In the ancient Chinese classic, the “I Ching”, the first 2 symbols are “Heaven” and “Earth”. The third in the sequence, “Zhun”, is sometimes translated as “Beginning”, and it is said that when Heaven and Earth come into play, “myriad beings are produced”.

Today I would like to explore the concept of co-creation. That is, what is the value of an audience, if any? Is creativity enough in and of itself, or does it need to be in some way validated or galvanized by an audience? And, if so, what might this say about the value of art in the context of popularity, accessibility, and pallatibility? Could we even go further and say that the “magic” only happens when the artist brings the energy of her art to the table and the audient acts as some kind of catalytic alchemical instrument transforming that energy into something more than it was before?

I am not an expert in alchemy, nor can I lay great claim to being anything more than an aficionado of concepts around energy transformation, social change, psychology, and high art. However, I must say that something rings true to me when I think of co-creation in the light of an alchemical metaphor despite the baggage that language carries. The creator needs the audience just as much as the audience needs the creator. Why?

The process of creativity is mysterious. At its very root it is more than simple recombination of existing elements – that would be mere collage. In an ideal sense, creativity brings something quite new into the world, though it may be made up of previously worked materials. I am thinking here of something like the music of Jon Hassell, in whose music one can hear a number of influences and elements of readily definable genres or cultures. And yet, in its totality it is really quite unlike anything that came before: it is truly creative, truly inspired, truly a breathing thing, a force that brings separate worlds together on multiple levels.

To clumsily use a quasi-alchemical turn of phrase: a part of the creative process can be said to happen “behind the veil”. To ground that in more contemporary lingo, it does not happen in the “alert, problem solving mode of consciousness”. In and of itself this is a wonderful thing, marvellous to contemplate and fascinating to turn in the mind. However, it is a process working only in one world, so to speak. The bridge has not yet been built, and perhaps this is where The Observer comes in.

The Observer, or The Listener, has both feet metaphorically planted in the material world, “in front of the veil”. He is not presented so much with the mystery of creation as with the material shell of that mystery, now made manifest.

Perhaps we could think of a piece of art as hanging in space and it can be seen from both sides. On the one side we have The Artist, and on the other, The Observer. In a less tangible way, music can work the same way: it can be experienced from both sides.

When The Listener is moved by what he hears, something magical has happened. The Artist has become an alchemist, offering real and possibly measurable change to the world, but The Listener was the required catalyst or vehicle that allowed this magic to “be made flesh”. From behind the veil to in front of the veil, 2 worlds are bridged for a few moments. Anyone who has been moved by a work of art knows the feeling of this: very hard to describe but unmistakable.

The 4^th character of the I Ching is sometimes translated as “Childhood”, and the 5^th “Needing”. How might these relate to the question of co-creation? Hmmmm.

I want to come at this topic with a comparison that some people may find uncomfortable because of some of the associations that are evoked. I would just ask that the reader take these words at face value and treat them almost like math variables: just symbols that carry an arbitrary meaning for a few moments while a concept is explored.

Here is the chiasmus: shaman is to spiritual as priest is to religion.

Holding that comparison in mind, I return to the question: what is the role of the artist in society?

For the past few years, I have subscribed to the idea of “the artist as shaman”. That is, the artist is the tribe member that lives outside the normal experience of daily life and, whether due to natural talent, hard work, the help of psychedelics, or just lunacy, explores inner worlds which “ordinary” people do not. It is the journey to “that undiscovered country from which no one returns unchanged”.

The shaman undertakes this journey with the understanding that she will return and share as much of that journey with the tribe as possible. That is, the “wisdom” won in the journey becomes a gift to the tribe in the personhood of the shaman. The price of the journey is to become changed in a way that never allows her to fully rejoin society: to have a “job”, to operate comfortably with the status quo, to live with the violence of play become law.

Critically, in the shamanistic system there is no “middle man” between the person who has undertaken the journey and the individual or tribe interacting with the shaman.

The shaman stands outside the society, paying the price of not belonging in order to be able to say: “I see us from the outside”, “I see the system for what it is”, “I take on the terror for the prize of knowing, but the knowing is non-verbal, and the agreement is that I will try to express the knowing to you, but I won’t be able to do it with language”, “this is Us”.

And here is a major barrier to the shaman/tribesperson relationship: the experience is ineffable and can never really be verbally conveyed. The message can really only be conveyed in the embodiment of the shaman.

In this way of looking at it, the artist has a tool for communicating that the shaman may not, and it is the language of art. It is the non-verbal record of the inner experience, the inner journey, that the artist shaman has undertaken. The resulting painting is the receipt of the experience, the signifier, the symbol which is shared with the society at large.

I believe it’s important that there not be a language of judgement around this. That is, the shaman is neither “better” nor “worse” than others. Just profoundly different. I like to see this in a way that makes the role played by the artist/shaman as important to the culture as the role of a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, a mother. It is a role that has value, but only if the society can see the value…which is where the priests come in.

In this comparison, the priest becomes a middle man between the shaman and the farmer. The priest is an entertainer, a gatekeeper, a signifier of class distinction, and the social representative of the language of judgement.

As I began this entry, I would like to finish it: the comparison may limp (omnis comparatio claudicat), but I believe there’s something worthwhile in the exercise of exploring the equation. I can do nothing but to leave it to the individual to determine whether they prefer priests or shamans, or which of the two roles a given artist chooses to inhabit.

Brief Eye Contact With the Shaman

By establishing deadlines, even artificial ones, the act of creation is given a higher priority in the hierarchy of everyday activities. Re-prioritizing daily tasks is often difficult at first, but becomes easier over the Thirty Days. The aim is to get something made by the end of the day. It may not be your best work, but it will give you experience with re-organizing your life to make creating art a priority.

I have participated in the project 8 times, and each time I’m reminded of the old adage “learn to do by doing”. Like many people, I grew up with a misconception about creativity and it’s strongly associated and misunderstood word, “inspiration”. The idea I had was that the great artists were inspired first and simply excreted their work in near perfect form. Their frequent craziness (insanity) allowed them to “get out of the way” and their art took over, such that it seemed they almost unconsciously made their great work.

Over time, this idea lost its romanticism, but there was an aspect which I did not really let go of easily: that inspiration came before work. I spent a lot of time bemoaning the fact that I did not just walk down the street and find myself struck by lightning that impelled me to race home and spend 24 hours straight downloading the muse.

Then came the great lesson of 30 Days: that in fact this inspiration/work relationship is entirely backwards. At least for me, the work has to be started first, the inspiration comes after that. For me, the hardest part has always been just turning on the equipment. In further research into the lives of artists and great thinkers, this theme has been a recurring one without fail. Inspiration is a result of work, and we are able to approach inspiration when we give to the process. My personal revelation here was that inspiration is really always there, the mistake is to expect it to descend towards us when the opportunity is always there to pull ourselves up towards it.

It may not work for everyone, but it’s a personal mythology I’ve come to be comfortable with and value tremendously in my creative endeavours.

Are you interested in trying 30 Days? Stay tuned to the website, it’s free to sign up, there’s a strong comradery, and who knows, you may find yourself inspired.

My associative mind couldn’t help but think of two quotes that rang so true for me that years later they still resonate in my self-talk:

…it is not finished when there is nothing more that you can add, it is finished when there is nothing more you can take away.

And

…a great poem is never finished, it is merely abandoned.

Having just typed out these two quotes, I can’t help but remember Robert Fripp talking about the difference between an ending, a finish, and a completion (I attended a Guitar Craft experience many years ago).

The question of “when is it done” is of particular interest in the context of artistic endeavour, since it is often due to a confusion around where the value is in art. It is a confusion of which I am often guilty myself, and have to be vigilant to remind myself away from. It is this: the painting that you see hanging on the wall is not the object of value. It is a receipt (I must tip my hat to Keith Ikeda-Barry for coming up with that word in this context). It is the receipt of your experience. Great art is always co-creative in some way, and the experience of being involved in that creation is the value. That you are able to look again upon the face of that partner is no different from looking through your wallet to see a receipt for that marvellous meal you had with a beautiful woman yesterday evening, the sparkling glasses, the blazing eyes, the smells, the textures, the feeling of aliveness. The paper in your hand is merely proof you were there, a beautiful but dead “proof of life”.

However, a funny thing happens when you view that receipt, because it is the signifier, not the signified, and just looking at the receipt changes the experience again. This is reminiscent of The Heisenberg Principle, where the mere act of observation changes a thing, making the notion of objective observation or even of remembering somewhat of a philosophical minefield.

And yet it is precisely this minefield that puts into a certain perspective the power of good art, because in being co-creative, it offers an invitation to be “in the moment”, to participate in creation in a way that can seem to be outside of linear time. Any ego that gets associated with this is completely beside the point, and belongs in the “receipt” category, for whether the signature at the bottom of the page says “van Gogh” or “van Beethoven” is simply proof of attendance. The quality of the experience is in your hands, in your eyes, in your ears, in your presence and in how much of these things you dare to bring to the moment.

Returning to the opening question, then, when is it done? Don’t look to the receipt to tell you. Tear it up, burn it as if it carried the worst virus. “It” isn’t there, because “It” flows for but a millisecond through the receipt. “It” is done when the goosebumps have come and gone until the next time you can run fast enough to catch up to the next one.

After the rehearsal I noticed a copy of Daniel Lanois’ book “Soul Mining”. Liam pointed out an interesting passage which I can’t quote verbatim, but it had to do with the reasons for why Lanois pursued certain skills, and why he pursued certain beauty. The upshot was that in many cases there was no real “reason” for it, no practical goal, no end “use” for that skill. Rather, it was a pursuit that was focused on beauty for the sake of beauty, and of the inherent enjoyment (I would invite the reader to see JG Bennett’s thoughts on Enjoyment and Pleasure).

This seemed significant, because it came from a time well before Daniel Lanois was famous, and before his meetings with Brian Eno. In other words, these were activities done without prior knowledge of their usefulness, their practicality, and even the possibility of ever using them again.

On my way home from the rehearsal, I thought about this and suddenly the image of the life of children came to mind. I suddenly realized that in fact children have exactly this ability – to play for the sake of playing. Robert Fripp once commented that working with Brian Eno always involved a sense of play. If it’s true that this is a characteristic which children have, it’s also true that somehow or another it is trained out of them, and therefore out of us. Thinking about that can produce a sense of resentment or loss, as if we’ve been hard done by society. And yet there’s an opportunity for self reflection here, and even self forgiveness for agreeing to these rules, agreeing to these limitations.

I often heard phrases like “virtue is its own reward” in my earlier days, and when I hear them now I race through them thinking I know what they mean. And yet, when I reflect on my decisions, both artistically and morally, I can’t escape the feeling that I rush it all.

What an incredible presentiment this is, though: a true opportunity to breathe deeply, stop the practicality censor, and just produce beauty for the sake of beauty. Enjoy the music for the simple sake of enjoying it. Touch the guitar just because it is sensual to hold it.

Could it be that a phrase like “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” in this case can actually point the way to a much more free and playful way of being? Abandon the hope for acknowledgement, for utility, for credit, for a masterpiece. Just. Play. Just. Beauty.

PS for those who are interested, these are a fascinating set of interviews with Daniel Lanois

In this discussion, a story came up around a certain well known jazz piano player who is quoted as saying “we can say nothing if our heart isn’t beating, and it’s as far from a drum machine as anything can be”.

Another topic that came up was the frequent criticism of Western tuning, which is something often heard in alternative, healing, and “spiritual” music circles, especially among those who have converted to a more “Eastern” philosophy on music.

Those who are critical of Western tuning (by which I assume they mean equal temperament) don’t appear to understand what makes it valuable, and while I don’t intend to make this post about the relative merits of Eastern and Western methods of tuning, this sort of critique has grown really tired for me. I much more respect the individual that can dance between those polarities, and operate equally freely in either one. So many “enlightened” individuals have made a career for themselves by planting their feet and criticizing what they don’t understand. It is certainly important to know what I am good at, and what I have committed my practice to: that is where my house is built. But if I can’t step off my property or even look over the fence with a sense of curiosity and wonder, and openness to new ways of seeing truth, then my house is a prison.

I have also come to see statements like “as far from a heart beat as anything” as being theatrical, and rather unenlightened. It’s a binary statement that seeks self validation only by invalidating the opposite. It can only exist because it invokes it’s evil twin. It does not say “I am”, it only says “I am not that”. Despite the cleverly scripted bite at technology, it sounds rather more like music must serve us, rather than we the music.

Music is bigger than that. It is not owned by us. It is not made for us. It is not a reward for “joining the club”. We are able to participate in it, but we are not it. We don’t really “create” it as much as we are able to borrow it, to take a piece of it and work with it for a short space of time – our little creation is the shell of an ineffable, un-holdable, un-understandable, un-hearable “AM”. Anything else is our ego demanding to have its existence acknowledged.

Does this mean we should not even approach music or creativity? Of course not. The fact that we’re able to participate and interact with it at all is one of the most wonderful and truly beautiful things we can do. But to think that we can ever come to the point where we grasp it in its infinity: no, that is the path towards stagnation and dictatorship. Does this mean we should play a bit of everything and stretch ourselves to every corner of the genre map? This is a tricky question, to which I’m inclined to say “no”. I do feel there is merit in mastery of a certain area. But let’s not confuse discipline and dictatorship: mastery is the domain of the humble, not the finished.

This compels me to be clear about something I mentioned in my previous post: the “human being” is not the valuable part of the musical experience. Whether a machine or a human plays a part is inconsequential from the point of view of music. The value in the act of doing, however, is for the doer. The value in listening is for the individual engaged in the act of listening, and no one else. That is, the payoff in participating with music is owned wholly by the individual involved. A very lucky and hard working few can do it as a group. It is one of the few things in life we can truly be capable of owning. Whether we choose to participate or not is our freedom, and surely this is the birthright of any intelligent being.

PS A special thank you to David Collins for his invaluable contributions to the discussion, including but not limited to this quote.

I watched 2 interesting documentaries recently, and on further reflection I realized there was a factor connecting them which was very important to me.

The first documentary was about the search for Artificial Intelligence. This is an area in which I’ve been interested for a long time, and I’ve referred to it in different terminology in a previous post. I’m personally quite certain that AI will become a fact and that in many ways AI will rival and surpass what is commonly supposed to be “human intelligence”. I find the process to be both thrilling and terrifying. After a lot of personal research, I tend to agree with the notion that intelligence is something that we do not “possess” but rather that “it possesses us” (see JG Bennett on Energies or Ken Wilber for much more lucid explanations on this). Another way to say it is, we are within Intelligence, rather than intelligence being within us.

The second documentary was about Richard Wagner, the infamous Teutonic composer who is often touted as being an opener of the way to many forms of modern music. In liking this documentary to Facebook, the inevitable controversy about Wagner’s anti-Semitism arose. It’s an area I feel profoundly uncomfortable with, and yet it spotlights an extremely important question – I will post a quote from my response to a friend’s comment:

“…regarding Wagner: I think that’s what gives value to this program. It’s the incongruity between the personal flaws and the music on the other side of it. That is, I don’t think it can be suggested that Wagner created this music *because* of his rank beliefs. This is where the last 30 seconds of Stephen Fry’s presentation becomes so important. It’s a huge question, because it really asks something critical about human endeavour, not just art: what do we own? what is us? is there a part of it isn’t us? and, if so, what is it? is it nameable (I tried to touch on this in a blog post: http://lascaux21.com/40/art-and-language/. That last 30 seconds of the video made it worth watching for me, and I don’t feel it’s an easy question. But it is a good one…”

So, the question: what part of creative endeavour, i.e. art, “belongs” to us? When we create art, or are in any way creative, is it the human being bringing into existence something totally new? Is it just bringing to light something that has always existed? Is art creating us? Or is it some kind of combination of these things?

To approach the question from a different angle: could an AI create art that had “value”? If that question seems strange, I offer a thought experiment: let’s say an artist had created a visual work, and you saw it being stepped on in the street as people mistook it for a piece of waste paper. Would this cause discomfort to you? Could there be a point where an AI could produce something creative that would cause a similar sense of discomfort in a human being observing the work being stepped on?

Another thought experiment: what if you were to listen to a piece of music that was powerfully moving, so much so that it brought tears to your eyes. And, afterwards, you were to find out that this piece of music had been created by an AI? What about the experience would change? As a quick interjection, there is a fascinating moment in the AI documentary that is worth a look – watch for the blonde woman’s reaction. That moment notwithstanding, what if the creativity, profundity, effectiveness, and even perceived value of such a thing was more than a human being’s efforts?

I stated earlier that I believe AI’s would eventually rival and surpass human intelligence. It may be “creative” in a very real and important sense. If there is other intelligent life in the universe, I believe it too will be creative and have “art” and all the forms of creativity we do.

So what? Will the AI make a human redundant? From some points of view, the answer may very well be yes. But there is an aspect of the question that I find is incredibly important, which is that in creating music, art, or anything creative, it is the individual experience that still counts for the individual. That is, there is a joy or thrill in creativity that can be experienced and owned, and for the human being, that is the value. In many ways, the art itself is quite disposable (we aren’t all going to have the longevity of a van Gogh, or of Wagner, nor even a Lady Gaga), but we can own the experience of the creativity both in the so-called moment of creation and for the length of our lives. To paraphrase Keith Ikeda-Barry, “the painting is the receipt of the creative experience”.

To start, a quick note on pronunciation, as incredibly even some of my French speaking friends mispronounce it. The sound of the word is “lass + koh” (as in “co-operation”).

I was about 20 years old when I first came up with this moniker. I had grown up in Germany where my parents had a Time Life book set called “The Emergence of Man”. From a very early age I can remember being fascinated by early humans, and I was apparently known for showing up at friends’ houses saying “let’s go play Australopithecus!” Later in life, in the very early days of the internet, I needed a nickname for an early email address – “lascaux21” spontaneously presented itself.

The “Lascaux” part refers to the famous cave paintings of Lascaux in France. There is still some debate as to the true age of these paintings, and even more debate on what they represent and why they were made.

In a future posting, I would like to talk about “what is art?”, or “does art have value?” What strikes me about the cave paintings of Lascaux is that from the point of view of daily life in this ancient era, the paintings don’t seem to serve any practical purpose – they don’t seem to be a manual to help you hunt, they don’t magically make food appear, they don’t seem to be plans for making a better atlatl. This is what is so amazing: the paintings are a pure expression of an inner life that has been stimulated by events in the material world. They are among the first signs of the self reflection of a self-contained intelligence. The material pool had existed for 4 billion years, and finally a mind looked and saw something reflected on the surface.

Across thousands of years, the significance of this place in its highly magical and charged form still resonates. We don’t know the individuals: a sort of signature was left by blowing paint over an outstretched hand, but we can’t read it as a name like we can “Rembrandt” or “Hasegawa Tōhaku”. Somehow because of and in spite of this, the work stands out as a gift uncluttered by ego or ambition. The work is functionally anonymous and consciously or unconsciously given to the ages. It does its work without claim to fame or demand for recognition. No one would “like” it on Facebook, no awards given. In fact, very few, and maybe none, other people would see it.

The “21″ in LASCAUX21 refers to the 21st century, which is the era in which I find myself. 20,000 years of linear time separates me from the man or woman crawling sometimes tens or hundreds of metres into a dark cave with nothing but a torch, some charcoal, and ochre because of something that burned inside and compelled external expression. From impression to expression – a cyclic link between two entirely different worlds made real. JG Bennett called it the creation of Adam. Carl Sagan called (human) intelligence the universe’s way of coming to know itself.

So, for me, this particular combination of cells, bones, neurons, and experiences called “Tim Gerwing”, LASCAUX21 is a way of reminding myself of my mission: to connect worlds, to be conscious, to know itself.

Here is how it unfolded:

“Monophony” is a term used to describe music that is a melody only, without  accompaniment. Sometimes, so-called “Eastern” music is classified in this way because it generally has a very linear structure, focusing heavily on a single melody. Often this kind of music includes highly sophisticated forms of melodic ornamentation and rhythmic structures. This kind of music is very often vocal and highly poetic, or if played on an instrument, it references a vocal style quite heavily. Arabic and Indian music are often cited as strong examples of this.

“Polyphony” refers to music where a melody is accompanied by a harmonic instrument or orchestra, and specifically to music where each note or phrase of a melody is given a chordal context. Most Western music is classifiable as polyphonic in some way or another.

A sub-category of polyphony is “counterpoint”, where more than 1 melody is performed at the same time. The melodies are composed in such a way that they constantly complement each other in a harmonically pleasing way. The classic example of this in the Western world might be fugues of JS Bach, or the choral construction of something like Beethoven’s vocal quartet from the 9th Symphony. Dixieland would be another notable example – simultaneous melodic improvisation.

Most people are able to listen to 2 part counterpoint, that is music with 2 independent voices, without any difficulty. With training, most are able to listen to, play, or appreciate 3 and 4 part harmony. It seems that beyond this, normal human listening becomes strained and the music stops being pleasing. In some ways this marks a transition from “music” to “noise”.

Consider now the idea of white noise. This is the sound that is heard between the stations on a radio, or on a TV channel that was snowy. Basically, white noise is a sound that contains every frequency within the range of human hearing in equal amounts. Pink noise and brown noise are interesting variants of this. The sounds of white, pink, and brown noise can actually be quite pleasing.

Could it be that adding layers of melody over and over would eventually produce a sort of white/pink/brown noise? That is, there would be so much audio information that eventually all frequencies would be represented equally?

Holding these ideas in mind, a very entertaining image emerged: if human intelligence can accommodate up to 4 parts of independent musical information, what would it be like to be an intelligence that could hear, make sense of, and enjoy 20 voices? 100? 1000? a million? billions? Not just hearing the pleasing result of the noise in totality, but the individual music within each voice. It would be like looking at a tree and in addition to seeing “TREE”, also seeing the individual character and beauty of every single leaf simultaneously…every cell in a flower simultaneously…every atom…every star.

However, shortly after hearing the word “useless” in my mind, a guitar line from Fripp shifted my feeling – amidst the rather static bounce of the background, Fripp plays an incredibly warm phrase. Warm as in humanly warm, affectionate, sensual. For an instant, I found myself anthropomorphizing the sense of what it would mean to be a star, in particular a “female” one. My mind suddenly cast back to reading “Whipping Star” and “The Dosadi Experiment” by Frank Herbert, where stars were given quite distinct personalities and voices (hello Fanny Mae).

Then, a more rational voice kicked in saying this was ridiculous: stars don’t have human attributes. If, and it’s a big if, they have anything approaching a consciousness it would certainly be vastly beyond what a human being is capable of even beginning to imagine.

And then, a third voice: in this thought experiment, there was a quantizing that happened through the music and my feeling. I might use a word like “blueberry” to describe a flavour in a wine whose flavour is highly complex and ultimately quite unspeakable. And yet, the “blueberry” description performs a service from the point of view of allowing the surface analytical self to create a handle on the experience.

On one hand, this is counter-productive – I’ve spoken before about the quantizing of real experience by language. Certain schools of contemplation heavily discourage the naming of experiences.

On the other hand, this music was also quantizing the imaginary consciousness of a star, a consciousness I couldn’t possibly contain in any real sense, and yet the music allowed me to wordlessly explore the inner experience. More importantly, it allowed me to do so in a way that words could not: directly affectionately, warmly, sensually.

This, for me, is the great value in music. It is also the great value of so-called “ambient” music. Whereas much music allows the listener to explore the emotional spaces involved in the human experience, ambient music invites a broader range of experience: what would it be like to be a star, to be wind, to be a scientific concept, to be just a vibration in space. It is an invitation that I have always welcomed, if sometimes with lazy resistance and judgement, and always come out the richer for.