DAVID KEQE VIOLIN SHOP 735 SE Morrison Portland/OR 97214 (503) 238-4515 humane point of view. He wrote popular music. He wasn’t ashamed to write popular music. None of the old masters were ashamed to write popular music. It's only in this damn century that such a separation has developed between so-called good composers, who sometimes are good for nothing, except for being snobs, and music for the ordinary person. I think a real master can do both. I had a very good experience with a Greek mystic in Boston, a mystic painter, who died some time ago. He worked as a counter man in a restaurant, and at night somehow he’d find time to teach all of us. We’d be sitting in the restaurant where all the rough taxi drivers were coming in and so on. And he would have visions, and tell us what spiritual guidance he had for the day, or what I should do, or my painter friend should do. I was very close to painters at that time [1940s], theater in New York. The theater experimented with me to improvise under marijuana, and I was affected in such a way afterwards — I’d never been so depressed — that I never wanted to touch it again. I improvised under it for two days. I realized the first day that the improvisation was so extraordinary that I’d better record it. So the second day I taped it, and I have that piece. It’s a wild piece. And I can’t play it anymore. It’s very difficult. I think somebody in Sweden is going to play it in a concert of my music this October, Jan Wallengren, a pianist and composer. I called it the Poseidon Sonata. I said, “Since I’m a water sign, we’ll call this the Poseidon.” And it was a tremendous improvisation. What happened was so extraordinary. I was in the corner of the room. I left my body, and my body was playing the piano. Later, it took me a whole month to write it down, even though we had a george’s place 1900 East Aloha 324-4760 n rm here because I love the I mountains. That's the only reason I chose to be in Seattle. I'm building this house upward.... I have a beautiful view in both directions — both the Olympics and the Cascades." HELIUM BALLOON BOUQUETS CALL THE EXPERTS! FREE DOWNTOWN DELIVERY 325-2406 or 325-0997 2044 EASTLAKE E. HAIR BY APPOINTMENT MEXICAN RESTAURANT 2 Blocks from Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne 122 1st Ave. N. 283-4242 On Capitol Hill Corner of 15th & Republican 1467 E. Republican 325-9005 ATRIUM deli-cafe Sandwiches Salads Soups Beverages Desserts 2517 FIRSTAVE. 622-2393 He told me I should spend time studying Oriental music, and I should start with old Armenian music. I was very proud of my melodic abilities, so I never wanted to study folk music of any kind. My own melodies I liked very much. I was very proud, and young, and stupid. But I made a point of going into it and learning to research. And that carried me finally all around the world. CSQ: This painter's name? Hovhaness: Hermon DiGiovanno ... He was a remarkable man, and he taught me many things which I never learned from anyone else. He taught us all. In fact, we called him the Socrates of Boston. CSQ: Are you all alone in your discoveries, your techniques, your synthesis of Eastern and Western music? Hovhaness: Well, when I did it, probably I was. But I’m sure one is not alone very long. As soon as one’s work is published, people know about it, and they know about it all over the world. So one doesn’t stay alone, except I’m very happy to be alone in a created work. I remember my spiritual teacher DiGiovanno used to say: “When you compose, imagine yourself with infinite space, out in the universe, without anything around you.” And I’ve found that works. It’s good advice. That’s why I don’t want to be in a Mac- Dowell colony or any other place where other composers congregate. I like to be free. I don’t want to have to talk about music. I like to do it instead. Because otherwise we eat dinner over the same piece, and everybody’s writing the same piece. Or we’re very much aware of what the other fellow is doing, so we do the opposite. It’s not very spontaneous. The Other Dimension CSQ: Have you read Thomas Mann’s book, Doctor Faustus? Hovhaness: .. .It’s a long book, but it’s a marvelous book. It’s about a composer who got mixed up with a prostitute and got syphilis and gradually went mad until he failed. He’d gotten deeper and deeper into a kind of experimental music, and finally lost his mind completely. CSQ: Have you felt that threat? Hovhaness: No. I don’t care how deep I go. [Laughter] I’m very happy to. CSQ: You’ve always felt buoyant enough to come back to the surface, to this world? Hovhaness: Yuh. But I feel that there’s no hostility between worlds. There may be in some cases, perhaps. But I’ve had so much help from the other dimension.... CSQ: Have you ever taken psychedelic substances? Hovhaness: In the '40s I was one of the music directors at an avant-garde tape recorder going at the time, the rhythm was so wild and free. Very difficult to write it down, but I did. It’s an exciting sonata.... CSQ: Why did you stop using marijuana? Hovhaness: Afterwards it had a very weird, cosmic kind of effect which I didn’t like It was too much for me. I talked to a musician about it one time, someone who used it a lot, and he said, “You’re too sensitive. You shouldn’t use it.” I knew I didn’t dare use it anymore. Getting Off the Planet CSQ: Do you go to the movies? Hovhaness: I haven’t for many years. CSQ: Have you ever heard of Obi- Wan Kenobi? Hovhaness: I’ve heard the name. Is it a real name or a joke? CSQ: Obi-Wan Kenobi is a figure, played by Alec Guinness in Star Wars, and you look a little like him. Hovhaness: Oh, I’ve seen him in other movies. I like astronomy too much to like anything to do with fiction on movies. I like Cosmos very much. But I can’t stand bringing our bad habits of wars and things like that into astronomical things. It should be a science. And I don’t believe that there’s any human beings in our solar system, or anything like us. We just happen to be lucky that the climate is just right — for a little while — but it may not last. Probably there are many higher intelligences than we are. So we shouldn’t imagine them being so stupid as we are. So I don’t like seeing Star Wars or anything to do with that kind of subject matter. CSQ: You mean the way it superimposes the human condition onto a futuristic, outer-space setting? Hovhaness: Yes. I think it’s pretty ridiculous, that sort of concept. Because if anybody was able to come to this little piece of dust that we're living on, I’m sure they’d be intelligent enough so that we’d be very happy to see them rather than fight with them. They’d have to be pretty advanced. And I don’t think we’re advanced at all. We’re just beginning to get off this planet, but we really aren’t off it yet. CSQ: Where is there to go anyway? Hovhaness: Going to the moon, of course, is practically next door. But then the very next place is very much further. And then if you get out of the solar system it would take years and years and years to get anywhere. There’s a wonderful spacing between the stars. It’s like music. So that the solar systems don’t interfere with each other. It’s like harmonics, natural harmonics, which Pythagoras based his philosophy on: bisecting the string. Clinton St. Quarterly 39
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