A spiritual (?) journey (Part 3)

Earlier I noted how Keith Jarrett's music moves me, how at times it fills me with a sense of wonder. This is something I rarely experience listening to other music. Other music may provoke an emotional response in me (it may make me feel sad or happy, for example) or leave me feeling contented, but these are responses on a different level.

Also, I find it difficult to relax while listening to Jarrett's music, not because it's discordant (on the contrary, most of it is extremely harmonious), but because it commands my attention. In other words, I often feel I have to stop what I'm doing and listen intently.

Keen to find out why Jarrett's music has this effect on me, I tracked down a copy of Inner Views, a book not widely available outside of Japan based on a lengthy interview with the pianist conducted in November 1988 by Japanese music journalist Kunihiko Yamashita.

In the interview, Jarrett describes how he realized quite early on in his career that he approached music differently from most of the other musicians around him. To him music was not just a form of entertainment; it was something far more serious.

Towards the end of the interview he says of his piano playing, "There are no emotions involved. So many people think it's an emotional thing in the way that emotions have colors like…happiness and anger and joy, but really as soon as an emotion is involved in a concert, I also lose the music."

He also recounts the following episode:

"One time someone came backstage and said, 'It was a nice concert, but the chairs were uncomfortable.' They were very uncomfortable, just little chairs. And I said, 'Oh, gee, I'm sorry. Should I do it again in a comfortable room for you?' But then I said, 'Did you ever learn anything when you were comfortable?' Who learns anything when they're comfortable?"

Throughout the book Jarrett speaks about his own music with a fervor that suggests he's on a mission. But if the point of the music is not to entertain or provoke an emotional response, and if he's not concerned with the comfort of his audience, then what is this mission?

The answer is hinted at in the following statement at the very beginning of the interview:

"I don't think of myself as a musician. When I hear myself play I realize it is not about music. It is about staying awake and continuing to perceive. Perception, awakeness and awareness."

Jarrett's ideas on the importance of what he describes as "perception, awakeness and awareness" owe much to the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian mystic who influenced many artists and writers in the early- to mid-20th century. Gurdjieff had some unusual ideas about music, and reading them reassured Jarrett that he was not alone in regarding music as something utterly serious.

"I knew my calling was music. But as to why that calling - why such a serious calling was in a world where the other people doing this didn’t feel serious…there was some discrepancy there. But this seriousness that surrounds music is what Gurdjieff explained. Not serious like the opposite of happy, but a profound, reasonable quality that emanated from music. Something that moved, truly could be a moving force."

I was convinced that if I wanted to know more about the effect Jarrett's music had on me, I needed to learn something about this Gurdjieff fellow. I went to the library and found a tatty old hardback entitled The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers, by James Webb. It turned out to be one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

(To be continued...)

Certainty

On Friday I received a letter from the Canterbury District Health Board advising me that an appointment has been booked for my nose surgery on 19 February.

Today I booked my flights to Japan. I'll arrive in Osaka on 18 May and leave Tokyo on 15 June.

That gives me 27 days to walk the Tokaido.

Synthesization

What would this blog be without the occasional post on my latest clothing and equipment purchases?

I've always been bit of a die hard when it comes to natural fabrics. Although I quickly cottoned on to the advantages of breathable synthetic fabrics like Gore-Tex for rainwear, when it comes to what I wear underneath, I've never felt inclined to ditch good old cotton. I put this down in part to a bad experience with some cheap Kathmandu travel pants that were meant to be breathable but left me feeling all sweaty when I wore them during a trip to Thailand or another of those hot and sticky Southeast Asian countries a few years back.

So when we walked the Nakasendo in 2007, while Erik took along a wardrobe consisting entirely of clothes made out of the latest breathable synthetic materials (I remember him telling me about an incident that occurred when he was "provisioning" in which a shop assistant told him he'd "die" if he wore anything else), I stuck fairly religiously to cotton underwear, t-shirts, trousers, and shirts. Needless to say I didn’t die. But I did envy Erik's ability to wash his clothes in the evening after a day's walking and have them dry and ready to wear again the next morning. I, on the other hand, had to wait either until we came across a hotel with coin laundry facilities so I could dry my washing in a dryer, or until we had a rest day so I could hand wash and dry things properly in my room.

I've been satisfied for some time that the latest breathable fabrics are in fact breathable. But there's another problem. I did take one synthetic top when we walked the Nakasendo, but I noticed it got rather smelly over the cause of a single day's walking even with a cotton t-shirt underneath, something I never experienced with cotton tops. However, this problem has now been solved with the introduction of "anti-microbial" clothing. So, to cut a long story short, the other day I popped into Columbia Sportswear Company's "flagship" New Zealand store on Colombo Street and splurged on some Silver Ridge Convertible Pants (Fossil) and a Mountain Tech Short Sleeve Tee (Night Train). I've yet to wear either on a walk, but I'll let you know how they perform when I do. I just hope my Night Train shirt doesn't clash with my Sunburst backpack.

This is for Grant

This will be the first and last time I imbed a YouTube music video on this blog.

I first began listening to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers late last year after a trip to Japan during which I saw a local group perform This is For Albert from the album Caravan.

This number, I Remember Clifford, features Lee Morgan on trumpet. It was written in memory of another trumpeter, Clifford Brown, one of the all-time nice guys of jazz who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1956 at the age of just 25. Brown played with Blakey in the forerunner to the Jazz Messengers, the Art Blakey Quintet.

Two blogs

Two blogs I discovered after returning from walking the Nakasendo.

The first is by an American who in 2001 left his job at Aeon (the name of which will be familiar to some of you) and embarked on an "autumn pilgrimage" that took him along the Tokaido from Tokyo to Kyoto and then on to Shikoku where he did the pilgrimage of the 88 temples, famous for its connection with the Shingon sect founder, Kukai, whose name of course you all remember from this post. The site's a bit of a maze, but well worth exploring.

The second, and more recent, discovery is a blog by a Singaporean who as I write is just beginning preparations for his attempt to walk the Nakasendo solo. This is definitely one to watch. His approach is a little different from most people's in that he's not concerned with sticking too closely to the original route and intends to "sleep rough" along the way. Good luck to him.

I've added both these blogs to the links at left.

The running fool is dead

So, what have I been doing post Nakasendo? Not running a marathon, that's for sure. For a while I did run pretty seriously. This included taking part in a series of organized 5-km "fun runs" at Hagley Park in early 2008, over the course of which I steadily improved my time, finishing up with a not discreditable (for a newbie veteran, that is) 27 minutes 33 seconds. Here's me surging towards the finishing line just ahead of a woman and her dog.


I downloaded a training schedule for people preparing to run their first marathon and was running nearly every day. But as I increased my workload to the point where I was doing 10-km runs once or twice a week, my knees started getting sore, so sore that they kept me awake at night, and I reluctantly concluded that I wouldn't be able to run a marathon. I packed away my singlets and running shorts and bought some new walking shoes (waterproof Keens, similar to the ones Erik wore when we walked the Nakasendo together).

And so in the middle of last year I switched to Plan B and bought a walking map of the Tokaido. I plan to walk it in May-June this year, but as usual there are several obstacles in my way. Principal among these is yet another health issue. I recently found out that the "unsightly bright red scab-like thing on the side of my nose" I referred to in October 2007 is in fact a basal cell carcinoma. A dermatologist has reassured me that it's no threat to my health, but I need to have it excised. I don’t know when this will be. I'm not even sure how long the waiting list for this kind of surgery is at the moment. Hopefully I can get it done and recuperate before 18 May, which is my preferred departure date.

A spiritual (?) journey (Part 2)

As I was saying, I'm a fan of the music of Keith Jarrett. Listening to his playing now, I find it difficult to imagine that I didn't fall in love with it straight away. Such is the sense of wonder it inspires in me. Such is the extent to which it moves me. Yes, I know some musicians grow on you. You're either not ready for them the first time you hear them, or you just need to allow time for them to grow on you. But it's different with Keith Jarrett. Today he moves me like no other musician I've heard before or since. Yet the first time I heard him I didn’t get it at all.

A few years ago when my brother Mark went to live overseas, he left me his extensive collection of Miles Davis CDs for safekeeping. He also left me a handful of CDs by other artists, among them Keith Jarrett's La Scala. I gave it a listen but it left no real impression on me.

I while later - I think it was Christmas time - we were up in Nelson where my father was living and someone put on The Melody at Night, With You. I thought it was beautiful. I still enjoy listening to it, although it's quite unlike most of Keith Jarrett's other recordings. It's very restrained (it was his first recording after a long period of enforced inactivity due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and he used a specially adjusted piano as he had insufficient strength in his hands to play a normal piano). Some people rather disparagingly refer to it as "Jarrett lite". But it's a good CD for introducing people to the world of Keith Jarrett without fear of scaring them off with some of his "heavier" material. It certainly did the trick for me. Back in Christchurch, I bought my own copy of The Melody at Night, With You. I also gave La Scala another listen, and before long I was hooked.

What really sealed my fate was seeing Keith Jarrett perform with his trio on the Standards DVD. The performance is shocking in a way. All his eccentricities (the facial contortions, the vocalizing, the dancing while playing) are laid bare, but at the same time his passion, joy, and ecstasy are so plain to see. I knew that I was witnessing something special. It wasn't just great music; there was something more to it.

On just about every Keith Jarrett recording I own, whether it be solo, trio, or quartet, there are certain passages that are so beautiful they almost bring me to tears. My reaction is more or less the same every time I listen to them. There are also moments of ecstasy, of rapture. I'd never experienced this while listening to music before, and I remember telling someone once that listening to Keith Jarrett changed the way I listen to all music, changed the way the sound enters my ears. How can someone's piano playing have such an effect? In an effort to answer this question, I started reading about Keith Jarrett and his approach to music.

(To be continued...)