Nothing new about this, as such: I missed an Anthony Braxton live concert, thanks to being too far removed from current goings-on to know that it was even taking place. That's right! Having talked recently about missing the ZIM septet (to say nothing of the "standards quartet" with Alex Hawkins), I managed to miss yet another performance just over a week ago - so, since I resumed blogging. You couldn't make this up. But yep, while I was taking far too long over a post about the '84 band, B. himself was in London, playing with his New Acoustic Quartet under the auspices of the London Jazz Festival (and on a double-bill with Henry Threadgill, what's more). It would be quite easy to give up hope altogether, upon realising that: it's as if I have slipped into some awful parallel universe where everything goes wrong, all chances are squandered, all effort thwarted - and every so often the universe just makes a point of rubbing my nose in it.
And yet...
... although I did not know it at the time, I was somehow synchronised with the maestro, intensely focused on his music while he was onstage. There is still a connection.
Now, the parallel-universe-where-everything-went-south idea is far from limited to my trivial meanderings (and underachievements). Braxton has always worked from a starting point, not of (merely) creating music, but of striving to make the world a better place. His musical strategies are extensions of his philosophy, and the energetic matrices which support the soundscapes his groups create are consciously designed to foster positive vibrations, enhancing human experience. Music to save the world... but wait, look at it. The world seems to be poised, a fraction of an inch away from irremediable ruin. B's music, in turn, actually does enrich the lives of a small number of people who allow it to touch them; but they form a vanishingly minuscule drop in an ocean of indifference. Even that would not necessarily matter: the hermit who lives in a cave on the far side of a mountain may yet hold in his or her hands secret levers which invisibly move distant engines; power does not need to be seen in order to make itself felt. But where, then, is this influence felt? More than ever before, it seems, the world's dwindling resources are controlled by a tiny minority of plutocrats who cannot see past the immediate expediency of the next moment. The planet might yet survive, but, surely, only by purging itself of the race which has failed so egregiously in its stewardship thereof.
And yet...
... I still breathe, and where I breathe there is life, and with life, hope. I could allow my inner gaze to focus exclusively on the damage inflicted, the gathering dark; but the massing of the dark only concentrates the light and makes it burn brighter. I choose instead to train my gaze on that which I can encompass and control: this present moment, in my own consciousness. I locate the seed of hope and nurture it.
Others may yet do the same. And they must choose whatever focus helps them in nurturing that seed; for myself, I am fortunate to have a number of such things. Among these blessings, none is greater than this man's music, and the knowledge of the fierce joy it brings to those who play it. I contact this joy when I listen... and thus is the downward spiral reversed.
22-11-2022
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