This is it for now:What Makes Music Sacred[?,.]
== Perfectible Harmony? . . . . . . . . What is that?
Well Timmy . . . perfectible harmony is a process. A process of trying to be in perfect harmony with absolutely everything.
== Seriously Dude? That's like not possible. == Kooky talk!!! Why bother?
Why indeed Tim ... but I didn't say to be in perfect harmony ... only to try.
== And why would I do that?
Well, you might not believe this little fella, but perfectible harmony is actually the essence of life. Sure ... you could just do whatever you wanted or else go with the flow, but would that bring you happiness? Cuz even if you're looking for nothing other than your own happiness or at least contentedness you're looking for harmony within your own little self enclosed existence of mind, soul and spirit. But then, can you really be happy within yourself if you're not happy with your surroundings and the people around you? Those are just other levels of harmony. Levels Timmy!
== Whatever, Dude. I don't need none of that cosmik debris. == A great man showed me a much simpler way to live - the Dude abides.
That's the movies Tim, and I'm not "The Dude".
== So what are you? Some kind of Mystery Man? == Cuz you ain't no Socrates.
And you ain't no Timaeus. The Dude had to deal with the guys who broke into his place, the guy that sent him, the Urine-ator and on and on ... but if you stop to think about it ... The Dude wasn't abiding. He went out looking for compensation. He got hung up on his rug.
== So ... what? ... he should'a been happy to have guests == and offered them a sandwich or something?
No of course not. And I'll be honest with you here Tim ... I have no idea how harmony could have been brought to that situation. It also would have been a very different, boring and sappy movie that I wouldn't wanna see. But in a very round about way this diversion into cinema (with references to Seinfeld, Frank Zappa and Plato) allows me to bring up a very important point about perfectible harmony.
== And what's that?
You can't truly understand the process of perfectible harmony but reading about it, hearing about it or watching it. You have to engage the process. Whether you realize it or not, any relationship we have is a relationship of harmony. It may be complete discord or concord or anywhere in between but these are just degrees of harmony. Interpersonal relationships are far too complex to start off with. Fortunately, the arts and especially music provide a forum for us to experience perfectible harmony without having to deal with personalities, and ethics and morals and whatnot.
== Really? I play in a band and listen to a lot of music == and I still don't get what you're saying.
And yet ... if you tune up before you play, you're already in the process of being in perfect harmony with whatever your tuning standard is. If you're rehearsing you're striving to play in time and in tune and as one band; not a bunch of people doing their own thing. Even if you're just writing material to bring to the band, you're trying to the parts and lyrics just right. You could even be alone in a home studio trying to find the right beats and samples to support some words that came to mind but you're not going to give it to someone else to listen to until all the layers are as harmonious as you can make them. These are all arcs of perfectible harmony.
The rest of this website is going to explore perfectible harmony as striving toward perfect harmony. Any piece of music is subjective and can never be 100% perfect. But the building blocks of music ... the relationships of one note to the next or one note sounding at the same time as another - what we call intonation - does in fact have perfect or pure states. Unlike the perfect forms the ancient Greeks hypothesized as the building blocks of all matter, we actually do perceive intervals as being perfect and we highly value hearing and producing them in that state. It's what drives musicians to practice and drives up ticket prices for highly skilled performers.
But I opened this page saying that perfectible harmony was a striving to be in perfect harmony with absolutely everything. I even went so far as to say the perfectible harmony was the essence of life. With that in mind I'll need to explore the concept in other arts and in the disciplines of science. That still doesn't cover absolutely everything which means I'll have to get into religions and spirituality. Science is practical and the arts are a practice so they'll fit together on this one site. Matters of the spirit I'm going to put somewhere else and since perfectible harmony is a process which needs to be engaged in order to be understood I've consolidated the concept into a few sentences meant to be prayed or meditated upon. I call it the Prayer of Perochoresis and it's just meant as a starting point without any specificity to any spiritual tradition or practice.
These are also not meant to be a final word on anything. Just a proposal to hopefully stimulate dialog. Anyone so inclined can email me at rkarow at panix dot com.