discovering alabama

Leadbelly.

I can listen to this over and over. The high-pitched harmonizing, I read, is his wife - ethereal! Are those inner and outer octaves criss-crossing, zinging all over the place? Even in the spoken word!

In this next one you can feel his voice, sung or spoken, slide between notes.


Obviously it can't be a matter of enlightenment, but I do reflect back to B'sTs' chapter Art, about our diminishing sensitivities; also about how sound vibrations effectuate "remorse." I think about inner and lateral octaves presented in Ouspensky, and reflect that I haven't a clue what that all means.

I reflect that other artists may croon and whimper and might fail to hit some mark. So I wonder to what extent his hitting such a mark is subjective, on his side or mine. Is it just another flavor of titillation?

I also muse about dervish Troov's Lav-Mer-Nokh (something like a piano) with its additional strings between the notes. And I went back to read Ouspensky recounting about the three sets of octaves, (1) a ray of creation, (2) broken down from (a) the absolute to the sun, (b) the sun to the earth, and (c) the earth to the moon (did I get that wrong?), and (3) the lateral ocatve starting at the sun, including organic life on earth as sol, fa, mi.

And I think it is getting late to learn something real.

While I'm harping on the subject, as dreadful as flitting around heaven playing the harp sounds, maybe the next order of worlds be populated by pythagorean initiates plotting the miraculous on such deceptively simple supercomputers such as harps and David's lyre? In any case, references to music are not purely intellectual, they engage emotion and moving.

Another association is Robert de Ropp describing Gurdjieff introducing a piece of music with,

This music I play you now come from Essene monastery where Jesus Christ spent from eighteenth to thirtieth year.” And in Meetings With remarkable Men he recounts, “I had been among the Essenes, most of whom are Jews, and that by means of very ancient Hebraic music and songs they had made plants grow in half an hour, and I described in detail how they had done this.

(source).

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the psaltery and the harp. Praise Him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals; praise Him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Alleluia. Just Kidding.