Music of Photography: On the edges of the knife

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me – like food or water.

Ray Charles

I think that one of the most powerful therapy in the world is melotherapy, through music. Photography can also be a form of therapy, painting also, or any other kind of arts.

In the United States, in the projects of Anytown, U.S.A., delinquent highschool students are encouraged to practice a form of art, or crafts, or what have you, in order to compensate for their delinquency and to give meaning to their lives. It’s not to just occupy their time in order to revert their mind from their bad habits, but rather to occupy it with something with constructive results rather than destructive, as it started to be in their lives.

This approach and practice is also done with former detainees and recidivists, people who went to jail for some deed or another etc., to make them find a vocation and exercise it and to put them to work for the community. This kind of program is rather an alternative when it should be the main program of rehabilitation for these people. I’m still studying the reasons behind this kind of destructive behaviour and what I could find is that revenge is the main reason.

Also, a lack or proper education and the loss of hope or trust for them is killing them, actually, from the people they used to be and could be, to the people they are in the moment of falling in the hands of these habits. It is not suffice to say that these bad habits are also promoted in our society today. I have no idea why governmental institutions still do this but I take it it’s out of a kind of revenge, also, on mankind, of some sort.

But let’s get back to talking about something more beautiful than this, shall we? :)

Recently, the word “vibrato” came to my mind. I know that everything vibrates, from the very big to the very small. And these vibrations are signaling the existence of electricity and magnetism. But I’m studying not the method called “tremolo”, but “vibrato”, which are vibrations with continuity. There are two musical notes that can vibrate with this effect and without interruptions or one musical note with repeating changes of pitch. This is really interesting because of the continuity characteristic that made me reflect upon this, and not about the pauses or gaps between two notes that are succeeding together, one after another, time and time again. I’m not interested in the gaps, for I will speak about them in a later chapter, but rather in the continuous stream of notes.

In photography, this continuity is very important. One cannot practice photography without having a continuity of purposes, without doing it regularly and this is what brings fast results. One can say this way “I can only get better at it”, which is what ultimately refers to learning and progressing.

Great photographers, such as Ansel Adams, Michael Kenna, Marc and David Muench, Galen Rowell, Josef Sudek, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Adamus and so on, were and are very dedicated in their field of activity. Becoming great requires, first of all, talent or propensity for this and practice to hone the skills and get them to mature, to ripe, fructified to the fullest.

This happens in any field, not only in photography. But I want to talk about the differences between vibrato and tremolo. We found out what vibrato means, the regular and continuous pulsating change of pitch for the notes played. But tremolo has interruptions and this also has a certain use.

In the practical, day-to-day life there is continuity without ever stopping, so to speak, from doing the things one needs or wants to do, and there are also moments of pause, passivity in which one stops doing what one was doing on a short term, so to speak, in order to rest and gather strengths. Of course, action consumes energy. But there is also a way of regenerating the energies in action. One doesn’t always need rest periods to regenerate, one also needs to act in balance with the harmonies of the Universe. This way, the “batteries” are recharging.

If our actions consume energy, it means we are fastening the wheel of perpetual movement of the Universe, that resides in us also. If we are lazy and have many periods of doing nothing in our lives, we can reduce the speed with which this wheel turns perpetually or we can somewhat actively refuse the energies, block them within us and create all sorts of stoppages within the channels of energy that represent their flowing system.

Energy must move. It is its nature! There’s no other way. But the energies that we have must be transformed and refined in order to feed our Soul and our Spirit. This way we feel accomplished. Every person who is doing this reaches the states of accomplishment in their life.

Therefore, vibrato and tremolo teaches us that everything vibrates, moves perpetually in the Universe, in us also, and must be this way. This is the nature of the things..

I also think that people who don’t have a purpose in life just yet need to find it and practice it. How one reaches perpetual success depends only on how one’s dosing one’s energies. We can be intelligent and balanced doing this.

There must be pauses also in the universal music, otherwise there is an abuse of energies. The balance of Nature, of the Universe is always intelligently made and played. There are no abuses other than what we are doing.

In conclusion, we need to get to that place that is our own and stay there, practice our skills, our God given talents, our Dharma, if you will, and go with the flow of the Intelligent Universe, but be intelligent also and not unconscious, mechanical beings. This way we will be forever vibrating on the same tune with the Cosmos and in harmony with it.

The first big step in one’s life is vocation. The next big step is the self-realization. :)

A life without meaning leads to a life lived in sin.