In the mind's wild countryside

[ted]

This month I am back to posting a shorter segment, degraded a bit to fit into 50mb. This one could be construed as a ramble through the dark and remote areas of the psyche, represented as a landscape. On the other hand it might have something to do with those visionary dreams wherein one perceives impossibly monstrous sea and land features, which are yet endowed with intense and unforgettable beauty and, stranger still, sensations of compelling familiarity. 

[quantum]

The first thing that popped into my head when listening to this are the paintings of Lawren Harris. I hear a common thread that spans this entire improvisation - it did not seem like a ramble at all. 

[ted]

Thanks for listening Neil, I had to look up Harris on the internet. His paintings are very pleasing and I was amazed how close his abstracted landscape style was to that of Don Binney, the New Zealand painter. The only difference was that Binney was obsessed with birds. It makes me wonder if he was influenced by Harris.

Yes, it is still a mystery to me how organic form develops unconsciously within a long improvisation. It might simply be that a state of critical mass emerges with the huge amount of musical and playing data in the brain over a lifetime. I know that, at seventy-two, I don't think much at all about what I am playing, at least compared with improvising in my earlier life. Things just seem to happen which I only perceive while listening later on, sometimes much later on. I also delight in the absolute freedom of the listener to place whatever personal associations he likes on my sounds, that is part of the magic of music, it seems to me.

[ranjit]

Amazing, Ted! I can imagine someone riding on horseback through villages somewhere in Northern Europe, while there is some kind of conflict, but not a full-scale war going on. I'm surprised by how specific the imagery is.

[ted]

Amazing, Ted! I can imagine someone riding on horseback through villages somewhere in Northern Europe, while there is some kind of conflict, but not a full-scale war going on. I'm surprised by how specific the imagery is.

Thanks for listening. I always take pleasure in the variety of images and associations my music triggers in the minds of listeners. Some people, perhaps most, find reassurance in fixed, universal meanings but I cannot operate that way. Even the same piece varies in its effect on me from one listening to the next. You have reminded me it is time to post another. I am faced with a surfeit of choice this month having recorded about twenty hours.