from a conversation between Stockhausen & Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone 1973 .. which really looks forward to the internet .. or sthing .. Let me come back to a couple of things we were just talking about. The Judeo-Xian tradition fosters the concept of one initial explosion - creation - everything starting from the One that reveals itself in its multiplicity. The idea here is that of time being an arch, finally arriving as the last days and the last judgment - its the cosmos coming to an end. With the idea of nirvana, however, we dont find that starting and stopping concept of time because, if I understand it correctly, nirvana means to be in all the times and everywhere at once - in an omnipresent state, eternal in the sense of reaching the timeless by incorporating everything. C. Its similar to the idea of synchronicity. S. Wonderful. Yes. Its the verticalism - everything exists at once. If you could make a clear cut through the whole universe, youd see that everything that we define as history or development exists at once - youd experience all the layers of sub-and supra consciousness. Its just that we cant be everywhere at once at the same time because of the way we are. Thats why we think of time as being a successive process - one thing after another - because were simply unable to grasp this great truth. We have these blinders - in this case theyre necessary - otherwise wed just explode from the joy of looking through everything at ourselves and the whole meaning of existence. C. If you break down the phrase I repeat myself, you find I repeat my Self. S. Who says I? C. Well, thats the mistake isnt it? S. No, thats the truth. Theres someone watching the I: the higher I is watching the lower I saying that it repeats itself. Who says I repeat myself? When I talk like this, whos saying that the I sees that the lower I repeats itself? C. Who writes your compositions? S. Thats why I say that nothing belongs to me. Theres an infinite series of the I, an infinite series of he you, and an infinite series of the it; and only these three make sense. In classical logic, as Ive said before, the third always had to be excluded - that was the alpha and omega of Aristotelian logic .... So what I want to say is that in the new cosmology these traditions are combined. We spoke about the concept of the ylem occurring every 83 billion years: you have that Judeo-Christian evolution of time which comes to a standstill, contracts again, comes to an end, after which the whole universe is purified by fire. The universe explodes again, it breathes periodically. So you have both the unlimited and the cyclic - cycle to cycle, endlessly. And whats interesting is to begin to understand the spiral tendency to these cycles. Thats not just a dull repetition or variation. C. Some of the early Greeks believed that Socrates would reappear as Socrates in five thousand years - speaking exactly the same words he spoke before. This isnt what you mean ... S. But even if that were true hed reappear, as you said, five thousand years later. He couldnt live a second if he were exactly the same physically or mentally. Hed immediately blow up, he couldnt even breathe the atmosphere. Socrates is just a name. C. You mentioned the falsity of the object-subject duality, saying that you cant speak about something without speaking about your speaking about it; and youve also said that ones way of looking something is itself transformed by what one sees. Arent you suggesting that finally theres no distinction between your audience and your music? S. Be careful. If you do away with dualism, you shouldnt level out everything. It would be more interesting to add a third force and begin with a ternary rather than a binary system of logic. We have the public, the musicians, the sounds produced, the waves perceived. All we can analyse now is what people manifest in their reactions: what they say, how they behave, the waves we feel in the hall which are emitted by the people themselves.. So we cant speak about the music as such without speaking about these who are listening to or making the music. We can only talk about what were able to describe concerning what we hear. How can you be aware of sound waves without your being what you are? The public becomes the music and the music becomes the public. C. Then why are there so many uncomprehending critics? S. Its like asking: Why are there clocks? Theyre devices based on common agreement meant to facilitate an objective system of evaluation or analysis. Lets say we all accepted the Platonic idea, described in The Republic, where certain sounds and instruments all had their precise functions. Plato gave very particular significance to what sounds do to man - what kinds of feelings, emotions, or thoughts they stir up in him. In Russia today or in Germany under the Nazis we find something similar to this. They tried to relate certain effects to certain sounds. In Nazi Germany they spoke about non-Aryan art, and they burned a lot of paintings and chased musicians away whose works deviated from the common denominator; those who were defining the aesthetic principles had a closed system of what was and wasnt good. Now we have to ask another question: Shall we really accept the completely atomistic concept in which everybody has his own aesthetic? By that concept, communication is impossible. Thats the other extreme, and we are really heading towards it. The so called idealistic anarchists in America are envisaging a world where theres ultimately no group anymore that can agree - everybody is alone with his own canon of values. The other extreme of course, is where you have a whole collective whose group ideal is affirmed by some power elite or unified by a myth like that of the ancient Greek gods. There are many possibilities in between, and Id rather say: Lets not stay at either extreme, but rather constantly move from one to the other. What Id like now is if people on the same wave lengths, on the same level of consciousness - although its almost impossible to measure this - if spiritual friends formed groups no longer bound by ties of city, village, family, blood, or race, but by the level of consciousness theyve achieved - their consciousness of themselves and of themselves as being the world and universe. If such people meet, they wouldnt need to talk very much about what music they like, about whats good or bad. It would become a global group structure like a network - as when youre flying over a city at night and you see these points of light which are like the synapses of the brain: it really looks like an enormous thinking brain. As Teihard de Chardin said, if we were outside of the noosphere wed feel the warmth of all those human beings. It would look as if our earth were shining, thered be an enormous light emanating from the thinking activity .. So this group of beings, these spirits that have a common canon are scattered all over the globe now. Thats the only real underground, though Id rather call it an overground. C. It seems to me that many of the young radicals who are working in different kinds of collectives also have these shared values and dont seem particularly atomised. S Yes, there are strong countermovements already. Theyve found friends who arent necessarily just from their home community or schools. It doesnt seem as if some of these young persons are atomised. I was of course talking specifically about aesthetic judgment, but it does apply to everything. I do think that a new nationalism is emerging. In the positive sense - being an individual in an expanded family. I dont believe, as were being told over and over, that the family is gone - thats only the obligatory family where you had only a choice of those persons who you knew in your village, town, or where you worked. You have very little chance to discover unions which were spiritually clear and perfectly alive. C. This is one way of saying that ESP is a metaphor for love. S. Yes it is. Exactly.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 03:46:42 +0000
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