Music as an advocate —

“I am thirsting for a composer,”
said an innovator to his disciple,

“who would learn my ideas from me and transpose them into his language;
that way. I should reach men’s ears and hearts for better.

With music
one can seduce men
to every error and every truth:
who could refute a tone?”

–“‘Then you would like to be considered irrefutable?” said his disciple.

The innovator replied:
“I wish for the seedling to become a tree.
For a principle to become a tree,
it has to be believed for a good while;
for it to be believed, it has to be considered irrefutable.

The tree needs storms, doubts, worms, and nastiness to
reveal the nature and the strength of the seedling; let it break
if it is not strong enough. But a seedling can only be destroyed
–not refuted…

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 2, Section 106 by Friedrich Nietzsche

I was drawn into the heart of our discussion last night.  How great is the difference between experience as an observer, even an attentive observer, than being present on stage, a member of an ensemble working/thinking/exploring together.  A member of our group interjected a conundrum, a long standing concern of his: 

Given the increase of humankind, the urban and suburban proliferation of civilization, by what right, authority, permission, __________, –should anyone have use of the land?

We all know the conclusion of this matter from the beginning of recorded history to the present:  “Might makes right” or to express the principle with more delicacy, if you have enough cold cash, or enough military, or enough technological advantage, — you may assert your unequivocal possession.  Then you’d proclaim the act, “legal.”

This precedent has to be replaced by another method, by a principle more kind to the earth, and more inclusive of all of us. 

HELP WANTED!  — A composer, an enchanter to help us believe generation to generation that the earth is sacred, and that we homo sapiens are of-the-earth as is every living being…