David Salminen

Remembering Karlheinz Stockhausen

Remembering Karlheinz Stockhausen – the 6th anniversary of his “flight to eternity” was just a couple of weeks ago, and I missed it, but – coincidentally – just last evening I was drawn to some old recordings I happen to have… and ended up listening to “Carre” -composed in 1958/59! And it still sounds very modern – even ahead of modern, to me. What a genius he was! His intentions, in his own words: “This piece tells no story. Every moment can exist for itself. One must leave time if one wants to let this music enter. Most of the changes take place very gently INSIDE the tones. I hope that this music may evoke a little quietude, depth and concentration, the consciousness that we have much time if we let it go, that it is better to come to oneself than to run wild, ‘for the things that happen need someone to happen to, someone must receive them’.”

Amen to that! My own work – my next concert, early in the spring of the New Year – is also an invitation to “leave time”. I am looking to The 2nd Law of Synchronicity… and also for inspiration and structure “INSIDE the tones”.

November 16 in Portland, Oregon: Cosmic Symmetries

COSMIC SYMMETRIES – free fall concert – piano improvisations
David Salminen – Saturday, 3 pm – November 16, 2013

Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave , Portland , OR 97205
http://www.portlandpianocompany.com

Music can be beautiful – that’s certainly one of the things sought in the concert experience. But there are also other benefits associated with the invited serendipity of this kind of concert… flights of fancy without a defining program… an escape from society’s constant reminders of who we are conditioned to be (an escape which can, paradoxically, improve our memories)… and a sense of wholeness, that emerges in the cosmic musical experience like a healing balm, against the ubiquitous modern complaint of feeling scattered.

Salminen’s music “contains the very spark of life, and the listeners catch that spark.” Julia Sopalski, For The Times

for more information, phone: 503.762.6387  – or email: davidasalminen@yahoo.com

the duration of a life

The results of a life-work are tangible in art… but there is something also that lasts, of the work itself, regardless of the result, in the invisible world… potentials build up, even if the particular creator doesn’t get “the credit”. Humanity is one, and one with all life on this planet, for that matter. Something about being around an old tree can awaken a feeling for this in some people, and there are of course many other ways, to awaken our sense of being part of a very old & ongoing project.

a favorite quote about “work” – in honor of the American ‘Labor Day Weekend’ 2013

One of my longtime most favorite quotations concerning work – in honor of the American Labor Day Weekend: In his book, The Masters of Wisdom, J.G. Bennett wrote that… “At the time of the Mongol invasion, the Grand Master [of the Central Asian Sufi’s known as the Khwajagan] was Khwaja Arif Riwgarawi. Riwgara was a village about twenty miles from Bukhara. According to a popular legend Chinghis Khan stopped in Riwgara before beginning the siege of Bukhara. Most of the population had fled, but Khwaja Arif remained and was seen working at a loom of his own invention. Chinghis Khan was impressed by his tranquil demeanor and by the skill with which he worked. He asked through an interpreter for an explanation. Khwaja Arif replied: ‘My outer attention is on my work and my inner attention is on the Truth; I have no time to notice what is happening in the world around me.’ Chinghis Khan was so pleased with this reply that he ordered the inhabitants of Riwgara should be left in peace…” The fate of Bukhara was not so benign: “The siege of Bukhara was over in a week and the Mongols entered the city on the 10^th February 1220. The citadel held out for another twelve days and all the defenders were killed…” In other places, the ability to maintain an inner tranquility in the midst of the hubbub, and while engaged in outer activity, has been described as “solitude in the crowd”. I suspect that having such a skill could even have benefit in today’s world!  So – If any of my friends are experimenting along these lines, I hope they will communicate – we can exchange observations, etc.

The Zone of Avoidance concert – July 21, 2013 – Portland, Oregon

To fellow soundcurrent travelers: I am really looking forward to creating music on July, 21, 2013 and to spending time with other people who can identify with being “a very strange kind of person” – in the spirit and sense of Thomas Merton’s words – seeking to be “deliberately irrelevant”, that is, people who “live with an ingrained irrelevance which is proper” in light of “the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life.” (these quotations come from Thomas Merton’s book ASIAN JOURNAL, copyright 1968 – and I can’t recommend the book highly enough, as a spiritual diary still apropos to our time)

An open invitation to David Salminen’s July 21, 2013 concert:

The Zone of Avoidance

– original piano music – inspired by astronomy –

– riding different waveforms, embracing the whole –

Sunday, 2 pm, July 21, 2013 – Portland Piano Company 

711 SW 14^th Ave in Portland, Oregon 97205  phone 503.775.2480

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=711+SW+14th+Ave.+Portland+97205

Admission is on a “pay what you want” basis. Always evolving, the music David manifests is dedicated toward the harmonious development of all. Please share this invitation with friends.

The “Zone of Avoidance” – or ZoA – is an astronomy term coined by the great scientist Edwin Hubble, after whom NASA’s famous & awe-inspiring space-based Hubble telescope is named. For many years, optical astronomers avoided looking into or across our Milky Way’s galactic equator, because of the obscuring effects of interstellar dust. Efforts were better spent looking elsewhere – anywhere else – than directly across the galaxy and into the ZoA! http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/Z/Zone+Of+Avoidance

a short synopsis of a dream I had about a year ago

I’d gone into a café where live music was playing, hoping to slip in anonymously. As I sat down, I was recognized by the musician who was playing, and invited to play music for awhile there myself. But for some reason I declined and left – and discovered that I’d parked in a traffic lane (somehow I’d not noticed, before heading into the café), and that my car had been towed! Next, I was just starting to ask myself about alternative ways to get home, when I awoke from the dream. In my waking re-cognition of the dream that morning, it seemed to me that I need to be more aware of where I choose to go and be, and to be more clear about parking in the parking lot, and to be more willing to enter café’s through the front door, and to not be so shy about announcing who I am – nor so shy about sharing what I do.