Encore, encore!

Oh, yeah.

And I’m talking on, and on, and on, well-gone beyond Zebra –

And let me tell you.

Though as cousin Bilbo taught us, “the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began,” baby…

MY lexicon starts with a Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz,

And does it stop there? I don’t think it does!

Therefore: on, on must thou go, well beyond Zed.

Don't take it from me; it's what Buddha said!

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate; for round and round she goes, and where she stops – Lord only knows!

Lexicon?

Oh, boy. I done did it agin…

Lured you in with something that’s still got one foot in the comprehensible, then – your attention having been enraptured by my lively fiddlin’ – slowly drew you beyond the veil of comprehensibility, where the rational mind has no footing, to a place where we apprehend meaning by finer instruments of perception.

Aaaall aboooooard!

Ok, I’m sorry.

I’m having way too much fun – this manner of expression is very correspondent to my being-nature, as Master Gurdjieff might have phrased it, but I am aware that to give it free rein is ultimately to give you the short end of the proverbial stick, and that for someone in my position, it would be better if I gave that end to myself, even if it’s a dog’s death.

So, I’ll bring this back to earth for a moment, then share what I suppose I really meant to share when I began this song and dance.

Picking up where we left off, with one foot still grounded on the conventional foundations established on the other side of the veil…

I said I wasn’t aware that that etymology I shared of the word encore was what it was.

When that word came to mind earlier today, later this morning as the case was, it seemed to me that its etymology was something like en cœur, something like “on my heart.”

I don’t know French, so it turns out that’s not the case.

But you know, when you’ve gone on beyond Zebra into a world of meaning that’s expressed by a higher order of symbolism than the conventional one people like to dabble and dribble in – that sort of impression and association usually isn’t wrong.

In fact, usually it’s right.

That’s intuition for you – or for me, anyway.

So.

I want to share something with you as an encore, because it’s on my heart.

If you’d like to look at this, it would certainly help; it’s the performance that this writing right here serves as an encore to.

And since what I linked above lists, real nice-like, all the component essay-parts that constitute the performance in toto, in chronological order no less – well, if you’d follow the links duly and dutifully, you’d spare me the effort of doing that again here.

Or, you know what? You don’t have to. This will stand on its own legs, I think.

Why am I sharing this?

Well, I had an interesting dream last night.

I won’t go into all of its details, nor all of the context behind its details, which is something more than the writing I’ve linked above.

Plus, maybe it means more than I think it does – time will tell.

That dream then got me reflecting on some things, and – well, that quickly germinated the seed of this idea of an “essay,” which I suppose has already come to fruition.

I don’t think it’s right to call it an essay, though; let’s call it something like… a multisensory multimedia presentation, though that is a bit coarse for our refined discourse.

But that’s ok; if you’ll only immerse yourself in it, I think you’ll apprehend its true value, whatever we choose to call it.

But... the dream, and then my thoughts, before I softly take your halting hand into my own warm one, and draw you slowly into this healing light- and sound-spa beyond the veil.

In the dream I was in a big box-store, something like a Costco, wandering and wondering as I often am in these dreams that are more-than-dreams.

While there, I encountered a small, older middle-aged man, with something like a turtle-shell on his back and a lyre in his hand.

While I and a few other people listened to him and watched him, rapt, he began to pluck his lyre and intone a beautiful melody in ancient Greek – both singing and instructing, all the while, as in some stage-play, being drawn about by strings to give the impression he was flying.

At the end of it, the performance being done, the man’s turtle-shell opened up and his young assistant helped him place the lyre back in it, all while the two of them shared a strange conversation in a wordless rhythmic chant.

I woke up with that strange feeling I get when I have a dream-that-isn’t-a-dream, and spent some time reflecting on it.

That led me to do some searching on YouTube, which led me to find a song (first one) that – well, opened up my heart and set the tears a-flowing – why, I don’t know.

And I don’t need to know; though here I give the impression that I do a lot of analysis, dissection, and interpretation, that’s mostly an afterthought, mostly for your sake.

I prefer to live in the mystery, letting it unfold its meaning to me as it wishes, organically – revealing itself to me in its own time as part of an innocent sort of courtship-dance.

There’s an art to this sort of courtship, on both sides of the dance, and it seems to me that too many seekers after the mystery are too eager to hurry to the bed at its end, if you follow my meaning.

Anyway, what I’m saying is… isn’t it interesting, how this all unfolds?

Reflection, digging, writing, dreaming, finding, sharing?

Reflecting on all this, it seemed good to me to share one more thing, as an encore; and I’ll give you a short, sweet preface, without further ado, before the curtain-veil lifts and the show begins.

I sure do, and did, a lot of writing.

But you know, as much as I like to write, and as much as I enjoy what comes of it, what I don’t share as much or as freely here is… the music behind it.

Though the power of this music surely operates on a subconscious level, in darkness, the power of my written exposition does not.

However far beyond the rational mind I try to take it – with the help of images or by way of stretching the boundaries of the words themselves – writing is always gonna have at least one foot on the ground of the so-called conscious mind, exposed in the light of day.

But you know why my writing is so good – beyond my having practiced and absorbed and developed so much, speaking of style and rhetorical skill?

It’s because it’s rooted deep in that dark subconscious realm.

And I don’t mean dark, in terms of evil, or scary – I mean, it’s fundamentally a realm of being beyond the narrowly circumscribed borders of conventional daylight rationality.

It is a dream-realm, and its language is images, fragrances, melodies, and other strange sounds you might call music.

Its logic seems illogical to the daylight-mind, but it’s actually a higher order of logic, and it speaks in a higher-order symbolic language.

How do you get fluent in that language?

Boy, oh boy…

I wish you’d read and absorb everything I’ve written here, because that would say it better. But in a word, there are many ways. Spending a lot of time in silence, observing your inner world, helps… but so does listening to music.

And I don’t mean just any music… it’s got to have a certain character.

In that regard, I’m sorry, but Western Music just will not cut the mustard or pass the muster.

Definitely not anything that’s current or popular, of course, but I even mean Western classical music; it’s all ultimately founded on entirely wrong principles, right down to its rotten root, and only serves to keep you entombed in a narrow coffin whose walls are named either Empty Bravado or Sappy Sentimentality.

No, mainly I’m talking about non-Western music, specifically things like classical Iranian dastgaah music… classical Carnatic Indian music… folk-musics of places like Eastern Europe or Greece or Western Asia, though Africa and East Asia have a lot to offer, too.

It’s far too big of a discussion to go into now, and it’s beside the point, while there is also a small measure of subjectivity involved, though I would argue that what you choose, taste-wise and in the realm of musical soul-instruction, has consequences you might not like down the road.

But what I’m saying is, the flavor these things have in common, which is so salutary to one’s Being, one’s Essence, and which serves to help one develop the kind of fluency in the higher order of perception and symbolic language we’re talking about… is something like this.

Polyrhythms…

Free meter, or very complex or long rhythmic phrasings…

And a focus on over-arching modes embracing and encompassing many moods, rather than a narrow focus on a small set of simple scales…

Which is to say, bringing to the whole-cloth fabric of the music many fine gradations of a broad spectrum of shades of feeling, most of them not sappy-sweet, but characterized by sorrow, sourness, bitterness – what you could call deliberately discordant notes of this kind consciously mingled with sparing notes of hopeful sweetness or even sudden joy.

The cultures that produce this kind of music – suddenly, tears well up! – they’re ancient, thousands and thousands of years old.

They’ve ruled the known world at one time, and have been in the depths of abject slavery at others. Many of them are now living quite humble lives in obscurity, amid ruins of what once was.

But… the memories of all that was live on in the spirit and blood of their peoples...

...and, in their languages and their poetic expression.

And I don’t just mean their words. I also mean the way the peoples of these great culture-traditions carry themselves and express their bodies, even in very small and fine ways.

Some of these performances I’ll share below, which I’ve found only recently, are in languages I don’t understand a word of, in contexts I have no bearings to orient myself within… except by intuition and a deep heart-sense.

Most of these things I’ll share, as soon as I saw and heard them, I cried and cried, feeling an intense kinship with and an immediate understanding of. Often I’d think something like, “What a tragedy I was born when and where I was. I was born in the wrong place and time.”

In other words – those places seem more like home, those people seem more like family, than the place I find myself living and the people I find myself among.

As a side note – get a taste of that, one way or another – and then talk a walk through an American grocery store, or neighborhood, or shopping mall – and prepare yourself for a being-shock that will strike you dumb, and pierce your heart with sorrow.

What a tragedy.

What I will share with you now is only a taste of what’s gone into the latest stew I’ve been slowly simmering in, but I think it all goes together nicely, and will do you well if you’ll have some, too.

Come – be the chick-pea in Rumi’s simmering soup-spa; its waters will soften you, and I promise not to whack you with my ladle if you choose to leap out.

Jian’s Dream Made Flesh; or, A Hymn to Kalliope and Apollo

The muses having been invoked with due reverence, let’s let the young blood say their spoke, of course with a nod to ancient modes.

Hoo-weee!

Don’t let your tears quench the flame now; these youngins sure know how to stoke the fire of feelin’!

Come, my Ossetian cousins – what have ye to say in turn and return? How will ye quite and requite the heart-piercing lament of the Bulgarians?

Do the old fires still burn in your hearths, too?

Yessir! Don’t stop now!

Flow, flow my tears, as I sit by the waters of Babylon and weep when I remember Zion; for they that carried me away captive require of me a song. But how shall I sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? So let my silent tears sing for me instead.

Or... why not commend the fire-iron to the surer hands of the elders? When the flame really starts blazing, it’s better to trust them to stoke and tend it.

Georgians Let Us Know How It’s Done.

Yowza!

It’s givin’ me chills, makin’ me sweat, laugh and cry all at once!

I need someone to bring be back and reel me in a little.

Why not take a breather with a glass of wine at a table in an Ossetian rose-garden?

Do they even make men like that on this side of the world anymore? I doubt it.

Hail, friend – one fisherman knows another from afar.

But my eye was rather drawn to that lovely flower of a woman blooming among the other red flowers; and that puts me in mind of something more refined.

Let’s sit still a little, slow our breath and quiet our minds, and take in the dance of this immaculate flower of the ever-rich Indian soil.

What a feast for the senses, worldly and spiritual alike!

Maybe a little too rich to digest?

A cultivated taste, for sure – not for everyone’s palate.

But the hour grows late, and truth be told – Georgian song and dance are nearer and dearer to this old hobbit’s heart – a bit of closer-to-home cookin’, good, plain old-fashioned food a bit better suited to my day-in-day-out stomach.

Man, oh man – Georgians really know how to live live, don’t they?

But you know... when the buzz wears off and the echoes of the party die down, when I come home to spend a quiet evening alone, nothing quite hits the spot like some classical Iranian dastgaah music.

Elegant, refined, subtly complex, while still holding on to some soul and life – cultivating the fire of passion into something lively without being wild, somethin’ you can really cook with – it stands apart and alone.

Here, a few famous Masters; as the person who posted it described it – a high note to close the show on – an Inimitable, Soul-Igniting Melody of the Musical Art of the Land of Iran, Played in the Mode of Homayoun.

Good night, sweet dreams, and God bless your journeys in the sunless noumenal realm that gives birth to your visible daytime doings.

12 June 2025