One Hand
Clapping:
The Taoe of Music
WholeArts and
The Psychic Internet is proud to present the
"Preface" and "Part One" of this
remarkable book by Daniel d'Quincy. "One Hand
Clapping: The Tao of Music," originally published by
WholeArts in 1991, is a book-length essay on the
performance of music from the perspective of Eastern
philosophy and religion. Mr. d'Quincy is a noted
composer, musician, author, inventor, educator, speaker,
and photographer. Please visit his unique music sites at WholeArts: syNThony, and the WholeArts Online Music Conservatory.
Page 34
Most of us have
no refuge in the comforting Christian myths of
resurrection and selective ravishment. No indisputable
evidence supports these fairy tales, and those who
actually believe in them seem none too bright or
educated. Our children learn science in their schools,
not theology. But in current scientific forecasts of the
future, we are no better off. Here we have the fearfully
haunting specter of entropy. In every day terms, this
means that everything is always and constantly tending to
fall apart, and it is everything we can do to hold it
together. Ultimately, entropy means that we see the
Universe itself winding out its days pointlessly like the
hands of clock. Eventually no force will remain to lift
the dumb weights that drive the mechanism’s weary
pendulum, and life will end, not with a bang, and not
with a whimper, but with a last tick-tock.
In a world like
this, fraught with dismal realities, freighted with
insuperable practical and moral responsibilities, one
cannot afford to assume a vague or flippant attitude
toward the established boundaries. Poetry has its place
as a decoration of life, but “reality” is
thought to be very prosaic indeed. Life is hard, and so
are “things” - and we must be tough to confront
them, stiff upper lip. The lines that are drawn by our
fathers are for all time, and not to be questioned. We
try to be tolerant, but really we feel that “There
is a right way and a wrong way to do everything.”
The “Marriage Protection Amendment” seems not a
bit superfluous to most of us. Life being subject to a
million contingencies, we may have but one chance to
establish our allegiance to right and good. Everything
can be lost in a moment to the fickle, and usually
lustful, whims of a wavering judgment. Besides, life for
us is too short. Archbishop Usher described a Universe
not quite six thousand years old.[1] The Hindus
have their kalpas, lasting on the average about
15,998,000 years, and they have endless lifetimes in this
kalpa and an infinite number of future kalpas
to make themselves, as the Christians say, “right
with God.” But for us, not a single second is to be
lost. Time waits for no one. With exercise and vitamins,
and the best medicine that money can buy, we work
frantically at extending our lifetimes, which is happily
increasing still in precious yearly increments. We sleep
fewer and fewer hours to get more done. Productivity is
the most sublime of our virtues. And at all times we are
striving with our distinctions. We must be right, or
repent. Satan tempts us into wrong at our own individual
and lonely peril. Constant vigilance is required.
Milton’s Paradise is a fortress.
But wait! This is
improbably grim. Life can’t possibly survive under
such pressures in such a scheme of things. Indeed, under
the influence of this diseased attitude toward life, we
seem to be assuring that it won’t survive. Surely,
there must be an alternative view of things. Let’s
begin again.
In strictly
experiential terms, isn’t the above drawing as much
a picture of two faces kissing as it is a picture of a
flower vase?[2] But if this is true, then the reality in
this case may be really quite other than what we have
supposed that God intends. One after all has to
acknowledge the “stubborn facts.” It cannot be
disputed that what one sees in this drawing depends on
how one looks at it. This is apparently what Shakespeare
had in mind when he made Hamlet say, “Nothing is
good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Even
considering this possibility tends to relieve the
pressure slightly, and that can’t be all bad.
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