So we are full into the political season and sometimes I get tired of reading political utterances because they all are spoken with such absoluteness. As though everyone is a preacher that God has touched. Sometimes I get tired of it.
So it was surprising to find this quote by the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould who himself was able to clearly articulate some of the knottiest and most systematized thought in music:
“The trouble begins when we start to be so impressed by the strategies of our systematized thought that we forget that it does relate to an obverse, that it is hewn from negation, that it is but very small security against the void of negation which surrounds it. And when that happens, when we forget these things, all sorts of mechanical failures begin to disrupt the functions of the human personality. When people who practice an art like music become captives of those positive assumptions of system, when they forget to credit that happening against negation which system is, and when they become disrespectful of the immensity of negation compared to system — then they put themselves out of reach of that replenishment of invention upon which creative ideas depend, because invention is, in fact, a cautious dipping into the negation that lies outside system from a position firmly ensconced in system.”
Doug here again: I wouldn’t leave you without some music. Here is Gould performing Contrapuncti 1 and 4 (theme inverted, or turned upside down) from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of Fugue. This recording made not too long before Gould died in 1981.
H. Doug Matsuoka etcetera 