David Salminen

musifying on Solar Flares, Space Weather and other phenomena…

… a quick note today to reiterate my invitation to friends & acquaintances, known and not yet known, to my November 23, 2014 piano concert in Portland, Oregon, USA. Details here:

http://www.allclassical.org/event/david-salminen-solar-flares/

Please join me in this musical meditation on the mysterious activities of our own star, aka The Sun, Sol, etc. By way of explanation… I’ve occasionally been told that such extra-musical themes are too abstract – not personal enough. However, to me, my and our relationship to the cosmos and the immediate cosmic neighborhood is actually very personal. All life on earth depends on the sun. Life is as “personal” as it gets! And we all have intuitions at times that connect the smaller cosmoses with the larger… A few of my favorite quotations hopefully illustrate this connection: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” (Carl Sagan) – “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars…” (the Desiderata – authorship unclear) – “The solar system is our cosmic home and we should know it as a man knows his own hearth… we should seek to know the sun… as a manifestation of creative power, the carrier of the cosmic plan…”  (J.G. Bennett, British philosopher-scientist – Vol. 1 of the Dramatic Universe, p. 442).

becoming star-struck, literally…

I ran across this a few years ago and was quite “struck” by the implications (although perhaps not intended by the author): “Just like living creatures on Earth, stars are born, change as they age, and die.” from the Illustrated Atlas of the Universe, page 152 – written by Mark A. Garlick (2006)

Maybe we have a lot in common with stars, planets, etc. Our cosmic belonging-ness is , at any rate, part of who we are, and I invite my friends and music fans in Portland, Oregon, to the November 23, 2014 concert, contemplating Solar Flares and other kinds of outbursts, the variety of effects that result, and the hidden forces within stars that bring such things about.

More details are posted at https://davidsalminen.com/2014/11/05/davids-fall-concert-portland-oregon/

David’s fall concert – Portland, Oregon

SOLAR FLARES – AN EXCURSION INTO HIDDEN MEANINGS

3 pm, November 23, 2014

Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave, Portland, Oregon

Map: http://portlandpianocompany.com/contact/

– open to the public – no tickets necessary – no admission charge for this event

– donations to support more presentations of this kind are gratefully appreciated

– for more information on the music & David, and how to purchase CD’s please call: (503) 762-6387 – or email: davidasalminen@yahoo.com

P.S. I’ve been really enjoying the contemplation of solar flares… so many people now seem to be registering some psychological or perhaps even spiritual influences (energetic, at any rate), when we are really “bombarded” by X-ray and other electromagnetic aspects of flares, as we were in late October, 2014. The scientists and scientific websites often talk about the upsetting of digital communications at these times, but as to the effects on living bodies… not so much. So I am looking at the metaphors. I am fascinated, for example, that there is something largely unpredictable going on deep inside the sun which results in spots that are creative in terms of flares and even CME’s. Here’s an informative science site: Coronal Weather Report: CMEs and Flares (Page 1)

our sun NASA-Europe photo- solar-system-NASA site PIA03149_br1

re: the inner process behind my August 17, 2014 concert in Portland, Oregon

The water theme is offering me a chance to see some things about myself and life a little more clearly… I just don’t know how many people share my view of the potential of music to open up perceptions and creative thinking, insight, and so forth… but those are the sorts of things that keep me going, with my impressionistic improvisations. Many years ago, when I started to have some remarkable experiences in the performance of composed music, I got motivated to learn a hundred or more special pieces that I thought had “messages” – but then, little by little, I found that what I heard was not necessarily at all what others heard!

Therefore, little by little, I gave in – to an appreciation of the unique subjectivity that everyone of us has. In that sense everyone is a genius – every person sees things or understands things that no one else does! The “message” of water that I recently happened upon in the Chinese Book of Changes/I Ching – that water “does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions.” … that message has begun to take on a profound significance to me. My hope with this concert is to encourage people to appreciate their own individual and unique “essential nature” !

This August 17 concert is free of charge, by the way (although donations to help defray costs and make more presentations possible are greatly appreciated). Here’s a link to the venue, with all the pertinent info: http://portlandpianocompany.com/press-events/

returning to a sense and feeling of oneself – with “music mantras”

How does one return to oneself, one’s sense & feeling of oneself, during the course of a busy day? I have been experimenting with “music mantras” for quite some time now. Instead of worrying about how to stop a tune that keeps running thru my head (which seems to be a common complaint in these times) I have experimented with intentionally placing a tune into my “mind” first thing in the morning, and allowing it to come up as it will during the day. I’ll run with it for awhile, and then just carry on with my business, whatever that may be. Two of the most effective tunes I’ve used for this are Finnish folk songs I memorized as a child during my early piano lessons. Someday I will have to record my piano versions of these two contrasting Finnish folk tunes, “I love you from the heart” and “I am a singing boy” – they are just marvelous. Another melody – actually a complicated melding of two contrasting themes – that arises often in my consciousness lately, as for instance right when I’m waking up in the morning, is the famous “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” by J.S. Bach. I don’t know why I love these particular tunes so much – but obviously such choices are very personal or idiosyncratic. Here is a recording of the Bach-Busoni version of my beloved “Wachet auf” – by the wise and subtle pianist of a previous generation…  Solomon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnGbzrH5NWs

David’s Spring concert – Sunday, March 30, 2014

DAVID SALMINEN – in concert – cosmic piano improvisations

Experiences in Synchronicity

Sunday, March 30, 2014, 3 pm – 430 pm

Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave. Portland, OR 97205

http://www.portlandpianocompany.com

Donations to help make additional events more feasible are gratefully accepted.

for more information, call 503.762.6387 or visit https://davidsalminen.com/music/

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotatation re synchronicity

“There is a difference between one and another hour of life in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet is there a depth in those brief moments, which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences .  For this reason, the argument, which is always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extaordinary hopes of man, namely, the appeal to experience, is forever invalid and vain. A mightier hope abolishes despair. We give up the past to the objector, and yet we hope… We grant that human life is mean; but how did we find out that it was mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this old discontent? … The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not baulk the very next moment.” (from the essay “The Over-Soul”, published in Emerson’s first Essay series, 1841)

For my part, especially in terms of music, it was extraordinary moments of “authority” that I experienced at performances under special circumstances – both others’ and my own – that began to give me solid data, internally, of the existence of other worlds – or of, shall we say, layers and levels to reality-so-called – that have had a magnificent “subsequent effect”. It is the continuation of that awakening, some 40-odd years ago now, that pushes me forward still to present music-meditation-concerts at the present time. If you’re in or near Portland, I hope you can join us for the pursuit of “Experiences in Synchronicity”  Sunday 3/30/14 at 3 pm, at the Portland Piano Company, Portland, Oregon. Admission is free – donations to support these events are gratefully appreciated.