There is no set programme. Improvisations starts with silence, or with a minimal theme. There is no rational definition for HA!. Always open to the future, always a dimension of not knowing. Is that scary or what? Or is it just normal, the way life unfolds anyway?
Does it mean that "anything just goes," "there are no rules," "you cannot make any mistakes..?" Or is there hidden somewhere, a basic structure, a skeleton that could be revealed once the flesh is torn away?
There is. But it is not in the usual sense of a structure that determines the outcome. Not in the usual sense of a plan that is followed, or a "trick" hidden in your head, that "works," only needs conscious application. No. It still starts with silence. There is still no conscious planning going on beforehand. But like a tree that grows from a seed, it grows freely, yet with the structure of it as an intrinsic part of the growth and the flow.
Our culture has a huge problem with anything that cannot be consciously controlled. Yet the most natural way of finding structure is not to control it. Simply to allow it. Even deeper: to trust it. Yes, in HA! it means to start in silence and to trust that it will present itself with structure included.
But what structure? Can it be analyzed and understood? Indeed it can. To start in silence is already a structural departure. Music that emerges from silence cannot be contrary to it. It remains close to silence, perhaps soft, slow, perhaps spiritual, perhaps suspended with little direction, perhaps like it is swimming under water, perhaps like it is being born, like a child, with a central consciousness of one-ness. And what happens next? What happens when silence is left behind? At some point, self-consciousness sets in. The eternity is broken, and a tension appears. The music moves, it grows, it becomes aware of an open field of possibilities. It explores, experiments, it gathers energy onto itself to the point of explosion. And then? Before it disintegrates, it remembers its beginnings, it seeks to find the whole within the host of details, it seeks form, it seeks and finds flow, containing both the silence and the movement within itself. Thus three broad structural parts can be distinguished, parts that are no rule, but only a map, no prescription but only an orientation. The structure never objectifies itself. It remains part of the living whole. A three-part structure: 1. child/one-ness/inward/instinctive 2. adolescent/growth/outward/sensational 3. maturity/stable flow/homecoming/emotive. A structure that naturally follows.
Much of what happens in this performance - the programme flow in itself and many of the improvised and recorded pieces - reveals this underlying structure. The HA!Man web site is organized on the basis of it. And the understanding of humanity as an adolescent species still searching for maturity flows from it.
It is both the
invitation and challenge of HA! - to find and nurture this spontaneous meeting
point between chaos and order, between mind and body, between "anything
goes" and the highest craftsmanship.
HA!Man 15 December 2012
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