Once again, Skin in the Game is described as taking some kind of risk; in Stevens' case in service of the art, the music, the listener, the singers, and himself. In service of the third entity; the actual entity that sits with a life, between all these individual entities. And being vulnerable in the name of authenticity and in the name of creating the very best experience of the music for all the players.
Being a conductor and a composer is a special niche of humanity, yet it relates to any of us who are trying to bring things together in the service of beauty, art and muse.
You will also hear the peculiar habits of non-Japanese in Japan who pepper their language with Japanese words without a second thought and also how we tend to mix and match, forgetting our English words from time to time!
We talk about the Muses, the Greek Chorus and the concepts of time Kronos and Kyros, Kronos being the currently culturally popular time of linear time; the time of clocks and calendars; it can be quantified and measured. Kronos is linear, moving inexorably out of the determinate past towards the determined future and has no freedom. Kyros is numinous. Kyros is a time of festivals and fantasies; it cannot be controlled or possessed. Numinous means "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring"; also "supernatural" or "appealing to the aesthetic sensibility”. We muse on how the art emerges from these numinous timelines and the conditions one can create in order to nudge the muse or to find one’s way into creation. Steven tells the story of how after 7 months of being unable to finish a score, from the outdoor bath of the local onsen, a visitation had him scurry home to complete his work of art. I wonder how I or we can create these conditions for creativity to enter, or for the muse to deliver the next piece of our art.
Steven describes himself as ‘the Young Sheldon’ of music, compelled to challenge authority figures if he thought that there were teaching inaccuracies.
Steven also talks about Darma - something he studied with a Swami who coincidentally lives ten minutes from me in Zushi (I’ll chalk this up to the Ordinary Magic). This is not a popular or well-known neighborhood at all.
Back in the world of Kronos Time, Steven has done many many tens of thousands of hours of musical devotion, starting at music school, where he sang at least 7 times a week and where the academic tutors were told to never give more than 30 minutes homework to these choral students, lest their practice be interrupted. While Steven described this as ‘enlightened’ he also acknowledged there may be downsides and it put me in mind of neurodivergent folk getting accommodations in school or in work. Enlightened - bending time and rules in service of the output.
One way to lead a life is through scarcity - through the expectations of others, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but could be vexing to the Spirit. Another way to lead a life is to follow your heart, but the intuitive promotions of the heart and the other ways to lead a life is to listen to everyone else
I know that I get really creative every time I get on the train to Tokyo, sometimes even almost missing my stop as my creative mind works in Kyros, but those pesky trains run on Kronos! Rest, Water, and Transition. Creating conditions for emergence of art. Travel could be typified as the in-between time. Neither here nor there; betwixt and between. A liminal space affording the muses a channel by which to enter our consensus reality.
We talk about the technical elements of music and in addition to the physics of vibrations, the mystical, soulful, impact that these have on our sacred
