The Second Law of Synchronicity – David Salminen – live in concert – exploratory piano improvisations
Sunday, March 30, 2014, 3 pm
Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave. Portland, OR 97205 http://www.portlandpianocompany.com
This concert is a chance to listen to music under special conditions which may facilitate the perception of synchronicities (before, during, and after the event). There is little needed in the way of explanation, but some explanation is in order:
The First Law of Synchronicity is the principle of Common Presence – the feeling of simply being here together in this moment, not somewhere else, and not later than… this moment! Being is the operative word.
The Second Law of Synchronicity is the phenomenon of Mutual Adjustment – without the necessity of a before and after process in time. We’ve all seen or heard this kind of thing somewhere, as in the synchronized flight of a flock of birds (especially murmuration) and in really “tight” performances by musical groups.
With a little bit of luck, this unique concert will facilitate special individual experiences within the heart-mind – one’s own personal meaning factory – of what is going on both within us and around us, synchronistically. Connections and insights arise out of music spontaneously, when time & space have been set aside for such experiences.
Diving into the sound stream, as in a concert of this kind, and catching and releasing various things along the way, is done by way of analogy to the cosmic process. This process, like the famous I Ching of the Chinese people, is a “book of changes” – gradual, sudden, recurrent, unique, and so on – and all of it merely part of the flow. The ideas inspiring this concert come in part out of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching, a book which has been a friend of the performer’s for over forty years. The 1949 forward to the book, by C. G. Jung, aptly describes the mystery of synchronicity in contemporary terms, as in the following on page xxiv. “The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure.”
My brief notes re “The Laws of Synchronicity” (actually six in number) are adapted from The Dramatic Universe, a four-volume work by J. G. Bennett, section 10.26.3. He cites Jung’s I Ching forward, in this choice bit clarifying synchronicity as denoting: “a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves, as well as with the subjective (psychic) state of the observer or observers.”
Donations to help make additional events like this more feasible are gratefully accepted. For more information, please call 503.762.6387 or visit https://davidsalminen.com/
David Salminen 
Written
on March 24, 2014