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| Redlining the passion gauge |
~ Ramble On
Mage Music 45
Back in the day when hot cars were as all-consuming as the new music brought to us courtesy of such guitar marvels as Jimmy Page, we talked about redlining. It
had nothing to do with smarmy financial practices and everything to do with
living on the edge.
The term redline comes from the red bars that are
displayed at the high end of a car’s tachometer. If you were drag racing, street racing or
just getting off the stoplight fast because you felt like it, you wanted those
RPMs to be high to deliver the most power.
Winding the engine up to the red line got you the maximum possible from
the engine at the risk of blowing it up.
It was dangerous, it could be costly.
It was worth it. We couldn't help ourselves - we were passionate about the cars and the music and pushing the envelope.
Passion
On the
emotional tachometer, passion is the human redline.
It’s not something that can ever be truly satisfied because it’s not
like a desire for ice cream that goes away after you've had a banana
split. Passion is enduring and
powerful - and when you mess with passion, you are in a handle-with-care state of being.
If you're a Mage, though, you can't avoid passion - it is actually two-thirds of the process of Magick.
Desire can range from mild thoughts to an all-consuming lust for something. Will - the drive to do something about that
desire – can range from barely there to an unrelenting force. When combined desire and will are at the high end of the emotional range, they
earn the label of passion.
You
don't have to be a Mage to intuitively understand that any ritual of Magick needs
to have some oomph behind it. No one would expect a ritual to amount to
much if the Mage only kinda-sorta wanted to, and only more-or-less felt like doing
it. With a car, high octane fuel provides more compression before detonating. Passion is high octane fuel for Magick.
But
like with a car engine, redlining passion is risky. Powerful surges of emotion are like powerful
surges of adrenaline or high octane car fuel – they have to be burned off before they blow up the engine. With adrenaline you have to take physical action.
With powerful emotion at the level of passion you have to feel it, surrender to it and let it take
you where it will because if you try to control it you risk blowing
up.
Here's the tricky part: The powerful surges of passion are barely controllable, and yet a Mage must channel passion through the ritual, the controlled component of Magick. The Mage must have the technical ability to do justice to the music, and that ability must live in muscle memory so it doesn't constrict the flow of passion. The skill (technique) must be such that the Mage doesn't think about the musical instrument as much as let it be played directly by the passion.
It's simple but...
If Magick was easy, everyone would be a Mage. If channeling passion through a musical instrument was easy, everyone would be a Mage Musician. Magick is simple but it is not easy.
If Magick was easy, everyone would be a Mage. If channeling passion through a musical instrument was easy, everyone would be a Mage Musician. Magick is simple but it is not easy.
"That's my lifetime achievement - that people would be inspired by the music."
~ Jimmy Page, Echo music award 2013
Mage Music and music lovers everywhere congratulate Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin on receiving the Echo music award. Believe me, we're inspired.
