Music and quiet

Silence: the exterior sort is often inspiration for creative work, and the interior sort is that, too, and is also part of creation itself

So it might seem a paradox that music is very often a gateway to silence. However, when you think about it, really think about and feel music -- and especially if you are a musician yourself -- you’ll come to know that music arises out of silence. It’s not just, hey, we begin! music is, if it’s really good, continuing of and sharing of the inspiration and conversation that begin with that interior quiet. That’s a thought which sounds like another paradox even as I write it, but that makes it no less true.

That idea of creativity arises from silence -- sometimes long quiet, sometimes just the beat of a breath between observation and connection -- works with other sorts of creativity, as well. The dancer in the moment before the dance, the chef at the moment of connecing ideas are also there in that silence. As I write this it is National Poetry Month in the US, so I invite you to think about how this might apply in that area. A recent trip to spend time with the paintings of the Glasgow Boys at Kelvingrove in Glasgow had me reflecting on how this works with visual art as well, especially, for example, the two very different paintings of the Victorian scene in Stirling Station and the evocation of druids in Bringing in the Mistletoe.

Musicians paint their pictures on silence, as the saying goes.

Music to go along with these ideas

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home
Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

and this Eddi Reader: Wild Mountainside

You may also wish to see
Music, meditation, creation
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition
music, silence, and spiritual journey

Photograph of a wild mountainside in Ireland is by Kerry Dexter, and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

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photographing music: Scotland

Eddi Reader at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall, a different view of Buchanan street, and piper in George Square on Burns night


music to go along
Music Road: Music for St Andrew's Day: music of Scotland

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Road Trip Music: Ohio

Music Road: creative practice: the spaces between

and Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

music and focus

Focusing on a song or a tune, whether you are the one playing and singing or the one doing the listening, is a way to relax, and to create. That may seem a contradiction, at first.

Whichever side of that circumstance you are on at any given time, though, it can be a doorway in to deep source of peace and refreshment.










photographs from Glasgow, Scotland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, copyright Kerry Dexter


Music to go along with these ideas

Music Road: national drum month: bodhran
Music Road: Scotland on the harp: Corrina Hewat
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After

you may also wish to see

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday
this week, be sure to check out the one with peanut butter and jelly included -- two things which also help with focus.

Painter of Music: Thomas Hart Benton at the Frist

Thomas Hart Benton in Story and Song is the name of an exhibit that just opened at the Frist Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a good title, and a good place for Benton’s works to be shown. Much of his work had to do with American music and with the people, landscapes, and day to day history that frames much of what we know as folk, country, and bluegrass music.

Have you seen Benton’s work? Probably so. It’s widely used in books and shown in art history texts as an example of what’s called regionalist painting, the region in this case being the American midwest. Benton's last work was The Sources of County Music, which hangs today in The Country Music Hall of Fame, just down the Street and around the corner from the Frist. He also illustrated three of Mark Twain’s works, including Life on the Mississippi.

Whether he was following story or song, Benton was known for getting down to the basics, and for wanting to tell the whole story -- commissioned to do a series of murals on Indiana’s history, he included reference to the Ku Klux Klan, which did not sit well with many; likewise, his southern pieces often contain images from slavery times.

Whatever he has as subject, one thing you get from Benton is a vibrant sense of people living their lives, and that as straightforward as his work may sometimes appear, there’s a lot more going on than what you take in at first glance. Music is often part of that, whether as a direct subject or as part of the day to day goings on and rhythms of life he painted. Benton himself loved music and was an accomplished harmonica player

The exhibit at the Frist has two sections, one about Benton’s work illustrating stories, and the other about his music related work. Benton, who was born in Missouri and studied in Chicago and Paris, was known as a leader of the American regionalist movement. He was also a teacher, and one of his students was Jackson Rollock, who took painting in a very different direction -- abstract expressionism.

The intersections between the visual and the musical often come up along the music road. If you’re anywhere near Nashville in the next few months, drop in and see what you think of Benton's take on music and story. The exhibit opens today and will be up through 31 January, 2010.

While you’re there, take in the other always intriguing exhibits at the Frist -- it’s an exhibiting rather than a collecting gallery, so things are always changing. Another one going now features the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, another painter involved with place, in her case the American south west.

From the Frist Center, information about The Thomas Hart Benton Exhibit. It's part of the Nashville Public Library's city wide celebration of Mark Twain, as well


music to go along with these ideas
Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

songs of place: Canada