WMV Music Web Log

Marilyn Banner writes:

When I was at VCCA this time I went “empty”. I had no ideas, but took all my encaustic supplies. I decided, in Ram Das’ words, to “be here now.”

It wasn’t hard. The Blue Ridge mountains greeted me in the distance daily. The boxwood trees spoke their ancient language. The cows hung out. The horses asked for apples and to be petted. The sky was everywhere. I was surrounded by 22 other people who spend their lives creating. I didn’t need anything else.

So I took my new wooden panels and layered them with beeswax and encaustic medium.
I photographed the land with my digital camera. I had no printer, but I did sketches from the photos by looking at that little window on the back of the camera. I began to “copy” my sketches onto the panels.

For 3 weeks I tried to get a lot of paintings to “work.” Visual artists know what that means. I have high standards, but my paintings either looked like someone else could have painted them, or like someone was forcing the paint to make something “look like something,” but it didn’t fit right on the panel, or FEEL right. I kept working, revising, overworking.

After 3 weeks something happened: I let go of all my need to “get it right.” I just gave up, and let whatever I had actually taken into me, come out. I remembered a book I had read 40 years ago in art school, “The Chinese on the Art of Painting,” where the author described someone understanding or integrating the landscape, or the bamboo, or the mountain, in a profound way.

That’s what I was doing, finally, after 3 weeks. I had “become” the mountains and the land. Or they had “become” a part of me. I hardly kept my eyes open when I worked. Something on a deeper level was happening. I worked in an altered state for the last few days, heat gun in one hand, brush full of encaustic paint in the other. Maybe you can see that here in the work.

Last night (I have been back in DC for a month) I went to my basement stash of old meaningful books, found that book immediately, and opened it to the exact part that my art teacher in the 60’s, David Lund, had guided me to. He loved the painters of the Sung Dynasty.

Here is a quotation from the book:
“Su Shih wrote, “There are men who possess Tao and possess art; others who possess Tao but have not art, although the things take form in their hearts, they do not take form under their hands.”
The spiritual inspiration alone, however pure and deep it may be, is not enough to transform a man into an artist; he must also know how to work, how to make the hand co-operate with the mind, he must possess the power of visualizing his pictures mentally, nay, of becoming the very motifs that he paints. Yu-k’o was, according to Su Shih’s poetical expression, transformed into the bamboos that he painted, and “when Han Kan painted horses, he truly was a horse.” Also other great masters like Wang Wei, Wu Tao-tzu, and Li Lung-mien are praised for their complete self-identification with the things that they did with their brush. When Li Po’shih stayed in the mountains he did not pay attention to one thing only but his spirit joined in with ten thousand things and the mind penetrated every kind of workmanship.”

Aside from the fact that they were only talking about male masters, I think this concept is “where it’s at” for painting, and maybe not just nature.

Labels: VCCA

When I was a young man in NY, I would meet artists who would say to me, you are not an artist, because you only play other people's music. A composer is an artist, but not you. Even from older folks, who should have known better. I thought this is not fair, because, after all, I suffer like an artist!

The suffering of artists - is just like that of other people, only slightly different. Someone might say, oh I am untalented and stupid, and that is suffering. I will earn money and raise a family and watch the ball game or cook dinner. An artist says, oh I am untalented and stupid, and I am compelled by some inner urge to create something which might be awful and make me ashamed and embarrassed. (And probably won't earn me any money, but that is another blog).

So, all artists that I know encounter this demon, the same one we all encounter but some manage to avoid, maybe by unfortunate collusion, that says we are worthless and have nothing to say or lack the capacity to carry out whatever it is that we wish to do. Just when you think you have a handle on it: see, I can prove that I'm good, I did this or that to demonstrate it, then it gets really bad, like a general conspiracy between inner and outer forces to strangle the creative impulse. So, artists devise ways to hide what they do even from themselves, so as not to attract the evil eye.

Labels: suffering of artists

Betty Hauck, violist. Betty is a musician's musician - my ideal for a chamber music player. She doesn't often grab the spotlight, but when she is a member of a group, the whole ensemble not only sounds better, but feels better.


I wish she lived in DC, but she comes down from New Hampshire (and now Boston) 2 or 3 times a year. Ben Redwine and Betty Hauck and I will perform at the Ratner Museum on March 26. We can't do the program I originally had planned, due to insufficient rehearsal time. (I had in mind the Leo Smit Trio, Francaix Trio, and premiere of Blair Goins' new trio). Oh well, but it will be a beautiful program of Brahms, Mozart, Poulenc, and Rebecca Clarke.

Betty will be back on May 20 to perform with Karyn Friedman, Sally McLain, and me! We will do the great Brahms and Loeffler songs for mezzo, viola, and piano, and Sally and Betty will play Mozart's gorgeous violin/viola G major duet. I have asked Sally to play Brahms Sonata in A Op. 100 with me - something I really look forward to.

Labels: Betty Hauck, violist

Elizabeth Kluegel, soprano, and Beth Graham, french horn. We are performing a program together that includes the famous Schubert "Auf dem Strom", as well as lesser known works for soprano, horn, and piano, like Arnold Cooke's "Nocturnes". It is very good that we have managed to schedule four (!) performances of this concert. Upcoming: Monday March 10 at 10:30 am at the Lombardi Cancer Center, and Sunday March 16 at 7:30 at Galilee Church in Pasadena MD. MP3s of the Schubert and Cooke are posted from the February 24 concert at Rock Spring Church.

I also perform the Brahms f minor Sonata on this program, at least the half of it with which the 20 year old Johannes introduced himself to the Schumanns in 1853. I am pleased with this: I finally feel like I know what I am doing with this piece. Maybe I will play the whole thing on a later program, but it is more than 45 minutes long altogether. On the other hand, it is all good music, so why not?

Allegro maestoso, and Andante espressivo, from Feb. 24.

Labels: beth graham, elizabeth kluegel

Another reflection on the role of teachers, good, bad, and otherwise. The foolishness of teachers can be as much of a guide in the end as the wisdom, I guess. I have thought a great deal about something one of my teachers said long ago - it was the expression of an idea which I regard as an aphorism of the devil. It was words to this effect: that it does not matter what you, the performer, feel about what you are doing - the only thing that matters is the effect you produce on the listener. What is diabolical about this idea? It is that it is a recipe for loss of soul. Now, I sit down with a Chopin Nocturne and think to myself, the only thing that matters here is the delight that I experience with each note that I play, the same delight that Chopin must have experienced with these chords, sonorities, resonances. This is the delight that you are invited to share. Nothing, nothing else matters.

As long as I am in a philosophical frame of mind (Chopin does that to me), a thought about youth and age. To youth, the sentiments of age may seem incomprehensible or overwhelming (as I seem to recall). To age, the concerns of youth, which were once our own, may no longer be of interest to us. I would like to have enthusiasm for both, not thinking one better than the other. Art allows us community with both the young and mature Beethoven, for instance. I have thought the early works of Beethoven frivolous compared with later ones, but I might like to reconsider that view.