The Role of Art and Music 2 (Amended)

It has been a very long time since the last I wrote an essay on this blog, the Covid 19 pandemic and all the incidental disruption had really distracted me from writing. I believe the pandemic and all the quarantine had prompted the entertainment producers in China to make high quality TV programmes to keep people entertained while under lock down. 

One such programmes was '乘风破浪3' (Sisters Who Make Waves) which was aired on May 2022 on Mango TV. Some short video clips of the show that featured Cindy Wang (王心凌) was recommended to me through my YouTube feed and the images of '王心凌男孩' infatuation with her song '爱你' was really infectious, it was very hard for me not to check out the rest of the show on YouTube. It was a singing and dancing show that was participated by 30 celebrities and many of them were familiar faces who debuted in the show business in the 2000's. I must say the quality of the entire show was way beyond my expectation, the design of the performance stage, the choice of songs and choreography, the stage pyrotechnics, the artists' makeup and fashion were all top notch.

To be honest, wasn't too familiar with the works of these 2000's artists back then but they sure brought back fond memories of the things I did, people I have met and places I have been in the 2000's. Even though life was hectic for me at that time, but I was energetic, purposeful and full of hopes and dreams. Now that I have more freedom and am half retired  it is only reasonable to assume that I should feel better. In certain ways it is more comfortable but at the same time, living without much purpose just makes me feel lethargic and redundant. That is why seeing these 2000's artists have awakened memories of me being active and given me energy to write something purposeful again.

The presence of the Hong Kong pop duo 'Twins' in the show reminded me of the essay 'The Role of Arts and Music' I wrote in 2017 and I saw some similar elements in the contents of my essay and the show. So I thought it is time to add some new insights to the Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism (儒释道) on wisdom and energy management that were dealt with in the first essay. 

As the Buddhists adage goes, 佛法在世间不离世间觉 离世觅菩提恰如求兔角， that is why I always prefer to understand these teachings from the perspective of their practical daily applications. The Buddha chose to preach the 'Four Noble Truths' 2,500 years ago in India/Nepal because livelihood of people in general at that time was tough and therefore people can relate better to the 4 types of sufferings in the 'Four Noble Truth' and will find the teachings acceptable and usable (因缘说法). I choose to interpret the dharma in the context of arts and music is because they are very much part of our daily lives these days and will be easily assimilated by the modern line of logic.

The Chinese philosophies and religions believe in the importance of the Yin Yang circulation (阴阳循环 刚柔相济 静动结合 生生不息 ) as the fundamental force that keeps everything in existence, and in Buddhist understanding, '阴' works like '分别' while '阳' works like '执着'. The smooth circulation of this fundamental Yin Yang energy is very much dependent on the harmonious flow or interaction between these two elements. This interchange of Yin Yang is very similar to the interchange of the nothingness and somethingness mirror images (刹那生灭) as mentioned in the previous essay 'Flower Adornment Sutra' (华严经) which created our space time continuum, it is like our universe is breathing. When the breathing is blocked, it means freeze frames as the bodies or entities can't generate inner energies to counter the implosion caused by the karmic gravity. They will usually take the form of chaos, instability, desperation, asphyxiation, agitation and the system will resort to extreme actions in order to continue breathing again.

In order to keep the energy circulating to sustain our existence, we need to overcome the obstacles that are in its way, and we do it with morals and interpersonal skills such as generosity (仁) to break down barriers between the rich and poor; humility (耻) to close the gap between the victorious and defeated; courtesy(礼) and respect (恭敬) to harmonise differences; justice (义) to resolve wrong doings and discrepancies; and love (爱), piety (孝) and loyalty (忠) to reciprocate the kindness and favors from others.

In addition to that, we also develop other alternative skills/circuits of Yin Yang circulation which act like ancillary power generators to create sensations and current flow when the main generators as above are blocked by karmic obstacles. These skills are in the form of harmony in music, coherence in literature, synchronicity and poise in dancing and sports, symmetry in design/beauty and logic to equate and balance numbers.

As you can see moral qualities like generosity, humility, courtesy, respect, justice, love, loyalty and piety; and different forms of intelligence such as harmony, coherence, synchronicity, symmetry and logic, share the characteristic that is similar to the nature of equality. It is this nature of equality that enabled the Yin Yang energy to circulate and this energy is what the Chinese called, '福气' or good fortune. Please refer to the article 'The Impermanence of Reality' for a more complete understanding of equality.

We take a look at how musical skills can be used to open a pathway for energy to flow, for example, the Jazz music made use of sounds or chords that give us the impression of something unresolved. Hybrid chords like these are filled with sharp or flat notes which are meant to blur the lines between two full notes and they have the effects of suspending our thoughts so that we are not fixated to any ideas or emotions. 

It is quite similar to the use of metaphors and allegories in poems in order to suspend our thoughts, for example when we equate the strength and hardiness of men to montains and the beauty of women to flowers, we blurr the lines between men and mountains, and between women to flowers.  Without it, men will be men and women will be women, and no new associations and ideas will be created. Once we have blurred the lines or fixation (执着)   then we will feel relaxed and free up the minds to let new ideas (分别) and energy to flow and set the Yin Yang cycle in motion.

We can also experience this suspended jazzy feelings from looking at masquerades and appropriately so, there is a jazzy song called 'This Masquerade' by 'Carpenters'. When you see people wearing half masks, you get to see only half their faces, it created an intriguing feeling of '若有若无', or 'looks like it but not quite it'. This slight intrigue created an uncertainty in our cognition that is open to interpretation, and it is this slight unresolved tension that is causing sensations to flow. It is like the kind of pleasant and soothing sensation you feel when you rub your hand together gently. If you don't do anything, you can't feel the current and become '死水' but if you rub your hands together too vigorously, you will feel pain. So it shows that we need a good balance of Yin (detach) Yang (attach) in order to generate the energy of '福气', too much of any side will yield either lifeless desolation or painful destruction.

Another example is how we get bored of our favourite music after listening to it over many times. If a song is genuinely good then we should be able to enjoy it no matter how often we listen to it right? The  problem is, the deep impression (着相) of the music that formed in our minds from the repetition will cause our minds to become jaded or fixated  like a writer's block. The deep impression prevented our mind to '收' (detach) and '放' (attach) in order to create the pleasant soothing current when we listen to our favourite music. We will have to stop listening to the song for a while so that our brains have time to erase the deep impression before we can enjoy it again. 阴阳循环，刹那生灭就是若有若无的现象.

The great thing about this episode of 乘风破浪 is that it has many elements which I am familiar with, such as rock music which I listened to for a period of time from age 13 to 15. Even though the appearance of the modern rock music and its elements have evolved a lot from the versions I was exposed to in the late 70's and early 80's, I can still relate to them because the essence hasn't changed.

Rock and roll music has its roots in jazz music as we can see how the 12 bars blues of Jazz got adapted to become the main hook in rock music. This suspended unresolved sound was used by rock musician to activate the logic of 'I don't care' or 'I am cool and indifferent' when they are faced with challenges and fear in lives. For example, we often watched in movies when militants were flying in helicopters to various destinations to carry out dangerous military operations, some cool and audacious rock and roll music will play in the background to help them temporarily suspend their fears. The 'devil may care' attitude of the rock music helped them to unresolve or deter the idea of fear from taking shape. This alternate state of mind tend to make them look numb and unperturbed by the dangers or turn them goofy and trivialize the dangers ahead with jokes. This is important for them to not let the stress and worry overwhelm them so that their minds can muster enough courage to carry on.

Besides being oblivious and reckless, one other element of the rock and roll soul is dereliction. Rock artists often make themselves look tattered, dilapidated, drab, gruff but cool from their makeup, hairstyle, fashion and posture. I wasn't exactly sure why they adopted this type of appearance until I read the memoirs of famous novelist, lyricist and movie script writer, 三毛 (陈懋平). She was very popular in the 70's and 80's in the Chinese literal community because of her vivid, romantic and liberal writings. One of her peculiar habits was collecting discarded waste like paper, glass, wood, metals and rubber and piece them together as beautiful and functional artworks, very much like what Pablo Picasso were very fond of doing.

This artistic expression reminded me of another Chinese artist, 陈漫 whose art philosophy centred on the idea of marrying opposite items and values into a coherent and communicative form. So it is the same philosophy behind 三毛's art of piecing together different pieces of waste to form a coherent end product. When they do that, they feel as if they had harmonized a certain conflict in their minds be it personal or philosophical, and once they achieved this harmony, they will feel great satisfaction because the harmony will enable the Yin Yang circulation to flow again. I believe the messages (the resolved conflicts) behind 三毛's garbage art and the derelict image of rockers are the same, they are saying that even discarded waste can be regarded as beautiful and popular, and that which are lowly can also have high regards. 

The rockers are people who felt that the conservative values are too stiff and exclusive, and they do not want to be constantly judged by standards which are perceived to be unfair. These aren't exactly dangerous military operations but they are defitely chocking their breath and they sought to break out from this constraint through expressing their subconscious grievances in the form of rock and roll music and culture as their own path in thinking and lifestyle.

I shall end part 1 here and continue to examine soft music, movies and dancing in subsequent essays from the same angle of 儒释道 and hope that things will be coherent. Soft music and dancing requires a different mindset and it is better to extricate from the rock and jazz state of mind first to avoid confusion.