Hilma Af Klint, “Altarpiece, No. 1, Group X, Altarpiece Series,” (1915). Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma Af Klints Verk. Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet
Hilma af Klint, “The Large Figure Paintings, No. 5, Group III, The Key to All Works to Date, The WU/Rose Series” (1907) Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma Af Klints Verk. Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet
Hilma af Klint, “The Swan, No. 17, Group IX/SUW, The SUW/UW Series” (1915). Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet
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Souls & Fibers to Soothe & Kill
Orpheus Examines the Influence of Music in the Minds of Men
Among the many bridges men have built to eternity, music appeared. It has a power, an inimitable authority on souls and fibers that holds the power to soothe and kill. Through the melody, lines are drawn and correspondences made between each fragment of the macrocosm in the most fulfilling harmony. It is a moment of pure logic in the Universe, and it moves you.
I am Orpheus, the beloved. Many nights ago, my disciples used to stare at the canopy and its immensurable mystery. Enticed by the pale and warm presence of the orbs, they shaped millions of spat worlds and danced and sung as proportions of the Universe were drawn. Through the very first sounds the air moved, vibrated, and in a myriad of refined variations it blew distances and intervals. Then rhythm emerged and life found shelter.
I am Orpheus and I hold the voice that heals. I reach the body and I move it, I lift the mind in exultation and imbue it with a sense of what it signifies. When my voice gets down to the heart, one discovers an inspiration, an unveiling of its enigmas, phoenixes asleep in the intimate. One day my song ceased as the buzzing racket of the crowd surrounded me. They wanted to hold, touch, and own it. They asked me to tell them about the logic and the science of the notes. Others harvested my words in little green books; they commented, upheld, and sold them. I ran away when men started to talk. The melody faded, swallowed in the cracking cacophony of conversation.
To the Orient I first fled. Through the _Tao_ and the _Tantra_ I turned into liquid, filling all cavities, completing all voids with a single, subtle blow. I wobbled to _Râga_, _Râgini,_ and all the modes and worlds they encompassed. My chakras were opened by an obscene extent of holy and wise mustaches. Among the sons of Abraham I sung the name of the Demiurge in thousands of hymns without even pronouncing His name. Then a beardy German erudite introduced me to the Tyrolean fairies that populated the hidden part of my Self. They were humming Wagnerian bawdy rhymes, fluttering within the lewd nooks of my inner consciousness, _auf wiedersehen_ _meine lieben._ And then I made the divine shores of California mine.
In my great despair for the new communion I trampled the mud of many gathering, laid with many who called themselves my disciple, oh sweet and docile kind! For months I stayed among hundreds of these surprising creatures, whispering a few memorized verses: _One evening, do you remember?/ We were sailing in silence/ Hearing over the waters and beneath the heavens/ only the distant rhythmic beat of oarsmen on your harmonious waves_. And, finally—in the tender pulsation of their fresh bodies, in the warmth of their wombs—I found it. A life ago I was son of gods; now by the sunburnt pool decks of Santa Monica, I throne.
Years of destitution and observation helped me master the skills of the most refined empathy. Mankind is delightfully predictable, from the socio-economical boundaries to the neverending dramas it endures. I know you in the most intimate parts of your life, and as every good healer I have the cure. _My little dove with broken heart/ Baby, baby, baby got the head in the mist/ After the rain the fine weather/ Do not worry I have a playlist_.
I am a god and my naked body a temple. I am Music and from my mouth Truth resounds. I changed my face and name many times; I am at once Elvis, John, Jim, Justin, and Kanye. There is one remainder: an invocation of an everlasting “revolution” that genius after genius is called to fire so as to purify the world to come. Behold the vigorous passion the wheels of humanity exercise to erect messiahs and prophets upon their own reflection. Insidious totem, _this ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll, sonofabitch_.
Despite the timeline of all divergent experiences and cycles, musical themes and modes are symmetries with a global set of identified situations. What’s left of the humdrum but a continual and repetitive cult? I’m asking you: How would you enjoy post-industrial commodity consumption without “Material Girl”? What does driving an SUV even mean without Diddy? What is love without Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”? Indeed, nations have fallen, religions collapsed, and calendars forsaken. And by my rule, Coachella marks the starting of a new year. There shan’t be more vivid communal ritual than the orgiastic tempo of this human tide bouncing to one single altar, expectorating the sensorial verses of Truth through thousands of decibels.
As Power and Science affirmed man to himself, Culture and Arts made him perceptible. Then an imperative urge for individual aesthetic flowed among the crowd, compelling every one of them to express their true Self through musical reflection. Identity is bound through the universal score and the frequency of gamut. Orpheus’s greatest trick: Is there any better way to make a man uphold the order to which he’s enchained than to tell him with song? Your passion is my panoptic. Appealing to the undeniable mystery of musical aesthetic signifies that yes, the universe is well-ordered and yes, the harmony is reached. _My dear child, tell me the music you like and I’m gonna tell you who you are_. I will decipher the infinite dimensions of your existence and reduce it to a single note on the score: light, crystalline, perfect.
Have you ever found yourself ridiculously moved by a moment of pure logic in the Universe? When the elements assemble around you to form a smooth, perfect, and incontestable wholeness. When the planets align to draw a line between your sensorial finitude and the incommensurable completion of space. Have you been submerged by this fascinating tickling of your littleness, how absurdly meaningless life can be in the great concerto of the orbs? And every time it occurs, do you fall into rapture, sounding your soul to resolve the clue of this ecstatic passion that rose and brought you to consciousness?
There is no easy way to tell you: you are genuinely sick and, most importantly, irretrievably deaf. Yes, my dear infant, I made that happen. I am the cure of the amazing vacuity of your life. I am the path to the stars. Why did you spend your student nights chewing on a chopstick, convincing yourself of the harmony reached through the keyboard solo of Supertramp’s “School”? Honestly, who would do so if not craving the memory of a lost concordance with the spheres? And yet, like all of us, I fucking LOVE Supertramp.
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