Must be the year for it, HHTDL will be lecturing in May at the home of the Rockettes and the Mighty Wurlitzer in New York (a 32' Diaphone sounds a lot like those trumpets to me), I do not know of any theremin performance to have ever happened there. But let's go with it, I don't know nothing, here's a thought.
Silence = Sound = Nothing?
Some how during childhood I started sitting, and I learned a Manta once when gave I a handkerchief, an orange, and a few bucks to some transcendental guy, but the real training and practice was silent after hearing Trungpa Rimpoche in Boulder and studying at the center in NYC learning silent walking and mandala meditations and contemplative arts. The silence was alive and the thinking stopped or at least tried to.
How could an instrument of sound bring us to that vivid silence? Playing the organ had given a taste of being centered, but a singing bowl revealed the slight balance of physical effort, mental detachment, and a delicate intent to draw the harmonic sounds from the bowl. You cannot force it, you get outta the way and allow it. Tasting that point of balance brought silence and sound together to form a brief lightening bolt of recognition that affected everything especially music making.
Then came the theremin. *That* was no accident. HA! Was the universe saying "OK Mr. silent hot shot now try this..."? Getting to a point of silent sound making, even stable pitch making seemed daunting, but the same practice applied.
Playing with a drone box or new age drone-a-long songs eventually hit the mark and the player as self disappeared for a millisecond. It was just the act of listening, the music was taking care of itself. For a lot of us, precision theremin playing is a contemplative art too, a single intrusive thought can throw pitch and tune right out the window.
The theremin hooked me and I became dedicated to playing it and joined the global effort to keep it alive and flourishing, the wave of theremin-bodhicitta. Now there's the ironic conundrum!
Silence is more than soundless-nonthinking-ness and brings a more challenging concept of change and passing. Despite all our efforts our theremins will break some day. There will come a time when there are no theremins or pipe organs any more, that time will be as it should be. It twinges the heart and that is an import thing to taste. To me to be a contemplative aether warrior bodhi means to simultaneously embrace and embody the moment of beauty and sound as well it's transitory nature and death. As they say, you cannot grasp and hold tight to a note at the theremim, just as you cannot hold onto anything really. This is the next step...
HA! If you love the theremin you have to let it go! HA!
There are also correlations you can make between theremin playing and the martial arts, to me especially the Western martial arts of the Renaissance. But we can kill 'em, slay 'em, and knock 'em dead later.
no matter what,
KEEP ON PLAYING!
