Iām afraid this is a phenomenon that the more you try to get on top of (by simulating it), the more it will recedeā¦ this very āgetting on topā is what chases it away.
Satie, Dane Rudhyar and Terry Jennings composed in a traditional manner ā the human performer was in the loop in a traditional way. But Eno and Hiroshi Yoshimura achieved the much the same things with electronic tools and methods that were partially if not completely generativeā¦
In search of commonalities, what I hear most is ā¦ attending to negative space, making silence and the environmental space around you a partnerā¦
In Satie we find the āpauseā. But the pause is not the phenomenon, itās already a technical interpretation ā precisely that which covers up the phenomenon or chases it away. What then is the phenomenon of the pause? The pause is rather that which frees the space so the āfigureā can resonate within it.
The silent space does not āgroundā the figure; it only bears it in its groundlessness.
āGroundingā and ābearingā are opposites: the soil bears the tree, but does not ground it.
If the tree had to be grounded in the sense of āset upon logical foundationsā it would be uprooted; that is, it would already cease to be as a tree.
Such is why the calculative approach in which we ponder the effect of this or that ātiming variationā or āaccentā only leads astray.
The thinking that is needed such that the space be freed for its groundlessness is rather of a meditative kind. In this the āpauseā is grasped more essentially.
Furthermore, the negation inherent in terms such as ānegative spaceā and āgroundlessnessā indicates also that something has been missed or is inexpressible in language; to be understood it must be given a purely positive character, not as a āvalueā, but as something posited.
The positive character of negative space is expressed most directly in the closing statements of Kawabataās 1968 Nobel lecture ā particularly in the positive meanings given to āemptinessā and ānothingnessā ā and their contrast with ānihilismā ā this is perhaps what Iām after:
The following is from the biography of Myoe by his disciple Kikai:
āSaigyo frequently came and talked of poetry. His own attitude towards poetry, he said, was far from the ordinary. Cherry blossoms, the cuckoo, the moon, snow: confronted with all the manifold forms of nature, his eyes and his ears were filled with emptiness. And were not all the words that came forth true words? When he sang of the blossoms the blossoms were not on his mind, when he sang of the moon he did not think of the moon. As the occasion presented itself, as the urge arose, he wrote poetry. The red rainbow across the sky was as the sky taking on color. The white sunlight was as the sky growing bright. Yet the empty sky, by its nature, was not something to become bright. It was not something to take on color. With a spirit like the empty sky he gives color to all the manifold scenes but not a trace remained. In such poetry was the Buddha, the manifestation of the ultimate truth.ā
Here we have the emptiness, the nothingness, of the Orient. My own works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different. Dogen entitled his poem about the seasons, āInnate Realityā, and even as he sang of the beauty of the seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.
[reference: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1968/kawabata/lecture/]
all this means ā like Eno and Yoshimura ā is to find your own way to free the spaceā¦ embrace the āgridlinessā of your tools while realizing you/they are not aloneā¦ for there is silenceā¦ silence isā¦ the silent space is your partner and guideā¦ accept its offer of friendship, as something which may bear the color of your toneā¦ but do not crowd it out, nor attempt to make the it a ground in the sense of aesthetics, in the sense of the figure-ground relation ā¦ leave its emptiness all the more as emptinessā¦ so that it may bear in its groundlessnessā¦
In this, and like Eno, you will not replicate the music of Satie, but instead find your own way. And this way may be just as far from Enoās as his was from Satieās.
