Tribute to Sun Ra, HR 57, P and 9th St, NW, Washington,DC
Tribute to Sun Ra, HR 57, P and 9th St, NW, Washington,DC
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Message-Id: 3042182871.0.p00879@psilink.com Date: Sun, 26 May 96 04:57:13 -0400 To: "Calvin Tullos" tullos@stsci.edu From: "Trudy Morse" p00879@psilink.com Subject: Tribute to Sun Ra, HR 57, P and 9th St, NW, Washington,DC
May 26, l996. Sun Ra Birthdate
Dear Calvin,
I want to thank you so much for an extraordinary evening. And since I am now back from Tokyo, by way of Orlando and Seattle, and my E-Mail is now working, I can sit and reflect about last night's program.
For the past month I have been involved in a sort of Edinburgh Festival continuum of intense experiences. Performances and involvement with Sam Rivers in Orlando, Michael Monaham (Tibetian scholar) in Seattle, Bob Cogan and Pozzi Escott in Tokyo, Anne LeBaron in DC, Hildegard von Bingem at St. Stephens Church, Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, et al, at home and at the Knitting Factory, Pauline Oliveros at Kingston, Amy Hendrickson in Boston, and the New England Conservatory Graduation exercises. Believe me, Plato's legendary banquet was nothing compared to these experiences!
And last night, somehow, Sun Ra's poetry wrapped up the whole experience. Your arrangements of Sun Ra's music was superb, and brought poems I had never read before, since they seemed too deep for entertainment.
And somehow, this morning I gained a sand of insight into the mindset of musician, the mystic, the philosopher, through Sun Ra's poetry. I never know what I will do for the evening program, since the music directs the poetry. And last night it occurred to me how closely Sun Ra is to Sartre, Hildegard von Bingen, Carl Jung, and basic Plato and Zen.
Within this past week, I went from intense involvement with Cecil Taylor, at his home, at the Knitting Factory, to sleeping over at the airport, so that I could experience an all-day discussion and musical program by scholars on Hildegard von Bingen. You can understand how wired up I was for the Sun Ra program at HR 57 Saturday evening, May 25, celebrating Sun Ra's birthday.
And because the poet captures the essence of life, Sun Ra's poetry best expressed what all great philosophers and mystics have been telling us through the ages.
Both he and Hildegard saw a race of angels at the borderline of man and God. The closer to God, the more dangerous and firey the heat. The closer to man, the ascent and descent is still pretty intense. Jung says we suppress the shadow of ourselves, because it's too painful. Sartre says God is dead, we just go into an abyss of Nothingness, Despair, Nausea, until we do a reconstruction of ourselves into Being and Becoming. Pretty dangerous stuff, says Jung. Better sometime, to keep the Shadow suppressed. Or in Zen, get a good slap into reality.
At each performance, I remind ourselves and the audience
The Outer Bridge
In the half-between world, Dwell they: The Tone Scientists In notes and tone They speak of many things... The tone scientists: Architects of planes of discipline Mathematically precise are they: The tone-scientists
From the Immeasurable Equation, Sun Ra
In RECOLLECTIONS, I point out:
We engage in the endless Cycle of birth and death The soul vaguely recollects The perfect forms
Pretty dangerous spot to be at, the OUTER BRIDGE. We all need anchorage on the Planet Earth. We need good partners, we need roadies to give us proper guidance, and most of all we need human beings to bring us back!
Thank you again for a beautiful experience, dangerous, but BEAUTIFUL good. This is what the ancient philosophers asked us to seek: THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. I have been guided on this path through the Masters like Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, and John Cage, and fellow struggling artists such as yourself.
In Awe and Gratitude
Trudy Morse
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