Month: March 2004

I’m a tremendous fan of internet radio stations as a way of encountering new music. Over the years some of my favorite stations have come and gone and others have persisted in providing wonderful music. One of my favorites I’ve rediscovered is Radio@Netscape‘s 20th Century station. Already today I’ve heard pieces I’ve been wanting to check out for some time (just finished listening to George Crumb’s “Unto the Hills”…) and other pieces by composers I simply never knew about.

Anyone else have favorite internet avant-garde/experimental/modern music stations they’d like to share?

^_^

to walk, truly, freely, how pleasant it is! moving freely, the mind wandering curiously, the thoughts from daily life at rest, attention simply on the moment at hand, all the time in the world to explore thoughts deeply, a peaceful ease, floating on along…

i used to walk more regularly than i do these days. i think it’s just that san francisco doesn’t require walking as much as new york did. i find i’m missing that time walking, thinking back to those days in new york going block to block, look up to see the buildings, thoughts adrift. ..

reminiscing about the walk up park avenue east from union square with that blue sky that one day, listening to debussy’s “la mer”… the walk from the hotel petrus to downtown krakow and back again that i took so many times, each so unique, the river, the sky, wawel in the distance… the walk after jumping in the river in geneva… the walk along the seine in paris at night with gypsies playing…

“Still Life” is something of a strange, contradictory term… I usuallly associate life as something active, moving, dynamic, and that which is still to be something passive, motionless. Yet, most still life can be dynamic and rich while motionless…

There’s a phrase from one of Michio Kushi’s Macrobiotic Cookbooks, dynamic homeostasis, which I read maybe six or seven years ago and is still with me today. That idea, of something being in balance, yet in motion, rich, alive, has been an ideal for me, something to pursue in life and in music.

The idea of stillness has been on my mind a lot lately as I’m contemplating the nature of the music I’m involved with. Not a music without motion within it, but rather a music that has the effect of motionlessness. That, regardless of what’s in the music, the experience is as John Cage once said, “to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences” …