October Notes - 2024
John Coltrane's "Circle" linking Jazz to Math and Physics.
My effort to understand the experience that set off my current body of work has landed me in the lap of John Coltrane.
My experience was that while watching Nick Hetko, a jazz musician, play, I saw the band, then the audience, and ultimately myself burst into colorful pixilated dots, like floating dust motes. I entered that space and felt all time existing at the same time, and everything being part of everything else, and I had a sense of tremendous well-being. I also felt that there was a "thing apart", which I believe is our consciousness, which could observe what I was experiencing. PS I was not on drugs.
I wanted to know what caused this experience. I thought that physics might explain it. Since jazz was causal to my experience, when I found Stephon Alexander’s, “The Jazz of Physics”, I hoped that it would explain this.
Several things he said about Coltrane seemed germane:
Coltrane believed that the complexity of the cosmos flows into the actions of humans, and he practiced endless hours to be a conduit of this cosmic force.
If one of the fundamental functions of the universe, as I’ve argued, is to improvise its structure, perhaps when Coltrane improvises, he is doing what the universe does, and what the universe did was to create a structure that would come to know the universe itself.
I think my experience may be where neuroscience meets physics meets jazz. If the jazz musician becomes "a conduit of the cosmic force," then could it be when that force acts on us, we can experience all the elements of that force in a neurological way? See more my initial experience HERE More about Coltrane’s diagram HERE
Pieces by Coltrane often linked to the diagram: GIANT STEPS A LOVE SUPREME COSMOS
My question moving forward is, as an artist, can I be a conduit of the “cosmic force” and induce in others the experience I had at the Jazz concert?
CURRENT EXHIBITION : THE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, ELLIO FINE ARTS, HOUSTON, TEXAS
HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: HILMA AF KLINT AND KANDINSKY
For a long time, Kandinsky has been credited with the creation of abstract art, but then we learned about Hilma af Klint, the Swedish artist and mystic, whose abstract works preceded Kandinsky.
What the two share in common is a desire to render on canvas that which is invisible -- music and spirit. Kandinsky tried to make a direct correlation to music with lots of made up theory. For more check out this blog post HERE.
HILMA AF KLINT
KANDINSKY, "Contrasting Sounds"
IN THE JOURNALS: VAN GOGH’S STARRY NIGHT
‘The Starry Night’ Accurately Depicts a Scientific Theory That Wasn’t Described Until Years After van Gogh’s Death. HERE
FROM THE LIBRARY : STEPHON ALEXANDER - THE JAZZ OF PHYSICS
“More than fifty years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music.
Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander follows suit, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe. Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics-a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim — The Jazz of Physics reveals that the ancient poetic idea of the "Music of the Spheres," taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics.” —Book Blurb
You don’t need to know much about jazz or physics to get through this book, but it helps. Alexander has written this book for the enthusiast not the specialist. His explanations are clear, his historical references interesting, and his conclusions fascinating. It is also interwoven with his story as both a jazz musician and an astrophysicist.
AT THE MOVIES: BEYOND THE VISIBLE
“Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in art historical discourse, before her long-delayed rediscovery. Director Halina Dryschka’s dazzling, course correcting documentary describes not only the life and craft of af Klint, but also the process of her mischaracterization and erasure by both a patriarchal narrative of artistic progress and capitalistic determination of artistic value." ZEITGEIST FILMS
ART SPOTLIGHT: THE APRON
"The Apron," 48 inches x 48 inches, oil, metallic paint, and acrylic marker on canvas, ©2024 Leslie Parke
I feel that I have to continue to advocate seeing my paintings in person, especially this one. The background is silver, on it are layers of dots and circles that follow the movement of swirling lines.
The title is personal. “The Apron” refers to a little apron that my mother sewed for me out of black and yellow calico fabric. When I reached a certain point in this painting the memory came flooding back. See more recent paintings HERE