Kevin P. Holland - The Still Point

Submission for edX BerkleeX: OMTHR-001x Music For Wellness course, assignment one. I am currently reading John Daido Loori’s The Zen of Creativity. Of particular interest is the chapter entitled “The Still Point”. Loori likens the center of creative expression to the eye of a hurricane — a calm, focused place where the mind is open and receptive amidst the chaos of the world, and the noise of our own thoughts. To quiet the mind and remain still, to listen openly and without judgement is to become closer to pure creative intention. “The mind is like the surface of a pond. When the wind blows, the surface is disturbed. Then there are waves and ripples, and the image of the sun or the moon is broken up. When the wind quiets down, the surface of the pond becomes like glass. The stilled mind is like a mirror. It doesn’t process; it just reflects. When there is a flower in front of it, it reflects a flower. When the flower is gone, the reflection is gone. The mind returns to that original smooth surface. A still mind is unobstructed. It doesn’t hold on or attach to anything. At any moment it is free, regardless of the circumstances.” - Loori In this improvised solo guitar piece, I aim to illustrate the contrast of a still mind with the cacophony of fractured thoughts that bombard us on a daily basis. There are moments of open simple harmony through unisons and octaves, phrases built upon stacked minor seconds and other dissonances, and percussive muted chording where the sound of the guitar is struggling to burst forth. Throughout the performance, I attempt to return to a still mind and open intervals to quiet the internal noise and flittering thought processes. Because the intention of this piece was to purposely travel between mental stillness and chaos, it sometimes proved difficult to fully let go of the noisier elements and return to harmony. But by using open intervals and soft harmonics to represent a pond’s stillness, I was able to follow those sounds as a guide back to internal consonance. YouTube: https://youtu.be/ndJlmT_nuno