Choir membership - how to know the artifact as a redemptive force.

 

We hear it so often - "these brave men and women are fighting and dying to protect our freedom." Isn't it true that those who live after hostilities end feel that their lives are owed to those who did not survive the battle? And isn't it true as well that this gratitude extends to all who fought and died, no matter on which side they fought? The battlefield soldiers thus make an artifact, a graspable reality that changes lives. And for those on the artistic battlefield, the struggle is with forceful, but not deadly materials.

 

Artifacts are not always so complexly made, but nevertheless carry complex information, like knots, for example. A knot is the simplest kind of metaphysical reality. As pure idea, the knots that bind our shoes add no mass to the shoestring, but add a wealth of usefulness. A tune is to a knot as noise is to cotton fibers in a shoestring.

 

Artifacts are always objective, and can contain genius, even though we, their creators, are flawed, and might be unaware of the objectivity of our own artifact. We musicians make musical artifacts of course, and like all artists, in the act, make a personal, spiritual artifact that survives as a residue of our work: a byproduct of the journey. Artifacts as objects of our focus can constellate new energies in us as well. I call these "artifacts as redemptive force" in that they beckon us into new pathways, unbidden and unexpected, emerging from the common prima materia in each spirit. And as the alchemists of old knew, this produces gold in our spirits.

 

Young musicians come to me from time to time and ask how music is composed. "I don't know," I say to them, "but I've been there many times when I've done it." Heaven's door is always open, and miracles happen in the Montview choir rooms all the time.

 

Peace,

John