Music only for myself.
Lately I've been losing myself practicing piano. I think, I should be doing this ten hours a day, not laboring over a Rhino model in studio, sipping my third Venti Black Eye of the night and hating myself for not having any good ideas. But then I realized that if I was forced to fulfill a certain quota for music every day, I would probably begin to think of it as more of a burden than an invaluable source of play and pleasure, as things currently stand.
The relationship between architecture and music, for me at least, is similar to the one between system and facade in modern construction. No longer are bearing walls my only option in design, a system limited in spatial aesthetics because it also has to dutifully hold up the building. I can dump all of my formal educational and moral loads onto the disciplined framework that is architectural education...so that I can freely pursue music as if it were a free plan/facade on a modern building. Nobody cares if you didn't follow the state building code in music. There is no Code in music. Code is one of the most unforgiving things ever, because it is meant to protect those that hold little power by arbitrarily constructing a line of acceptable behavior for the others. And if the boundaries are constructed with little thought and lots of stupidity (they often go together), then you're fucked. In comparison, music doesn't have to make the world better. Music takes no responsibility for the future. Music doesn't have to bear the weight of my existence, neither financially nor psychologically, and I dear hope not physically. Music is detached from, yet still perceivable by others!
"Humans have their feet planted into the Earth and their heads in the heavens," said my Building Systems professor in his last lecture. In the same way, I am grateful to architecture for grounding me, for producing me thus far in order that I can lust for endless possibilities in the musical heavens, in order that I can converse with deceased white male composers through the ethereal medium of sound. So let it be that I have to leave every practice desperately wishing that I had played my pieces just one more time, even if my fingers are on the verge of contracting tendonitis. When I crawl out from the nightmarish practice rooms into the piercing sun-bleached quad, I am at ease with the knowledge that the Crouse dungeons, in all of their musky, wooden, dirty, cacophonous glory, will always be the welcoming womb of engagement for me and my music. Those are the bedchambers for a psychedelic lover that is everywhere and nowhere, a lover created by and existing only within myself.
The relationship between architecture and music, for me at least, is similar to the one between system and facade in modern construction. No longer are bearing walls my only option in design, a system limited in spatial aesthetics because it also has to dutifully hold up the building. I can dump all of my formal educational and moral loads onto the disciplined framework that is architectural education...so that I can freely pursue music as if it were a free plan/facade on a modern building. Nobody cares if you didn't follow the state building code in music. There is no Code in music. Code is one of the most unforgiving things ever, because it is meant to protect those that hold little power by arbitrarily constructing a line of acceptable behavior for the others. And if the boundaries are constructed with little thought and lots of stupidity (they often go together), then you're fucked. In comparison, music doesn't have to make the world better. Music takes no responsibility for the future. Music doesn't have to bear the weight of my existence, neither financially nor psychologically, and I dear hope not physically. Music is detached from, yet still perceivable by others!
"Humans have their feet planted into the Earth and their heads in the heavens," said my Building Systems professor in his last lecture. In the same way, I am grateful to architecture for grounding me, for producing me thus far in order that I can lust for endless possibilities in the musical heavens, in order that I can converse with deceased white male composers through the ethereal medium of sound. So let it be that I have to leave every practice desperately wishing that I had played my pieces just one more time, even if my fingers are on the verge of contracting tendonitis. When I crawl out from the nightmarish practice rooms into the piercing sun-bleached quad, I am at ease with the knowledge that the Crouse dungeons, in all of their musky, wooden, dirty, cacophonous glory, will always be the welcoming womb of engagement for me and my music. Those are the bedchambers for a psychedelic lover that is everywhere and nowhere, a lover created by and existing only within myself.
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