Let The Master Be Your Music

Because why not.

Physical Graffiti: Houses of the Holy (remaster alternate mix)

Muse Music Magick - and a Happy Birthday

2013 - Year of the Muse

~jimmypage.com, January 1 2013

Before all the sweat equity that a Mage must put into Magick - or a musician into music - there must be inspiration to provide the goal, the end point of that journey. But where does inspiration come from?

The neat, clean hard-wired explanation

Scientists today are discovering some incredible information on how communication and creativity work in our brains. They are getting a picture of how truly hard-wired we humans are for what we are capable of. The actual physical pathways of electrical pulses and brain structures involved during acts of creativity are being mapped.  This is very exciting stuff - but what scientists are doing is confirming what many of us have already understood:  Music is something that not only we all can do or at least appreciate, but is a basic and necessary part of the human communicative experience that evolution shaped the brain to do.

But as nice and neat as that sounds, that still doesn't explain the source of inspiration.  Science is remarkably chary of addressing the hard questions:  Why does life exist at all?  What started it?  What's it all for?

The mushy, non-scientific explanation

Like with Magick, music is a process and an experience. Like with Magick, the musical process requires desire and will and ritual (performance). And like with Magick, in spite of what science would say, the source of music is not ultimately to be found in the hard-wired world but in something much vaster than electrical pulses in the human brain. 

Science has yet to venture into to the scary territory of the Mysteries and pretty much either pretends that part of the human experience doesn't even exist or that it's hogwash (although quantum physics is making that avoidance harder and harder to maintain). Even when attempting to categorize, quantify and otherwise pin down psychic phenomena science clings to the notion that there is no difference between the mind and the brain.  

The ancients tackle the hard stuff

Some thinkers have always known better.  To them - particularly the ancient sages of mythology and philosophy -  the mind/brain sameness claim would have been considered ignorant in the extreme.

Which is not to say that human attempts to explain the unexplained (and likely unexplainable) have been 100% accurate either, but at least they tried, and so those of us today with broader vision benefit.  There is much to learn from mythology, and thus we come to Muses, the goddesses who embody inspiration and the arts.

The Muses

In western mythology there were originally three muses: Practice, Memory and Song. However, traditional mythology gives us nine muses - either daughters of Gaia and Uranus, or of Zeus and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory, daughter of Gaia and Uranus). No matter what the genealogy, the Muse we are most interested in is Euterpe ("giver of delight"), originally the muse of music and later of lyric poetry. She is most often depicted holding a flute or sometimes a lyre.

Diodorus Siculus (Greek historian 1st century B.C.) said of Euterpe, "she gives to those who hear her sing delight in the blessings which education bestows."  The bringer of musical inspiration bestows the blessing of knowledge. But we knew that.

The point of the mythology is not that there is a goddess named Euterpe hovering in the background tapping the head of a musician with a magic wand and knocking inspiration into the otherwise vacant mind, but that the inspiration is a connection from the human mind to another realm, one that is vaster than humans. It is a blessing of enlightenment and delight that appears to spring from outside the musician, in mythology from a Muse.

Truly, inspiration comes from and through the musician, as does Magick. The source isn't the human being exactly - the Mage or the musician opens the way, is a conduit of the infinite and, necessarily, a filter that cannot help but distort (that pesky infinite/finite issue).

Background mosaic of  Euterpe
appears on the front
of a concert hall,
"la salle Rameau",
in Lyon, France.  Click here for full image. 

Who needs a Muse?
So what's with the Muse, then?  If a Mage or musician can do it without one, who needs an ancient goddesses of mythology?  Well, to put it simply, there's the audience issue, too.

The Muse not only provides an explanation for the seeming Magickal blossoming of an idea but is also an audience to bounce ideas off.  All artists, all creators, need an audience - someone impartial who will experience and validate the work. But while in the process of creation, an actual human and fallible audience can be a bad idea - an uneducated comment, or even a good comment at the wrong time, can squash the artist's creative flow flatter than a bug under the sole of a Dr. Martens boot.

While some artists and Mage have a living, breathing person as Muse who provides inspiration and feedback, those extraordinary individuals are rare.  For the solitary artist or Mage, the work in progress must be bounced off of the vision of the heart and soul. It can be done, and must be done that way for the highest-level Mages of Magick, music or any of the arts or advancements in knowledge - new work means going where no Mage has gone before.

The Muse, then, is a metaphor for the artist's or Mage's process of tapping into the infinite and letting the light shine through.  Jimmy Page has declared this is the year of the Muse: A year of inspiration, of creation, of new music and of Magick.

Listen for your own Muse, for you surely have one if you want one.  If not your own, then Jimmy Page's will do.

Happy Birthday Jimmy Page January 9

Mage Music: Imagine This

Mage Music: Imagine This

Aubrey Beardsley
Frontispiece to The Wonderful History of
Vergilius the Sorcerer1893 

What exactly makes a mage powerful?  Unlike what is portrayed in fiction, a mage doesn’t have to be a person in black robes, and isn’t a person who has a lot of magic stored up in amulets or who is born with magical power.  A mage doesn’t “have” magic any more than a computer “has” the internet.  Magic is like Yoda’s Force – it is the energy source of life.  Like a Jedi who masters the Force, a true mage is one who has the skill, talent and will to open to that energy and to use it to make changes in the world. 

Think of the relationship of a mage to magic the same way you do of the device you use to access the internet to the internet itself.  The internet is gigantic, so big it is for all practical purposes infinite – there’s no way your device can access it all.  Still, the more powerful the device the better it can access the internet and the more data it can process, providing it isn’t hampered by malware, poor programming or by just not having sufficient capacity.

It’s the same with a mage.  All of us access the energy of the universe without even thinking about it – it’s called being alive.  A mage, however, accesses that energy on purpose, using clarity of mind to visualize the desired outcome, and then ritual of some sort to focus the mind on the desired outcome.

The clarity both comes from and results in enlightenment – literally aligning with the energy of the universe.  The most proficient use of the energy comes through focus.  The actual process is not truly important – alignment with the energy of the universe can be equally achieved through magick, meditation, the sciences, art or, in the case of Jimmy Page, through music.  The product of true enlightenment is readily apparent to anyone who sees experiences it. 

It can be easily seen why Jimmy Page is considered a mage:  He engages purposeful clarity of vision, and focuses through the ritual of the music on a desired outcome.  Music is the ritual of his magic.

Jimmy Page is well known for his attention to detail and his control of all aspects of his vision.  Thus when comparing the John Lennon/Yoko Ono 1972 film, Imagine,  to the Jimmy Page acoustic segment deleted from the 2008 video It Might Get Loud, we must wonder what Mr. Page’s choices meant in the context of the music he was playing.

It would be very hard to believe that Jimmy Page had never seen the Lennon/Ono film, if not when it first came out then sometime over the next thirty-something years, when Mr. Page makes a video of himself playing an unnamed acoustic guitar piece in a room so identical to the one in the Lennon/Ono film that one might only tell the difference by checking out the scenery through the windows and details of the rooms.

A white empty room; a white chair for Jimmy Page, a white piano for John Lennon:  We must believe Jimmy Page didn’t just “happen” to choose that room to be filmed in or that his chair placement, in basically the same location as John Lennon’s piano, was accidental.  We must believe that the video starts and ends with visual focus on a reflection in the floor rather than the guitarist for a reason.  We must believe that there is purpose for everything in this video because control of detail has always been in Jimmy Page’s nature.  He is, after all, a master mage – he is performing ritual - but it is for his own purposes and it is up to us to take meaning from it.

The music

John Lennon’s song is very different from Jimmy Page’s.  Lennon’s is finished and polished.  It has lyrics that carry the meaning; the music is support for the lyrics.  Jimmy Page’s song sounds raw and unfinished.  It doesn’t even seem like it was meant for an acoustic guitar; it sounds very much like he was hearing an electric guitar in his head along with support instruments.  It has no need for lyrics because the music itself carries the meaning.

The visuals

While each song is being played, the music is the focus.  But before and after each song, the visuals are the focus. 

At the beginning of Imagine, Yoko Ono and John Lennon walk together to the room where the music will take place.  At the end they look at each other, then kiss – excluding the viewer and, in making the video be about the two of them, leaving the message of the song behind.  The song is over.

At the beginning of the Jimmy Page acoustic video the camera focuses on the reflective floor before panning to the musician.  At the end, Jimmy Page sits back and looks out the window, redirecting focus out to the world before turning to look at the camera, which then pans to the reflective floor.  The music has been given to the world, and then to the viewer, and then… the reflection.  Has the song, or more importantly the message, actually ended?

This brings us to the message, the intent of the work of the ritual.

The message

No one can read the mind of the artist or the mage, or presume to know what the meaning of a work is.  The inner vision is the artist’s alone and each person brings to a work his or her own life experience, which acts as a filter and framework for interpretation.

Nevertheless, we can make some statements about the message of Jimmy Page’s video.  The setting is meant to evoke another setting.  The beginning and end focus on a reflective surface:  This video is meant to reflect something else.  There are no lyrics, so the music and the video itself convey the message.  Jimmy Page’s song and video have no name, but reflects the Lennon/Ono film and song:  Imagine.  To me the message is just that:  Imagine what this song of Jimmy Page’s - still in process, still more in his head than in the world – will be.  Imagine, because there is so much more than what is seen and heard there.

Of course there is no way to know if any of this interpretation was meant by Jimmy Page. Sometimes, perhaps often, the creator doesn't actually know what the work means - he or she only knows that it must be created.  Still... keep in mind what Albert Einstein said:  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  Technology can come in many forms, can't it?  Science or art, video or music - whatever it is, advanced enough and it is indistinguishable from magic.  

The Music and The Magic

Mage Music: The Music and The Magic
What I’m listening to as I write: Ten Years Gone

Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti
Led Zeppelin Atlanta 1977
Led Zeppelin Seattle 1977
Led Zeppelin California 1977
Led Zeppelin MSG New York 1977
Led Zeppelin Knebworth 1979
Led Zeppelin Cleveland 1979
Page & Plant Rehearsal 1996
Page & Plant Japan 1996
The Black Crowes with Jimmy Page New York 2000

Jimmy Page is often referred to as a Mage or Magus. A mage is a person who performs a paranormal kind of magic as opposed to magical tricks like a stage illusionist in Las Vegas. It's likely the label originally reflected Mr. Page's interest in the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley, although today it holds true for a different reason: Jimmy Page's uncanny musical ability.

A mage can also be referred to as an enchanter, wizard, magus, thaumaturgist, or simply magician. Each term has a subtly different meaning - some more negative than others - but all terms that refer to the occult kind of magic revolve around the manipulation of reality through supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws.

Magic is similar to religion in many ways. Although magic is generally more result-oriented and religion more worship-oriented, both (ideally) are about spiritual growth. And, as with religion, magic may take different approaches: That of the holographic or sympathetic universe (the practitioner's actions cause a parallel effect elsewhere), or that of collaboration (the practitioner gets supernatural beings to cause the effect).

In some ways all meanings apply to Jimmy Page as magus, especially since he, himself, described his life as “a fusion of magick and music” (Guitar World, January 2008). (Note the alternate spelling: magick. Crowley chose the spelling with “k” at the end to differentiate between occult vs. stage illusionist practice).

Rituals are sets of symbolic actions, performed in a certain order. Almost all religions and magic use rituals in their practice, however those more "purely" spiritual are seen as being able to practice without need of ritual. For most practitioners, pure or otherwise, ritual is a tool that serves as a means of settling the mind into the right frame to achieve the transformation desired.

The specific ritual used in magic depends on the type of magician and his/her approach to the practice, but the purpose for using ritual for all practitioners is the same: To create a focus of the will (focused desire) of the mage in order to bring about the desired transformations and to focus and unify the other participants in the ceremony (ceremonial participants are generally a source of power for the magician).

It would be easy to simply say that Jimmy Page’s musical work is magical because it is so very good, but that says nothing much at all.

It would be more accurate to say that Jimmy Page’s musical work is magical because it is about manipulation of reality through music and, in my opinion, because it is also for purposes of spiritual growth.
In his own words and actions, Mr. Page shows that his music speaks for him in a magical way. In a 1973 interview he stated that “We're all still seeking for truth - the search goes on", and “…at those times when I've hit it [when performing], it's just like I'm a vehicle for some greater force."

Of course, people grow, people change. The beliefs of the young are tempered by age. The Jimmy Page of 1973 is not the Jimmy Page of today, yet in 2010 Mr. Page still believed in the power of music: “ I think it’s got to be all part of our DNA, this mass communication through music” (The Scotsman interview).

Pure magic, the transformation of the world, is achieved almost every time that Jimmy Page performs. Mr. Page has been dismissed by critics for his sloppy playing, for not always staying in tune – basically for lack of perfection - but even on his worst, most tuneless, sloppy days, his music conveys an extra layer of meaning, a communication that makes the manner in which it is performed almost irrelevant. It is magic coming through, as Jimmy Page says about Embryo, a work in progress that he plays in the movie It Might Get Loud.

It is what we, the participants in the ritualistic ceremony of the music of Jimmy Page, understand is the guitar alchemy of a powerful mage.

MAGE MUSIC

I'm curious about music - why it works, why it generates the responses it does.  I'm not educated in music theory, but I want to know more about music than just that I like it or that it seems powerful.  I want to know why.  I'm hoping you do, too.

There's lots of pages devoted to Jimmy Page as guitarist, solo, with Led Zeppelin and others.  There's discussion of the lyrics of the songs, and there's lots about Mr. Page's guitars and techniques too.  There's not so much out there about the music itself, though.

I'm curious about the music.  About why it is so magical, how someone with no classical music education could compose the way Mr. Page does, about what works, what doesn't.  About the influences - both on Mr. Page and that of his music on others.

With the help of thinking people everywhere who admire Jimmy Page and his work, this blog is dedicated to serious (and maybe not-so-serious) analysis of his awesome music.

Be advised that it is this blogmaster's opinion that Jimmy Page is truly The Rock God; nevertheless we understand that there are other musicians and music of value.  Thus, all music can be discussed with reference to Mr. Page's work as long as it is done in a respectful manner, and with insight that will allow us all to learn.

PS - we will NOT beg Jimmy Page to reunite Led Zeppelin on this blog, OK?