1.
A Portrait of Sound — music by Minor Fossil
From the Community
The first thing that caught my attention in this particular post by
is the title. There it was, sitting in my inbox reading 'A Portrait of Sound', and it sparked a kind of curiosity and intrigue, but not the passing kind. I felt like I had been in on this 'thought stream' before...I listened to the piece (👇🏽), over and over and over. Each time it ended I didn't feel like I was ready. There was something I knew I was being told, and I couldn't quite hear it.
This morning, I was rummaging through some old sketchbooks, looking for one that had enough blank pages to last me a short trip away. In one of the sketchbooks I wrote (I don't know when):
What does sleep look like?
What does time look like?
What do dreams look like?
What does sound look like?
What does love look like?
And then I remembered - "A Portrait of Sound." I had been in here before! Sometimes ideas don't come as languaged thoughts. More like a feeling that only gets registered in the neo-cortex once it has something to resonate with, that's external to itself.
So I revisit this song, and in their original post (👆🏼) Fossil writes:
I’ve learned to never delete or throw away of my musical ideas. All of those ideas that have needed to be written and recorded, but end up stalling out, can always be incorporated into another song or expanded upon later. It just might not be that idea’s time yet. Sometimes inspiration takes its time, and that one idea from two years ago may just be the part I am looking for.
I knew it was time to write this particular post, and respond to some of my own questions.
2.
The Sound the Universe Makes — a TED Talk by Janna Levin
From TED
As I reflected on these questions, the words that formed were: "Perhaps, it looks like life creating itself." (Note: the rest of this section may not make a lot of sense if you don't watch the video... )
Perhaps, when we sleep, time takes form. Not as a linear measure of events occurring, seemingly one after another... but rather as dreams with no past, present, or future. Perhaps dreams are the ashes of dead stars, falling through the undulations of the time-space fabric into our sleep, waiting to become the material of this reality.
Perhaps, sound is a portrait of infinity - but only a portrait. It's the kind of infinity we can't seem to directly perceive or hide behind. Infinity that's a black hole, where things go to die - and dying isn't what we think it is.
Perhaps, love is a kind of death. Death like a sound - a silence - that you hear beating inside yourself when someone sees you for who you are, which has nothing to do with who you think you are.
"The universe makes a sound -- is a sound. In the core of this sound there's a silence, a silence that creates that sound, which is not its opposite, but its inseparable soul... Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate... it can watch other flowers grow and become what they are."
— Etel Adnan
At some point in the video, she says: "there's no such thing as standing outside the universe." I think she meant it scientifically, and she said it so in-passing that you could miss it - but it made me pause the video.
There is no such thing as standing outside the universe. But there is such a thing as outside the universe that we will never, ever, know.
3.
Portraits of Silence — paintings by Etel Adnan
From the Gallery
"Portraits of Silence" is the title I gave to this section of the post - I'm not sure what the titles are exactly of Etel Adnan's pieces.
When I think about what it might look like inside of a black hole that absorbs all light that passes, I imagine it might look something like this. A blackhole, after living for millennia as a burning ball of fire dies and becomes a dense 'nothing' against an expanse of 'everything.'
Perhaps, this is what silence looks like.
📚 SHOULDERS OF GIANTS 📚
Last week, I posted about Tony Bennett (👇🏽) and his moving contribution to the world of Jazz and music. Today I read up a little bit about Etel Adnan who died in 2021 at age 96 - she was a firecracker, and left this earth having emptied herself so completely.
I'm about to read her final contribution in the form of a novel called 'Shifting the Silence.' I also wanted to share with you a list of recommendations of great creatives to learn about, provided by various readers from last week's comments section:
The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith
Van Gogh: A Power Seething by Julian Bell
Sheryl (Documentary, Sheryl Crow)
The Go-Go's (Documentary)
Becoming Frida (Frida Kahlo, Documentary)
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Reborn: Journals of Susan Sontag
Consciousness, Creativity, and Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch
The Art Life (Documentary, David Lynch)
Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin
Amazing Grace (Aretha Franklin)
And A Voice to Sing With: A Memoir
Chronicles V.1 - Bob Dylan
I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen
Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday)
I love how you found a breadcrumb you left for yourself in that old sketchbook that led you back to A Portrait of Sound, and this entire post!
Thank you for sharing A Portrait of Sound! The TED Talk was really interesting to watch as space has always fascinated me.