Last few weeks have been quite a bit of busy! Just last Thursday Toast Beards did a gig at the Maison in New Orleans with our friends Never Ever & the Family Band and City Zoo. I had read Inayat Khan's "Mysticism of Sound and Music" and I was never quite the same. There are sections about the "Power of the Word" and other concomitant New Age concepts that for whatever reason affected me. A poesy beyond the page means a poesy of life, a poesy of full being and becoming. All your language, your expression is a re-presentation of your principles and must be viewed as such by any responsible artist. So I've been crafting songs likewise! One is called "Always Having a Good Time" because when we have a gig and play a song I would like for all to be having a good time! And guess what? It works.
Besides the gigery and blossoming (though on a small scale) success of Toast Beards, I've been working on a few other ideas. A friend of mine has access to some art space in the New Orleans area and I'm planning on abusing networked connections to this institutional apparatus... And as a true crazy I'm compelled by pattern. Are you familiar with a Vedic square? I'd presume you are as it is basically a multiplication table reduced to digital roots. All this means is that once the products in the table exceed one digit, they are simplified into one digit representations. A 10 becomes a 1, a 12 becomes a 3 by a process very similar to that used in numerology. The purpose of crafting squares of these sorts is to see the regularity in the pattern of multiplication (inverted division/divination?).
The minimal research I've performed informs me that many a designer and architect has used these patterns as the basis of a symbolism. The Muslims whoso feared representations of the Prophet or the Absolute were forced into symmetric and elaborately patterned representations by doctrine. The ineffable, the unsayable, the unmappable, the unlimited, the Infinite is incapable of true representation (though its presentation is quite obvious). Many traditional architects of sacred images be they mandala, thangka, chapel design or likewise have employed a Vedic square pattern in their designs. So I've been fashioning these simple number squares and superimposing different designs. The magic is that there are a myriad of patterns within the system and any set of aspects can be highlighted as the basis of a design. It may be difficult for me to explain this in language. I've done some studies already but don't have a digital camera. I'm getting a friend to take some images for me and doing a series of studies before I do more formal works.
I am full of ideas which assault the art-space, the artworlds, I am playing an artgame. Once the true power of word, of art is realized by the practitioner, it can't help but become politicized and philosophized. We see the doctrinal content in all artifact, there is no behavior that does not demonstrate a "way." An artist is not truly realized until self-concern is obliterated, a slavish stylistic posturing is abandoned and true purposive motion begins. The motion may be realized through any medium: the motion of language vocalized, the motion of a dance, the motion of a music, the motion of a static or dynamic image... I plan to realize with great purpose a principled motion, a motion of love, a motion of true import beyond art movement or style. A poem architected without ornament, plain function, meaning through use. I'll work out the self and art essay with some points to be made on advertising language, ideology, anonymity in the artworld and the artgame soon. I may even talk about the 2011 poet laureate Poncho Peligroso... But at the moment I will continue research. Love!
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