the plot may be lost. The human spirit is meant to wander, and wander it must. A good teacher will guide within the framework that a student presents. Wandering does not seek but often finds a destination with this guidance. If one wanders within a construct, they wander eternally.

Artmaking is the eternal, delicate interplay between physical instrumental limitations and the limitless pursuit of tone and beauty. Beauty can also be un-beautiful. Sometimes this requires a bold obstruction of clear reality, whatever that reality may be for each and every one of us. As we must choose in life when to adopt a certain posture, we must also recognize the profound moments that require us to blur the edges and leave things unsaid. What is unspoken is rarely unheard. In this world, truth tends to initially hide itself, but by Mother Nature, it will not remain silent forever; it simply cannot.

The truth will heal even those most deeply hurt by the lies that are normalized. In due course, lies fade in the presence of truth, and the truth will set you free.

Durch alle Töne tönet
Im bunten Erdentraum
Ein leiser Ton gezogen
Für den, der heimlich lauschet.

– F. Schlegel

In the contemporary world, it seems that much of art is realized via a particular malaise - right to left, and upside down. The culture seeks to identify first the monetary value of the artist, instead of seeing their work as an extension of something larger and beyond this life. If one cannot bring some type of monetary value, they are not looked upon favorably. I feel it is a delightful thought experiment to at least question the reason as to why people create beautiful things. Why are we driven to create? Why are we innately drawn to beautiful things?

The origin of creative passion in many artists is a necessity and exists independently of external acknowledgement. This artist’s mission is to create beauty for the sake of beauty; beauty, the undefinable. To myself, I find that often, no matter the terms, I am drawn to create - be it through writing, photographs, or music. In various ways throughout my life, I have continually been reminded that the artist who is not actively creating is existing in their most undesirable state. A dear friend of mine brought these matters to my attention today, giving me the desire to parse out some ideas and, in doing so, more likely than not, leave behind more questions than answers.

The idea of inwardness is often discussed in classical music making. This is where an artist expresses their deepest emotions in the most intensely felt manner, but in a way that does not make their position overly clangorous. This inwardness reflects a state of expression that is laconic in nature, but the intensity of expression is never lessened by a crass attempt to remain stoic. If nothing else, the imbued expression in these “inward” works screams louder and with more vitality than any work of pure showmanship. This being said, our souls do not always, but can spill over… Through art, we profess and find purpose in sharing. When the inner world is just beaming, we are inclined to share our work for no reason other than this.

This spilling over must never become an exercise of the ego - it must be drawn from a pure place. It must never be a deliberate subterfuge of the ego itself. While an artist may find immense personal joy in sharing their hard work, art serves as an independent entity and beautiful attribute of the artist, the conduit of something above all else. The mortal mind may hijack these feelings for validation, and it may become habitual; it is only natural, especially in the young. The distinction here is that these feelings emanate from the radiant inner world of expression. In a case of love, two people cultivate a bond that defies description and share it openly in hopes that others might glimpse this quiet radiance. This brings attention to another point often iterated at my alma mater. A great humanities professor spoke not just about how people are naturally inclined to appreciate and create beautiful things, but how we are naturally drawn to share beauty with others when we see it before our very eyes. Why, upon a great vista, must we take a photo? Why must we turn to our travel companion and ask them if they do in fact see what we do? It is because we are beside ourselves with something we cannot explain. Or, at least, we hope that perhaps our neighbor that we love may see things as we do. These scenes and moments in life touch a part of each of us so deeply. We feel so fervently, but cannot describe why.

The ego is permissible only so that one’s artistic reality may be conveyed as purely as possible in the face of public scrutiny. As soon as the ego grows large enough to disturb the message of the art itself, the art loses much of what it hides. The ego can protect and so equally can it destroy and often, very maliciously, and in radio silence. A photographer finds peace and refuge behind his camera’s viewfinder, and a musician finds it in their interpretation after many hours of contemplation. Both of these arrivals are parsed in solitude, under safe spaces, where thoughts can wander, and convictions can be formed. It is then and only then that an artist can come forth and share something they hold as truth.

The matter of religiosity comes to the fore. While formal religion can be viewed through stigmatic lenses, it is only after the stripping away of these stigmas that the truth attached to denominational religion seems to fizzle. We see what is left behind: raw virtue and truth. Perhaps this is what people mean when they self-identify as “spiritual.” Chief among this framework is the act of devotion. We devote and sacrifice our love to another; we give a part of ourselves. In this talk of art and religion, we must of course mention J.S. Bach, the man from whom all further art was realized. Bach was able to achieve earth-shattering wonder precisely because his devotion gave him an unshakeable point of execution. This man held dear the most real things to him and, by doing so, created music that is as timeless as it is. I have always heard the works of Bach as something beyond the definable in this life, even as a child, and it is for this reason that I concur that there must be some absolutely undefinable intention and truth in his music that is intrinsically felt - the muse from which it was written - that makes these otherwise latent qualities so precisely etched.

One may draw into question (and many classical musicians do ask this): why do we speak of these great composers as deity-like figures? I can say that I do. My most beloved teacher and her husband spoke about the “Gods of Classical Music.” Every time I would hear this from her, I would immediately know the weight and responsibility I carried on my shoulders as an artist. The material with which we grapple is holy, pure, and must be treated with the utmost respect. Every time you sit to practice, you must hold the highest reverence for what it is you are attempting to interpret. Bach saw “God,” his truth, and irrespective of faith, we can feel this unbreakable strength in his music. It absolutely transcends religion. Religion is a human creation, as we call a table a table.

This reverence is what separates true stewardship from validation. There is an immense artistic transformation that unfolds in a person when the focus shifts from self-glory to simply serving as a vessel. By acknowledging an undefinable muse completely beyond the self, whether one calls it God or a nameless item, the ego dissolves. To create, and have the burning desire to do so constantly, may take an earthbound toll in an otherwise tainted life, but what a life it would be without such things. And of course, to let in that which is tainted is to give these things power. If a tree falls in a forest?

If artists accept that the material with which we grapple is holy, then the act of bringing it to life requires an ongoing vulnerability. The leap of faith is not a choice, but an acceptance of a lifelong pursuit. This is why the greatest teachers in this practice do not “retire.” Art is the essence of our entire existence, and it breathes meaning into everything we do.

In a culture hugely crippled by narcissistic greed, by “worshipping” the greats, we protect our only remaining anchor to the sublime. As trite as it may sound, every human being possesses the ability to make a choice - the choice to look within and choose their source of purpose. Some fall victim to the ego and mortal mind and live that out for their bodily days. Truths are incredibly difficult to accept, especially when you believe or are conditioned into something so fervently, but may it stand eternally true these words: we are born as children and die as children. Every amassed asset is a farce, and it will be left behind just as invisible as it was when you were born. We are born integrated, we disintegrate, and we have to reintegrate. How does one play the game without entirely losing themselves? Perhaps an impossibility.

With art, music, and truth. That is our Bible, and this Bible has no terms.

—

There are no facts, only interpretations.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks

Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is ongoing within you, and if you wish to find it, you must seek it within yourself.

- Søren Kierkegaard

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only a little at a time at a truth we find bitter.

- Denis Diderot

The only truth which matters is the truth which is lived and felt inside the soul; all else is mere words, a net to catch the wind.

- Alan Watts

Do not look for truth outside yourself; it is only found within the quiet radiance of your own inner world.

- Augustine of Hippo