Style and Stage

[Rowly]

Can you say a piano sonata does not exist until the pianist interacts with the piano to play it? But he can play it in his mind just as well... Others played it on the piano before him and still others will play it after him. He himself will probably play it again - does the sonata cease to EXIST in the meantime? Perhaps it will cease to MANIFEST, but not to EXIST.

Indeed, does it need to be heard by a second or third party to have been played with style?
Surely a musician, writer or the creator or performer of any art can feel the satisfaction of having captured something that he knows to have style whether anyone else is available to share the experience or not? Did Constable only develop style at the age of fifty three when he was finally accepted by The Royal Society?

[Gruto]

Can you say a piano sonata does not exist until the pianist interacts with the piano to play it? But he can play it in his mind just as well... Others played it on the piano before him and still others will play it after him. He himself will probably play it again - does the sonata cease to EXIST in the meantime? Perhaps it will cease to MANIFEST, but not to EXIST.

Indeed, does it need to be heard by a second or third party to have been played with style?
Surely a musician, writer or the creator or performer of any art can feel the satisfaction of having captured something that he knows to have style whether anyone else is available to share the experience or not? Did Constable only develop style at the age of fifty three when he was finally accepted by The Royal Society?

Don't confuse a stage with a real stage, a visible third party or peer reviewing. A stage is a personal experience fueled by the social. The satisfaction of having captured something that has style whether anyone else is available to share the experience cannot be fully understood without including a stage. A craftsman working on a suit might be very satisfied because he has achieved an excellent result - but, excellent in relation to what? To certain ideals for how an excellent suit should be, ideals that he more or less shares with other craftsmen. They are not his very own inventions. The idea of social flying is wonderful, but we have to face the bonds that make it difficult, if we don't want to share Pinocchio's destiny ...

"I've got no strings
So I have fun
I'm not tied up to anyone
They've got strings
But you can see
There are no strings on me"

[Costi]

Gruto, deja vu! - we've been through Pinocchio already, we need fresh fuel for this, the old oil is burnt out...
Rowly, perhaps not everyone can experience Style unless socially recognized. Unfortunately, what is acknowledged by "society" as style is often a lame substitute... Completely unreliable! So much good music never reaches our ears because inspired composers never even bother to write it down or publish it - they just enjoy it... in Style!
Style is inspiration, not motivation (I know, we've been through that, too - but what can I do, we're moving in circles, like prey birds, instead of spirals...). There is a ton of abyssal psychology dealing with motivation, deeply rooted in our darkest depths. And too little... shall we call it aural psychology? - that which deals with what inspires us, the nimbus that connects us to what is above, fueled by thin vapors of upper extraction, rather than motivations running on charred soft coal.

All sorts of sounds and dreams are passing through our heads. Some of it is just babbling, other parts are our inner working with the world outside us. (to be continued)

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on"...
Let's not delude ourselves we're much more (or something else) than that and take ourselves too seriously.

[Rowly]

the nimbus that connects us to what is above, fueled by thin vapors of upper extraction, rather than motivations running on charred soft coal.

I think that's it. Style is the expression of our higher evolved selves and a beacon of what we are capable of becoming. It is the manifestation of pure thought, the rich gift which doesn't wax poor because the giver did not prove unkind (because the motivation was not from his lower animal instinctual self, running on charred soft coal). Style affects us all, whether we realize it or not. Perhaps, we are not yet highly enough evolved to recognise every instance of it and we do need a reference point, a stage, if you will, whether from our own stored experiences or from others. To use a religious metaphor, And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. When God saw that it was good, did he not have style? What was his stage?

[Gruto]

Style is inspiration, not motivation

Inspiration is production. Your body and mind are workning to create inspiration. Inspiration dwells on experience. It is rooted in time.

If you had been raised as a tibetan munk, would your thoughts and inspiration be the same - would your style be the same?

perhaps not everyone can experience Style unless socially recognized. Unfortunately, what is acknowledged by "society" as style is often a lame substitute...

Style is not about recognition. It is about intention, or production. You produce style. That proces includes experiences, thoughts and feelings that are influenced by life among other people.

Style is the expression of our higher evolved selves and a beacon of what we are capable of becoming. It is the manifestation of pure thought

Would your "higher evolved self" be the same, if you had been raised as a tibetan munk?

[Rowly]

Would your "higher evolved self" be the same, if you had been raised as a tibetan munk?

For me to be as a Tibetan Monk would be the ultimate in the performing arts

[Rowly]

For me to be as a Tibetan Monk would be the ultimate in the performing arts

Referring only to the life of piety and abstemiousness, I hope you realize that.

[Gruto]

For me to be as a Tibetan Monk would be the ultimate in the performing arts

That view would probably be different, if you had actually being raised as a Tibetan monk

[Costi]

Style is the expression of our higher evolved selves and a beacon of what we are capable of becoming.

What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.

[Costi]

Inspiration is production. Your body and mind are workning to create inspiration. Inspiration dwells on experience. It is rooted in time.

That, perhaps, is perspiration
Inspiration is not the product of fantasy, we don't create it. We discover it, inside us, we unveil it. It takes place in the inner world of Imagination (active imagination, the place of revelations, if you wish) - but not the "creative" phantasy of drunkards and liars.

If you had been raised as a tibetan munk, would your thoughts and inspiration be the same - would your style be the same?

The mechanism are the same - of motivation, of inspiration - irrespective of cultural differences. Of course the results are different, even from person to person, not just from race to race. Thank goodness for diversity!

Style is not about recognition. It is about intention, or production. You produce style. That proces includes experiences, thoughts and feelings that are influenced by life among other people.

It would be so easy if we could produce Style, like we grow hair... but I'm afraid we can't. The best we can do is find the vein inside us and follow it.

Society is more often a cage than a stage in this regard...

[Gruto]

Inspiration is production. Your body and mind are workning to create inspiration. Inspiration dwells on experience. It is rooted in time.

That, perhaps, is perspiration
Inspiration is not the product of fantasy, we don't create it. We discover it, inside us, we unveil it. It takes place in the inner world of Imagination (active imagination, the place of revelations, if you wish) - but not the "creative" phantasy of drunkards and liars.

If you had been raised as a tibetan munk, would your thoughts and inspiration be the same - would your style be the same?

The mechanism are the same - of motivation, of inspiration - irrespective of cultural differences. Of course the results are different, even from person to person, not just from race to race. Thank goodness for diversity!

Style is not about recognition. It is about intention, or production. You produce style. That proces includes experiences, thoughts and feelings that are influenced by life among other people.

It would be so easy if we could produce Style, like we grow hair... but I'm afraid we can't. The best we can do is find the vein inside us and follow it.

Society is more often a cage than a stage in this regard...

Freedom to create style doesn't come from avoinding society but from embracing it, including its imperfections. A no-sayer cannot create style. Everything about him may be perfect but he will be lacking style because he doesn't dare to incorporate life, that is, society.

Read your dear Proust again, and you will see that your eternity is temporality.

[NJS]

Inspiration is production. Your body and mind are workning to create inspiration. Inspiration dwells on experience. It is rooted in time.

That, perhaps, is perspiration

Horses sweat; gentlemen perspire, and ladies merely glow.

[Costi]

Horses sweat; gentlemen perspire, and ladies merely glow.

Sometimes I wish I had "powdering my nose" as an excuse...
But no! - I have to stay and SWEAT!

[Costi]

Freedom to create style doesn't come from avoinding society but from embracing it, including its imperfections. A no-sayer cannot create style. Everything about him may be perfect but he will be lacking style because he doesn't dare to incorporate life, that is, society.

Read your dear Proust again

DEAR Gruto,

I'll send DEAR Proust your regards - he's dying to meet you one day...

Who said anything about avoiding society?! Even though naysayers are also part of this "society" of yours, I am not one of them. I love people and am inclined to find more qualities than faults in them (or else... ).
But I do not think we shall find Style outside of ourselves, in society, or that its manifestations depend on it (even though some of them may take place in the presence and with respect to others), or that we can find our inspiration there. And then society is made up of individuals, I am sure you don't embrace humanity as a whole in practice, either - you have your preferences, your groups, your affinities, like all of us. So what is "society" to you may not be "society" to me...
Dear Proust HATED society (as a private person and as a character in "La Recherche") and bitterly ironized it, but was capable of great depth (of emotion, not just analysis) with individuals. He frequented salons out of curiosity and as a source of study material - hardly for love of humanity and certainly not for love of "high society". He ironizes Goncourt brothers' high life chronicles because he realizes they saw something completely different from him in the same places and people. He worked WITH and ON himself, IN society. He wanted to be invited by the Duchess of Guermantes because he was fascinated with HER, not because he wanted to socialize with her and her guests. And how much irony is there in M.me Verdurin's becoming Princesse de Guermantes... becoming one of those she previously hated (as they were inaccessible) has not changed a bit of her "style" in the final scene of "Le Temps Retrouve" where all actors are truly "on stage".

[NJS]

Horses sweat; ge

ntlemen perspire, and ladies merely glow.

Sometimes I wish I had "powdering my nose" as an excuse...
But no! - I have to stay and SWEAT!

Well, I have heard: 'Going to see a man about a dog'.