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 52
The Ego defines
each of us in opposition to our surroundings, while the
Self incorporates us within the totality of things, for
the human being is nothing apart from her physical, and
also the social, environment. For example, the words we
use are social constructs. These things have historical
dimensions. Northrop Frye’s Order of Words[1] leads us on to contemplate an Order of
Ideas. Thus, our thinking as it actually manifests in
reality is impossible to conceive outside of the
historical and cultural order of thought that conditions
it, any given idea being not simply an absolute archetype
of the mind, but a dated product of our collective human
mental and spiritual evolution. In just the same way, we
cannot conceive of ourselves outside of our political
economy. The American citizen’s insistence that his
government’s tax surplus is “my money” is
surpassing foolishness and farce.
We in the West
are given to mechanical metaphors for ourselves, but why
do always choose robotic contraptions or computers, with
all their parts and plumbing, pulleys and levers,
switches, and cable connections? And if we simply must
use a mechanical metaphor, why not instead try something
like the radio receiver, which of course is nothing
without the radio transmitter at a distance and the
content that it transmits invisibly and intangibly over
the airwaves.[2] Such a metaphor would at least facilitate a
description of the kinds of invisible emanations to which
we as musicians may have perhaps a particular
sensitivity. Indeed, we can bypass the mechanical
metaphor entirely, including the radio, and suggest
instead a reality that is essentially musical and
instrumental. Since the time of the Greeks, at least,
musicians have been describing the peculiar way in which
musical tones operate on the human organism. Thus, Plato
hoped to tune human nature to specific vibrations. He
deplored the indolent effects of the Ionian and Lydian
Modes, and favored the Dorian and Phrygian Modes, which
were, respectively, “the strain of necessity and the
strain of freedom.” Similarly, Confucius said that
“the best way to improve manners and customs is to
pay attention to the composition of the music played in
the country.”
In the latest
developments in science, physicists are talking about
vibrating strings at the most fundamental level of
existence. We might easily speculate in a similar vein
that all of life depends on a biological
“tuning” to specific frequencies. Our DNA
sequences are sufficiently string-like for us to imagine
that they resonate to specific frequencies. The miniscule
difference between the shape of our string and the shape
of the chimp’s means that we are able to tune into
the human frequency rather than the simian frequency. The
mechanical supposition of one-to-one correspondences
between gene sequences and specific diseases is but the
claptrap of marketing in securities for biotech
corporations. The actual process is much more like music,
which is based on the constant interaction of shifting
harmonic resonances. It may be some time before this can
be demonstrated on the biological level, but on the
social level of experience, it is almost too easy to see
how the human being can be “tuned” to a great
variety of frequencies. People today debate whether or
not violence on television has an effect on children just
in the same way that earlier generations argued if filth
and contamination had something to do with disease. But
this is nothing compared with the much more serious way
in which politicians have learned to “tune”
their constituencies to the corrupt vibrations of
professional and salaried demagoguery.
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