Before the Fall, 11x14 inches, collage and colored pencil on canvas, $308
Along with Falling Together I wrote a book, quite some time ago, if still unpublished. You can read the first chapter here. It tells the story of a golden crowned sparrow who feels out of place in heaven.
It's not that there is anything wrong with heaven. She is surrounded by a family of varied buntings in a world that is almost entirely purple. Given her drab plumage, and her one yellow streak of color upon her head, she doesn't quite feel like she belongs, and doesn't feel completely worthy of the buntings' love.
One day she sees a red apple glowing far down below, notable because it is not purple. She asks the buntings about it.
They say that this apple can only be found on earth, and it holds the fattest, juiciest worms. Of course, the sparrow longs to go in search of it.
The buntings warn her that this apple exists in a very dense world, one of pain and sorrow, but she wants to go on her quest anyway, secretly feeling that she might also find other birds who resemble her more than the buntings do.
Sparrow is in search of a better world even though she already lives in the "best of all possible worlds" - to throw in a reference to Candide.
Now let's play with some threads of association regarding the sparrow's tale.
The better world, purple, the crown chakra, Aquarius, B-flat. How are these seemingly disparate things related?
In the rainbow chakra system the color purple is applied to the crown chakra that sits at the very top of your head. This chakra is involved with a feeling of oneness with all that lives, of perfect divine love, of experiencing the all pervasive and pure awareness that is the ocean in which all souls swim. In other words, the crown chakra is associated with the spirit world itself.
Someone decided that all chakras should also be assigned a musical note, but they only went so far as seven. The lowest chakra would be red, and C, while the crown chakra would be purple and B.
Since I'm using a system of 12 things are going to be a bit different. For me magenta gets to be B, which would make purple B-flat.
Now we get to something called "the tone zodiac." This is some seriously nerdy hippie stuff, and clicking on that link will give you a theory lesson combined with astrology and singing bowls.
The tone zodiac goes back to ancient Greece as the brain child of Ptolemy based in Pythagorean ideas. Rudolf Steiner (Austrian occultist and founder of Waldorf education and eurythmics) made his own, which is really quite basic.
In Steiner's tone zodiac B-flat is associated with Aquarius.
He also wrote a series of poems based on the zodiac called Twelve Moods.
Here is the poem he wrote for Aquarius:
May what is bounded yield to the boundless.
What feels the lack of bounds, may it create
Bounds for itself in its depths;
May it raise itself in the current,
As wave, flowing forth, sustaining itself,
In becoming, shaping itself to existence.
Set yourself bounds, oh boundless!
Sounds like a metaphor for incarnation to me. If we come to earth to experience limitations, and to experience the epiphanies that come from those limitations. It also seems to speak of a cycle of give and take, which I'll get to later.
Now we get to something called "the doctrine of the affections."
This was an idea from the 17th and 18th century that equated specific emotions and moods to musical keys. There are several different lists of these made by different people, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they often conflict.
The whole idea that different keys prompted different emotions came from tuning systems of the time, which would make each key sound quite different from each other, so there is some sense to this, but it is still very subjective.
For most of this time period there were certain keys that were considered practically unplayable given these limitations in keyboard tuning techniques, which means that these lists of emotions don't usually include all 12 keys.
One does, and it is by a writer and poet named Christian Schubart. You might know him as the author of the poem "The Trout" that Franz Schubert turned into one of his most famous songs. Schubert vs Schubart, yeah, it gets confusing.
Schubart's list of affects associated with each key dates from 1806, which is perhaps a little late to the party, but at least tuning techniques had evolved so that all 12 keys were being used.
Here is what Schubart says B-flat means in his system: Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope, and aspiration for a better world.
What's funny is that this idea of longing for a better world is a sentiment most often applied to people born under the sign of Aquarius.
Of all people, Aquarians are supposed to be the ones who most want to bring the perfect love of spirit down to earth, as well as being some of the most far out folks of the zodiac. Purple is their favorite color, no doubt.
Know who else was an Aquarius? Schubert! And this brings us to the story of why Schubert's 5th symphony is in B-flat, or at least my deduction.
On June 13, 1816 Schubert went to a house concert where a Mozart quintet was played. While we don't know specifically which one, some scholars have made an argument for the one in G minor, K.516.
Anyway, after that concert Schubert wrote in his diary, "Mozart! Immortal Mozart! How many and what countless images of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!"
On October 3 Schubert finished his 5th symphony, something so clearly Mozart inspired that I have long called it "Mozart's 42nd." Mozart was also an Aquarius, BTW.
Setting it in B-flat seems to have been Schubert's way of depicting that better life, or better world, that Mozart opened up to him. Then in early 1817 he wrote The Trout. Thank you, Schubart, for all that inspiration, apparently.
There is this quote by the theologian Karl Barth, “It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.”
I would agree with that.
But is the spirit world really "better?" I would say yes, if for no other reason than that Dolly Parton and Tim Curry are now there.
Going back to Rudolf Steiner's poem about Aquarius though, there is a give and take between "the bounded and the boundless" that we tend to ignore.
The word "chakra" means wheel, and in that sense these energy centers of the body - by which I mean the spiritual body that envelops the physical body - are always cycling up and down.
Think of them as Ferris wheels. One moment they're up in heaven, and the next they're down on earth. The gifts of heaven come down to earth through us, and when we return to spirit we bring new gifts back, but we are ever within our wheel.
Whew, what a ramble! Thank you for sticking with my thoughts this far, and now you know what a day inside my head is like.
Next time we'll talk about indigo.