Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Zen and Archery


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Posted by Rick Denney on August 03, 2001 at 10:12:07:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Zen and Archery posted by Joseph on August 02, 2001 at 18:23:29:

I agree. Pirsig tries to define quality using circular arguments, to become a self-defining thing. God (assuming he exists in the way Christians believe) is a person who can therefore define himself and reveal himself as he chooses, and Pirsig tries to give Quality those same characteristics. That's what I meant by divorcing the effect from the source as he does.

Even so, most people (Christians and other religious people included) allow noise to crowd out their thoughts, so that they approach what they do scattered and planless. Pirsig encourages us to consider how we approach those activities. I believe there is a definition of quality consistent with my own beliefs, and that definition is profoundly different, perhaps, from the next fellow (it is certainly different from Pirsig's). But whatever the definition, Pirsig's description of quality (as opposed to its definition) was the first that jibed with my own internal beliefs, and it unlocked a whole range of my own thinking.

For the musician, the key, it seems to me, is to by highly focused on the musical product separately from the craft required to produce it, while still being completely aware of that craft during performance. The best musicians ignore craft only because they have internalized it so deeply that it no longer bears on their conscious thoughts. They are still aware of it. That is the first aspect of approaching something with quality, it seems to me: preparing oneself for performance by perhaps years of focused training. Vaughan Williams called it "doing your stodge." But during performance, the great musicians are not thinking about their car payment, or last night's argument with their spouse. They are completely committed to the music they are producing, but in a way that does not get in the way of craft. That's the reason musicians read and think about these books.

Rick "who can describe it, maybe, but who can't do it" Denney


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