Phillip Treloar - Thought's Eternal Peace
MNM037
Thought’s Eternal Peace
Dedicated with Heart-filled Love to the memory of my sister
Lynette Ruth Treloar
November 3, 1944 ~ May 9, 2020
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If communication means something like, to meet in exchange on common ground, then common ground implies a shared medium understood by all participants. Communication is a concept that rewards thought. That word is in common use and when used, it is usually taken for granted; we assume its meaning to be common ground. In daily life this assumption is both practical and necessary. But that word qua concept is also applied to the so-called arts and here commonality and taken-for-granted assumptions become problematic. One only has to consider the word ‘creative’ or the word ‘spirit’ to get the drift of my thought here. Interpretive contexts carry crucial significance. It’s a process.
From early childhood I couldn’t understand why emulation was necessary. School was like being in a cage of parrots. Education was basically regurgitation: being ‘taught’ how to read the world and express perceptions while the notion of experience as a heuristic process, through discovery, was negated. Common ground was all that counted, and I wasn’t very capable on common ground. Difference, where it applied, was acceptable as long as it was rational in common-ground terms. To some who may be reading this, these thoughts may not be news. But nothing much has changed, other than the means by which common ground is made wider while pulling more people into its fold. The smartphone syndrome makes the point. Our humanity is being asphyxiated by the information industry and a marketplace with its mechanistic predilections, and it operates on concepts like popularity, hero worship, competition, desire, greed, superiority, opportunism, and...
Some seem able to circumvent the impact and I’m one. My own path was broached in the late-1960’s early-’70s. Improvised music had become my all and, in those days, musical improvisation was equated with jazz. For me, that meant African American music. Since then, and due in no small measure to a few brave hearts beyond the African American orbit and of which, again, I’m one, the borders of music improvisation have been extended, not to mention made fuzzy, to the point where almost any kind of sound- making/organization constitutes music which communicates in some form. Common ground has become multiple-multiple. My little Johnny could do that! And he does, or appears to, or so his parents think. And little Johnnies come in a vast variety of adult bodies. Where are we going?
Emulation, as I understand it, boils down to something quite simply stated: the psychological implications of intention. It goes without saying, I hope, that getting in touch with those psychological implications and intentions is no easy road to hoe. In fact, the will required to excavate the depths of one’s own psychological makeup is prodigious, and, in the process, one comes face-to-face with the question of humility, the implications being directly related to the place and assignation demanded by that ever-present conceit I’ll refer to as “I-ness”. Ego is easily appeased (albeit insatiable) but not so easily subdued, let alone negated. Bottom line though, it’s a pest. It’ll devour the yield of creative propagation like a plague of grasshoppers in a field of wheat.
Subdue the ego and the drive to emulate becomes impotent, thus allowing innate qualities to emerge. And, for some inexplicable reason, I became fascinated with innate qualities at a young age, not only my own, but whosever I came into close contact with. The sharing of innate qualities, I discovered, is not everybody’s cup of tea; scary for many. But those innate qualities, when given their due respect, proliferate as more space is given them. They thrive in eventful experience.
It was eventful experience that led me to music and its making. I’ve never conceived of music as being common ground. Popularity, for its own sake, has always been anathema; a dis-ease; a terminal illness that eats away the very life force of creativity. My induction into music happened when I was fourteen. It was immediate, and in almost no time I realized clearly that I’d never be its master, nor it mine. The road ahead was laid but not paved.
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 was an instantaneous experience. I acquired a copy of that music in about 1971 and by the end of the first track on Side A I’d become a marimba player. In my imagination I remained a marimba player until 1995, by which time I was forty-nine and had had a wealth of experience as an improvising musician and composer of notated music. Teaching English as a second language in Japan enabled me to pay for my beautiful five-and-a-half octave Korogi marimba. I’d never played a keyboard instrument other than, over the years, fiddling around on pianos from time to time. I set myself the task of learning the marimba through experience – no teachers, no tutors or method books, no tunes of the jazz or any other variety, and no reading of marimba parts. My aim was quite simple: to find a relationship with the marimba I felt completely at home with so as to allow the music I felt to be innate, to emerge.
In 1976 I was the recipient of a visitation (as I like to think of the experience) from which I found myself with a composition, Primal Communication, and a philosophy of life that immediately became a commitment. I was thirty years of age. At that stage I’d not studied music composition in any way at all nor had I begun reading philosophy, or books of any kind. The experience pointed the way, a way I continue to travel. The philosophy I came to refer to as Collective Autonomy and is based on the virtues of Truth, Faith, Trust, Humility, and Sincerity. The music here, Thoughts Eternal Peace, reflects that philosophy. It also reflects my decades-long endeavor to understand a Buddhist perspective regarding what counts as life. Neither endeavor has reached anything that might resemble an achievement and I have no expectations for them to be otherwise than what they are. They are, simply put, a privileged responsibility. There is just the doing, one moment feeding into the next then the next. Little by little the impact of past moments weighs in, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, perhaps a little progress is being made.
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© Phil TRELOAR 2024
credits
released February 9, 2025
CREDITS AND THANK YOUS
I see little point in publishing this offering without being committed to the belief that you, the recipient, is being embraced in some way by the feelings and thoughts encoded within. But it is you who determines the nature of reception and in whatever way you do, I extend to you my gratitude for doing so.
Extensive notes of appreciation could be written for each person who has contributed their musical and technical expertise, time and generosity of spirit to the making of this offering. I trust that each person mentioned below will accept my sincere gratitude with the assurance that the extensive notes are in my heart.
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Recording: Dan Shapland and Matt Newsome
Mastering: Andrew Garton
Design: Brodie McAllister
Production & Publishing: Made Now Music (Brodie McAllister)
Instrument – Korogi five-octave marimba: Just Percussion (Tom O’Kelly)
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Expressing Thanks to: The legion of musicians with whom, over many years, I’ve shared creative space; Billy Hart, a consummate musician who unerringly marked the turning point; Madhup Maudgalaya, who pointed the way to harmonic infinity; Dr Graham Hair, who provided the light to recontextualize my vision; Simone de Haan, whose insight was catalytic; Brodie McAllister, for his untiring support and contribution to creative music as a player, producer, and organizer, and his and Cat McAllister’s cherished friendship; Tom and Alison O’Kelly, for their heart-filled kindness, boundless generosity and loving friendship; My sons, Teo and Wynton and Zali, my granddaughter, who are always there; My late sister, Lynette, with whom I shared a deep spiritual relationship and Michèle, her partner; Our parents who taught us the irreplaceable value of truth; And the person I share life with on a daily basis, my wife, Miki KIDO. Not only is Miki-chan an outstanding musician but a person whose integrity and humanity has inspired me for more than thirty years and whose innate ability to balance the scales when all the weight seems to be on one side is nothing less than miraculous.