I was just listening to a recording of a call from a couple of years ago, where I suggested that divination was like becoming a ‘cello. Then I stopped and asked if anyone had questions, and a nice participant told me that I’d just lost him with that last bit. On reflection, I could see his point.
A ‘cello is basically a big resonant box. It vibrates when you play it – and, sitting in the middle of the orchestra, you find it also vibrates by itself, in response to the sounds surrounding you. Divination makes you something like a ‘cello in that as well as making your own music, you become capable of vibrating in sympathy with everything around you. You come into sympathetic resonance with it all; you hum with awareness.
A couple of weeks ago, I got my ‘cello fixed up at the repairers. As well as new strings – the old ones were getting very dull and subdued – the repairer recommended some other changes (new tailpiece and gut, moving the soundpost…) to encourage the instrument to resonate more freely. He explained how the current arrangement was damping the vibrations and muffling the sound. So I accepted all his recommendations, and sure enough the ‘cello resonated and sang far more easily and clearly. I was delighted.
This seems to me to be something that we can experience with the metaphorical divination-‘cello as well. For ‘heavy old tailpiece and subdued old strings’ read ‘heavy old emotional baggage and dull old assumptions’. Review a few of these, lighten the weight, and everything about you and your responsiveness to readings resonates more clearly and freely. You become emotionally and spiritually more mobile and sensitive; you pick up more and subtler meanings; you come into sympathetic resonance more easily. You fill up with the awareness of being in constant dialogue with your world.
Then the next day, I took my ‘cello out of its case to practise… and found it had developed a huge, hideous, rattling, ‘everything is falling apart, panic now’ kind of buzz. The new, freer resonance after all those years in its subdued and dampened state had shaken something apart. (I learned, later, that making changes like this to an instrument quite often has this effect.) I got mildly hysterical; I reproached myself bitterly for ever having the changes made. The ‘cello might not have been sounding to its full potential before, but at least it had been in one piece!
And this, too, seems to me to have its parallels in divination. Everything comes alive, everything is vibrant and resonant… and then the new resonance shakes things loose, and there’s the huge, hideous, rattling, ‘everything is falling apart, panic now’ kind of buzz, jarring you to your bones. Maybe this comes through the agency of a reading that challenges everything you thought you knew; maybe it arises internally as if from nowhere, as suddenly change happens.
This is where the analogy comes apart, as diviners, given time and patience, are miraculous self-repairing creatures, whereas the ‘cello needed to go back to the repairer for a week and receive a lot of expert attention (and glue). I brought it home last Friday, and it sings.
Remarkable! As a musician I completely agree with this. I fact, just yesternight I was reading the section of the Ta Chuan where the “echo” is mentioned and typing it out along with some notes in the Wilhelm edition – all of which had something to do with a little paper I wrote on “Nested Images.” This wonderful piece reminds me so much of that. I will be giving a talk on Divination in the future and will no doubt make use of this precious analogy! (By the way – Bruckner’s 9th is one of my favorite symphonies (along with his 7th – where the slow movement suddenly goes into the minor key upon Bruckner’s intuition that Wagner had died). Perhaps very many people are not aware of what sensitive instruments they are – and when they are not, the YiJing can begin to “tune” them and sensitize them to their harmonic resonance with all that is. Thank you for this wonderful writing. – Glen
Glad you liked it! Yes, agreed, there’s a definite ‘tuning’ effect from readings.
Another Yeek musician? What do you play?
YEEK!!! Yes, I play piano and organ…was a Church and Synagogue organist for many years (Choir directior, of course). Also used to sing with the famous Westminster Choir (Princeton, New Jersey, USA). I accompaned many interesting singers over the years as well….I LOVE it – (SO: tell me – do you like Bruckner??)
– Glen
PS) I always enjoy reading the section on “The Spirit of Music” in the Richard Wilhelm Lectures on the I Ching (pp. 60-72) where he deals with Hexagram 16. There he write of Confucius: “Confucius himself is an example of how far the spirit of music might compel surrender to the Arounsing. Once, while with a famous music master, he heard a melody. First he learned its tones, then its spirit, later the heart, emotions, significance, and the thoughts of the man who had invented this music. Although the music master was already satisfied with Confucius’ playing of the melody, he still could not desist. Only when a vision of a dark, tall shape confronted him, did he say: ‘I see him, of dark, tall shape; exalted being, a creator among men.’ Then the muic master bowed before Confucius and said: ‘Indeed this melody derives from King Wen, the creator of our culture.’ ”
– Glen
What a marvelous take on divination 🙂
I’m thinking that sometimes we hum and sometimes we screech … ;-D
… and that Change goes on changing through hums and screeches and everything else …
What Glen writes about how Confucius moved through evolving types of hearing an instrument — “First he learned its tones, then its spirit, [then its] heart” — reminds me of how we learn the I Ching over time …
BTW — Regarding the ‘cello … Bach’s Solo Cello Suites are sublime …
Jaliya’s last blog post..The MERCY reading …
Oh… another thing I must re-read, I don’t remember that part!
Yes, Yeek is a word. You heard it here first.
Bruckner – yes, I enjoyed playing in #9 a great deal, and I hadn’t really expected to. (Bruckner doesn’t really count ‘recognising that orchestral musicians are human’ among his many virtues.) A good experience, to have been part of that.
yes – how interesting how about evolving through different types of hearing the instrument – and I agree that we often have this evolving in how we listen to the YiJing as well. (Another way to think of this: Is the YiJing a Cello for me – or a trumpet – or a tympani….?) Or is it any and all of these depeding on the type or resonance I provide for its “echo.” (Sympathetic resonance being the acoustical principle for all textures of experience)
Yeek is NOW a new word for me – and I plan to use it every opportunity I have!!!
Bach is great (just watched Rostrapovitch play solo Bach on old EMI vidao- amazing)…though I am also a rebel – listening as I am to the Leopold Stokowski famous (infamous?) orchestral transcriptions of Bach) I am not a purist asking for only original instruments (for example) when Baroque music is played (or recorded).
I suppose this would say that I am not a purist when it comes to “original instruments” of the YiJing either.
Does this have anything to do with the expansion of the YiJing into the language or media of a later period and/or culture? It seems that I enjoy seeing the many ways the YiJing has interacted with new surroundings and how it has been adapted to the “sound” of its environmant over and over again.
Yet I know that the original language is the seed – and one must be informed from it – for after all – it is the seed from which this mighty tree of JiYing has grown.
I’d still like to hear about paradoxes of resonance, like how you grasp the bow. I’m learning to use the bacchi (“plectrum”–looks like car window scraper) for the shamisen, after 11 years of study, & have spoken w/ drummers, singers and keyboardists about the paradox I also learned about in TaiJi: strength thru relaxation. Cannot have a vise-like death-grip on the bacchi! Cannot hunch shoulders up while moving arms! You’d think you should grip the hammer or plectrum up close so you can control it better, but no! hold it way back so it moves itself. The thing is floating between fingers and now frequently drops out of my hands, to my great consternation. Must be something similar for keyboard and for ‘cello? Isn’t this like “wu wei er wei” (action thru non-action)?
Glen – I’m quite content to play Bach on a modern (1870-ish) ‘cello, and enjoy all kinds of newly ‘discovered’ interpretive methods with Yi, so maybe there’s a parallel.
Scott – yes, the bow’s the same: the harder I grip it, the less I can do with it, and also the faster I get blinding pain in my hand that makes me lose all other sensation anyway. This is a Helpful Clue.
Bowing as wu wei? Maybe like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcjeZ3o5us
Great analogy…’though I’m a piano woman, this resonates. I love this: “You fill up with the awareness of being in constant dialogue with your world.” Alive, in tune or being tuned and learning the music of life. Thanks for this…
J. Ruth Kely’s last blog post..High Wattage for Sustainable Living . . .
Love it!
Absolutely, I see this all the time with clients moving through personal change with neurofeedback. They get more sensitive to what’s “not right” as well as to the nudges as to how to increase what’s right — and may go through periods of discomfort that are “worse” — until they take the actions to follow their guidance/nudges as to what/where/how is more right for them.
The rattling as a helpful indicator of further adjustments being needed 😉
Always the awareness of the negative and discordant is much like a musical indication that one is being made to “listen” to the inner guidance system, Now: I must also admit something here (among friends only, of course)….somehow way back in my early life (and that’s a LONG time ago!!!..) I was trained (through default) that acceping the discordant and the negative was “OK” – because that was the operative modality. Thus, a part of my “life training” through the inner guidance (and the YiJing which echoes this) I have been able to see myself “replay” this over and over again – especially in terms of significant human relationships. My self-image and self-worth was trained to allow, accept, tolerate, and feel deserving of this non-harmonic life. And as I listen to my own musical instrument being so very “out of tune” – it has allowed me to see clearly that I have invited into my chamber music circle similar players!!!…and we have all played a rather discordant and mal-formed sonata – sonatina – that has also had its impact on the “audience” of my life – my children, my friends, my associates….
Thus, how thankful for the holographic music of the YiJing through which I can check my strings form time to time..
– Glen
I think that a truly resonant reading can ‘shake things loose’ that previously were hanging together OK – ideas, assumptions, comfortable places. (Who hasn’t, at some point, stared at an answer that succinctly demolishes what they’ve been doing and wondered what possessed them to ask?) It’s very strange and interesting that neurofeedback could lead in the same direction.
Glen – isn’t it odd how much there is to this music analogy? You and others are taking it way beyond what I suggested in my post. Makes me think that this is reflecting something intrinsic to our nature.
And, you know, it is perfectly possible to build up a ‘tolerance’ for dodgy tuning, just as it’s possible to spend every playing moment listening/sensing and correcting. Changing from tolerance to awareness isn’t easy. It helps (so I’ve learned from our conductor, who’s a professional ‘cellist) to work on tuning the simplest things first, so you’re not distracted by technical demands. (I think our analogy is still holding, don’t you?)
Hi Hilary! I’m a newcomer here and a cellist, too, so what a pleasure to read this post — I agree in toto!
This site is great, you are great. I’m really happy I joined.
Hugs from Rome
Hello! Really glad to meet you here.