“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” …