Re-Vision Radio's

Musekal PhiloSophy

Re-Vision Radio broadcasts a Musekal Philosophy from the TOWER OF SONG

"It has been said that the Troubadours [of the Twelfth-century Renaissance] are responsible for modern poetry. It is, however, mostly to their songs . . . that the troubadours owe their survival into the twentieth century. They envisioned love as inspiration to song."

Folk-rock and rock musicians served as singing prophets for the generation of the Sixties. Orpheus—bard, prophet, rhetorician, and musician ("singer of love-songs”)—is the archetype for musicians of the Sixties, who joined the prophetic ranks of the new singer songwriter, and created the music that defined the whole idea of the confessional songwriter, with his or her introspective style: "the sound of an introverted, troubled dreamer, with this sort of tremulous angelic voice."

"Let us bring to bear the persuasive powers of sweet-tongued Rhetoric and . . . let us have as well Music, the maid-servant of my house, to sing us melodies of varying mood."
(Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy)

"How charming is divine Philosophy
not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose
But musical as is Apollo's lute."
(Coleridge)

"a schizoid polycentricity, a style of consciousness that thrives in plural meanings, in cryptic double-talk, in escaping definitions."

And thus Re-Vision Radio's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack mixes PhiloSophy & Music--a harmonious interplay of dialectics/argument and song, prose composition and metrical composition; a concourse of prose discourse and lyrical outpouring that issues in a songful Radio-text of ideas & love.

"Behind the lyric and the song is the governing, central idea, and you have to keep both of them going, so neither gets bogged down. The trick is to keep them going together.”
(Stephen Soundheim)

RE-VISION RADIO's
Music Magic & the "Music of the Spheres"
in the TOWER OF SONG

Revision Radio quests, through Orpheus' musical magic, for The Tower of Song, by following the aboriginal "songlines" of the planet (i.e., world music) in order to enter into the soul of the "Unending Song" (i.e., the "Music of the Spheres"). In Revision Radio's "Musekal Philosophy," entering (with the astral body) into the song is a metaphor for emerging into the Tower of Song. Once "there" (inside the music), the listener-quester will "see what I mean" by the Tower of Song! "Did Ye Get Healed"?

Those who are affected by music can be divided into two classes: those who hear the spiritual meaning, and those who hear only the material sound. However, there's a third class of people affected by music: those listening to the Tower of Song hear the material sound, hear the spiritual meaning, and see the psychic image. In other words, they imaginally see what it means.

This visionary effect of music is the beginning of Renaissance occult, magical science of music based upon Pythagoras and Orpheus, which Marsilio Ficino and Robert Fludd practiced. Central to this occult music magic was the concept of "soul," since it was this that music effected.

It has no less a power than anything else that goes into the one who is singing. From him this power goes to the nearest listener, to the extent that the song keeps its vigor and keeps the spirit of the one singing, especially if this singer himself has a Phoebean nature, a strong vital spirit of the heart, and a stong animal spirit…. The seminal spirit generates beyond itself an offspring, so the vital and animal power, where it is most effective, makes the most intense sort of things through the song of its spirit. It works powerfully, with conception and agitation, on the nearest body; then, spilling over, it moves the next body, and when it has affected its own, it then affects someone else with a certain property. It conceives this from its own form and from selecting the right time. –Masilio Ficino

Music in Renaissance magic was the art of producing a desired effect or result on the soul through the use of various techniques, like incantation, that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature. Music magic is essentially the art of combining and regulating sounds of varying pitch to produce compositions expressive of various ideas or emotions. This music art of magic that was designed to effect the soul was based upon a system of occult correspondences between certain chords, planets, and the individual's temperament or "humours."

The connections of these two arts persist in our common usage as well. We still hear talk of "the magic of music," a phrase that evokes the emotions music mysteriously but powerfully arouses. The lexicon of magic has loaned one of its specifically musical terms to our vocabulary of emotional delight: from incantare or incantatio, the musical technique taken the dictionary to be exemplary of all magical operations--"enchanting," "enchanted," and related words. And from the most common Latin term for a song or tune, we derive a ubiquitous English word that still retains magical implications in some of its meanings, "charm." On a less commonplace level music and magic are linked in the etymologies of their names themselves. Both derive from ancient mythical or semimythical figures, from the Muses of ancient Greece and the Zoroastrian priest/shaman of the ancient Middle East, the Old Persian magush, sorcerer. Both words referred originally to the arts of these personages and carry still the resonance of their authoritative, all-embracing knowledge: the nine arts represented by the Muses, daughters of Memory (Mnemosyne) herself; and the high priest/sorcerer of all-but-forgotten mystery religions.

This resonance is by now weak in the case of music, of course. The history of this term's use has been one of delimitation. Though derived from words that once denoted the totality of the Muses' arts, the universal knowledge of techne, music has in modern times come to denote a much more restricted range of craft. The variety of arts denoted by magic, on the other hand, has always remained broad, notwithstanding local redefinitions and circumscriptions in particular historical situations. In the history of these two usages the European sixteenth century was a pivotal time. It was the last moment in central currents of European culture when the term music could allude to a form of universal knowledge, when musical thought could aspire to embrace or at least touch all human conceptions and fashionings. But it also witnessed an efflorescence in magic, a transitory broadening of the always significant range of the occult arts that allowed the word in some usages to connote a universal philosophy. The stage attained in the sixteenth century by each of these branches of thought along the arc of its internal development--the still-persisting breadth of the one, the momentary comprehensiveness of the other--allowed for novel and rich interactions between them.

Music, therefore, begins to look like a method of magic. If this is true, then this is an old connection, since it all goes back to Orpheus, the musician/magician.

Re-Vision Radio's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, in mixing Philosophy & Music --dialectics/argument and song--, also broadcasts a confluence of the ancient "Infinite Conversation" & "Unending Song." Again, this goes back to the legendary Orpheus, whose favorite pursuits were rhetoric and music--Orpheus, "singer of love songs."

RE-VISION RADIO'S
Romantic Quest in Archaic Revival of
Musekal Philosophy

RE-VISION RADIO Takes You Back
--"Way, Way Back"--in Archaic Revival

to the origins of Western Philosophy with Parmenides, Empedocles, and Pythagoras, when "philosophy" was poetry--was a visionary/mystic discipline, with ascent journeys to the stars (Parmenides). In other words, "way, way back" to the shamanic origins of Western "philosophy." From there, it goes back to Socrates and Plato (introducing the concept of "soul," or "psyche") when, after carving a separate role for "philosophy" (dialectic), a synthesis of philosophy's new logos with old poetry's mythos was attempted--especially with music. But most of all, Re-Vision Radio takes you back--"way, way back"--to great Orpheus, who symbolizes the original and perfect union of Philosophy & Music.

And the music on the radio,
and the music on the radio
Has so much soul, has so much soul
And you listen, in the nightime
While we're still and quiet. . .

"Let us bring to bear the persuasive powers of sweet-tongued Rhetoric and . . . let us have as well Music, the maid-servant of my house, to sing us melodies of varying mood." (Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy)

"This introduction is the key which shall open to you the flowers of the discourse that is to follow, namely, the investigation of the arts, of wisdom, of reason and understanding, the efficacious methods and revelations which throw light upon the secret words. (From the alchemical text, ‘The Visions of Zosimos’)"

"The way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is to speak and write sincerely. He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at attempting to satisfy your own curiosity." (Emerson, Spiritual Laws)

"This spiritual love acts not, nor can exist / Without Imagination, which in truth / Is but another name for absolute power / And clearest insight, amplitude of mind / And Reason in its most exalted mood." (Emerson)

Re-Vision Radio would go back to the "light of Ancient Greece /Towards the One" (V.M.), it broadcasts its "Archaic Revival" of great Orpheus--rhetorican and "singer of love songs." Yes, "way, way back" to the shamanic orgins of Western culture, when "religion" (e.g., "the Orphic Mysteries") was understood as a tradition of shamanic ecstasy. Thus, looking back to the cult of the Muses and Plato, who encorporated the Orphic Mystery cult into the new dialectical tradition, Re-Vision Radio reunites Philosophy & Music, and, thus, puts its Philosophy best in song.

And that "PhiloSophy" is essentially a "Soul-making" (Keats) discipline, since "give attention to soul""erotic metaphysics" (a commingling of "love and ideas"), because of Socrates' and Plato's emphasis on eros (erotic mania) as the driving force of the philosopher's (the "lover of wisdom") quest--"a simultaneous knowing and loving by means of imagining.” Thus, the kind of practically defines the entire philosophy of Socrates and Plato. It is also an PhiloSophy heard on Re-Vision Radio is a union of knowing and desire: "You can call my love Sophia / I call my love Philosophy." (V.M.) This is why the Gypsy Scholar re-visions "PhiloSophy" as a great Western Quest-Romance:

"[Lovers of Wisdom] believe that it is wrong to oppose PhiloSophy with her offer of liberation and purification, so they turn and follow her wherever she leads." (Socrates, Phaedo )

Therefore, since "Eros redefines reason in its own terms," Re-Vison Radio's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, mixing PhiloSophy & Song, or dialectics and music, replaces the "murders to dissect" (Wordsworth) mode of academic (Protestant) scholarship with service to Eros--insight, synthesis, celebration; "Reason in its most exalted mood."

And, thus, your Re-Vision Radio host, the Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist --in the role of the scholar as artist of Eros and longing to connect with that soulful dark blue-fire rhythm of things--romantically burns the candle at both ends: logos & mythos, ideas and love, reason & imagination, fact & fantasy, realism & idealism, dialectical & mystical, mind & heart--the end of the Argument & the Song on your radio dial, tuned to the Romantic Tower of Song.

And in the Tower of Song, those "funny voices" from "way, way back" can he heard: "Love that discourses in my mind" (Pugatorio, Canto II). Practicing its own form of the twelfth-century Troubadour "Dialectic of Love," the Gypsy Scholar would use his Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack to discourse on love and philosophy, love and ideas--the philosophy of love and the love of philosophy ("wisdom"). Indeed, in the Tower of Song (listening to Socrates and Plato) these two are so intertwined that one can't tell if the philosophers are singing about the virtues of love or, conversely, if the lovers are decanting on the pleasures of philosophy. Ergo, in the Tower of Song one can find following equation etched in the wall: PhiloSophy = Music = Love ("Oh, Socrates and Plato / They praised it [love] to the sky." --Van Morrison. Re-Vision Radio's "flowers of discourse" (the Essay-with-Soundtrack), plays both aspects of the psyche: both reason and inagination, scholarly/critical intellect and intuitive/artistic heart, academic research and mystical insearch; both secular hermeneutics and sacred hermetic/kabbalistic interpretation, both scholarly rigor and poetic reverie, Apollonian clarity and Dionysian obscurity, philosophical questioning and romantic questing; both philosophical aptitude with musical amplitude. This results in the paradoxical reuniting of the Western head and heart—-a Romantic comingling of a "sensuous reason" and a "feeling intellect," thereby synthesizing the left and right brain: "If my heart could do my thinking / And my head begin to feel / I would look upon the world anew / And know what's truly real." (Van Morrison) Running the popular song through the engine of dialectic not only re-visions the song philosophically, but returns the dialectic to its original Orphic/Pythagorean/Platonic music--making philosophy musical. In other words, Platonic dialectic becomes oracular poetry/song “after it has risen, with an incredible impulse, through the mania [madness] of Eros to the heights of philosophy." And the "heights of philosophy" are expressed on Re-Vsion Radio as the "flowers of discourse."

Therefore, tied by those "twenty-seven angels" to the writing table in the Tower of Song, the Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist re-visions PhiloSophy leading, finally, not to ponderous academic desiccation but to ecstatic Dionysian celebration--a sort of mind-jazz ensemble.

... Oh my dear, oh my dear sweet love it's a long, long journey
Long, long journey, journey back home
Back home to you, feel you by my side
Long journey, journey, journey

Yeah in the midnight, in the midnight, I burn the candle
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
Burn the candle at both ends, burn the candle at both ends
And I keep on, `cause I can't sleep at night
Until the daylight comes through
And I just, and I just, have to sing ...

(Van Morrison, 'Hymns To The Silence')

RE-VISION RADIO Presents

MUSEKAL PHILOSOPHY

Musekal Philosophy: Playing Philosophy, Playing Music

Re-Vision Radio's quest has taken it back--“way, way back” to "the light of ancient Greece / Towards the One" (the Neoplatonic’s “the One”). Sitting at that ancient banquet table in the Tower of Song, I learned from Socrates and Plato to reunite Philosophy & Music into a single discipline, an ecstatic discipline--originally, "of the Muses"--in service to Eros. Thus, because for Plato Philosophy was a dialectical art form--a form of play--, on Re-Vision Radio playing music is actually playing with Philosophy. (The Muses have the "gift of speculative knowledge" and "unregrettable play," "measured and reasonable play." Mousikos: "of the Muses, devotion to the Muses, musical; musician; lyric poet; scholar, man of letters." Mousie, ta mousike: "art of the Muses; music, song, poetry, dancing, arts, letters, accomplishments"). "We have sought truth, and sometimes found it. But have we had any fun?" –Benjamin Jowlett, translator of Platonic dialogues). Therefore, the Western "ancient quarrel" (agon) between mythos and logos will be resolved when poetry/music and philosophy are recognized as two aspects of one art form. And because, as Hesiod tells us, the Muses are "of one mind," poetry/music and philosophy are not out of tune with each other. This single-mindedness unites the different nine Muses into "one harmonious chorus." (The name of the Muses and of music are derived from their making "philosophical inquiries." Furthermore, these Muses have, writes Plato, "the gift of speculative knowledge" and are "of one mind," desiring to "express themselves in song." Plato also suggests that "the Muses and music in general are named, apparently, from mosthai, "searching," and "philosophy"--"to strive after," "to long for," or "to desire eagerly"--, and partakes of similar meanings as does philosophia; "loving," "searching," "striving," and "inquiry.") My own definition of musicology's "speculative music" succinctly designates the grand union of philosophical inquiry and musicality. In broadcasting what I call Musekal Philosophy, via my Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, I strive to give listeners what in the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll is described as "lyrics that make one think." This is the great legacy of the Sixties folk-rock musicians, our modern Trobadours. "I understand my music as chords of inquiry" (Joni Mitchell). My novel notion that Philosophy & Music are one-and-the-same "art" is found in Socrates’ original con-fusion, brought about by his dream that admonished him to "Make and cultivate music!" Hence, Socrates reflects that "the study of Philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, is the noblest and best [highest] form of music." I only compound Socrates’ con-fusion, in regarding, conversely, Music as the highest form of Philosophy. In my Musekal PhiloSophy, then, the philosopher and the poet are in complete harmony, since Socrates’ the daimon/muse,"music art." Diotima, demanded of Socrates a

On Re-Vision Radio, this reunion and fusion of Philosophy & Music--dialectics/argument and song; logos and mythos--makes for a philosophy that is musical and, conversely, a music that is philosophical. Thus, Everybody Knows the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack's musekal philosophy is also the (Romantic) "philosophy of music." (The Romantic's belief that music is the highest art; the pure expression of feeling and thus supra-rational, and the end of philosophy is music.) In addition, Musekal Philosophy makes the ideal philosopher (according to Socrates and Plato) a "fervent musician," or a "musical man.” Moreover, because PhiloSophy is a form of “play”--an artistic endeavor--, it makes the scholar of philosophy a scholar-artist-musician, who is distinguished by his or her ability to play with knowledge and create a collage of ideas or intellectual mind-jazz.

".... Here's to the was you been, to the is you in, to what's deep in deep and what's down and down / to the lost and the blind, and the almost found. / Here's to somebody within the sound of your voice this morning. / Here's to somebody who can't be within the sound of your voice tonight. / Here's to a light buzz in your head, and a soundtrack in your mind / going on and on, and on and on and on--like a good time…."

MUSEKAL PHILOSOPHY: PhiloSophy In A New Key

Going back--"way, way back"--Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack would pick up the fallen standard of the nineteenth-century Romantic Essay, which sought to transcend the boundaries of prose and non-prose and conjoin philosophy and poetry. The Romantic Essay has been described (based upon its development by Wordsworth and Coleridge) as a "conjunction of Reason and Passion that did not draw particularly sharp lines of differentiation between ‘poetry’ and the ‘impassioned, eloquent, and powerful’ prose." Following in this Dionysian genre, I conceived of the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack as "the perfect union of words and music." Thus, my Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, like the Romantic Essay, begins with an "impassioned, eloquent, and powerful prose, following from a fairly strict following of traditional ‘public’ discourse to modes of prose requiring the virtual abandonment or annihilation of such discourse and often quite literally disappearing into poetry or into the silence of contemplation and vision."

Re-Vision Radio, in programming a mix of rigorous intellectual argument and a profound musical sensuousness, strives to unite intellect and feeling, head and heart. It has been said that Romantic Mind is "the union of deep feeling and profound thought." Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack assays back and forth between the dialectical and musical, between logos and mythos; between, in other words, the mind & heart. So Everybody Knows "If my heart could do my thinking / And my mind begin to feel / I’d would see the world anew / And know what’s truly real." (Van Morrison) In practicing its own type of the Romantic “Arts & Sciences of the Imagination” (Blake), Re-Vision Radio delights in remixing what Wordsworth has poetically combined--"high Argument" of "the Mind, / My haunt, and the main region of my song." Re-Vision Radio, in bridging high academic culture with low pop-culture, takes its cue from the great Romantic composer, Beethoven, who, it is said, "took great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace," making his music "a union of sensuous and rational." It also looks to the inspired American scholar Emerson who dared to proclaim: "I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low." Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, assaying back and forth between high academic culturelow pop-culture (song), finds itself validated in literary theory: (argument) and "Soliloquy bridges the gap between high art and popular song." Thus, the Musekal Philosophy of my Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack broadcasts its meaning in two modes: Wordsworth’s "high argument" and Lorca’s "deep song." ". . . they have climbed, / on high with song that is more sweet, more deep." (Dante, Divine Comedy) "Music that can deepest reach." (Emerson, The Essays)

Re-Vision Radio's quest is to seamlessly fuse together a prose argument with a lyrical song. The medium for this ideal accomplishment on radio is the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, which is, simply, prose argument put to music. And this seamlessness of going back and forth between the prose argument and the poetic song could be described in the following way: "So the words dissolve into the music, and the music dissolves into the words, and a refreshment is produced, kind of oxygen." (Alan Watts) My Essay-with-Soundtrack’s mixing of PhiloSophy & Song is truly an Orphic medley of dialectics & mythopoetics, logos & mythos--Argument & Song (Blake). And, thus, Everybody Knows Musekal PhiloSophy heard on Re-Vision Radio means that a Song is as good as an Argument/Essay. In fact, through the Orphic Esay-with-Soundtrack, they are in dialectical relationship; that is, there's a song hermetically hidden in the prose of an essay and, conversely, there's an essay waiting to be revealed in a song lyric. And the goal of Revision Radio, through its Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, is to not only cause the listener to "hear" the familair song empowered by philosophical meaning and "see" the essay's meaning amplified by song--thus experiencing a "new" song--, but to so seamlessly weave together essay and song that it feels like the song was actually tailor-made for the essay. 

"When ... writing ... all the natural instincts are at work the way some people play a musical instrument without a lesson." (Lillian Hellman)

In fact, it wouldn't be too much to say that virtually everything my novel hyrid radio-text meant--the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, and the Musekal Philosophy it evoked--was later found intellectually worked out in a classic philosophical tome (one whose title even provided a rich metaphor for my conception):

"... we find the belief very widely disseminated that music is an emotional catharsis, that its essence is self-expression." "The content has been symbolized for us, and what it invites is not [just] emotional response, but insight." "... conveying a musical message." "... music articulates forms which language cannot set forth." "'There are feelings ... which are so constantly suppressed by the tumult of our passions, that they can reveal themselves but timidly, and are practically unknown to us.... Note, however, what response a certain kind of music evokes in our hearts: we are attentive, it is charming; it does not aim to arouse either sorrow or joy, pity or anger, and yet we are moved by it. We are so imperceptibly, so gently moved, that we do nor know we are affected, or rather, that we can give no name to the effect.... Indeed, it is quite impossible to name everything fascinating in music, and bring it under definite headings. Therefore music has fulfilled its mission whenever our hearts are satisfied.'" "These two excellent thinkers saw in music what most aestheticians failed to see--its intellectual value, its close relation to concepts, not by reason of its difficult academic 'laws,' but in virtue of its revelations. If it reveals the rationale of feelings, the rhythm and pattern of their rise and decline and interwining, to our minds, then it is a force in our mental life, our awareness and understanding, and not only our affective experience." "But this explanation of music as a high abstraction, and musical experience as a purely logical revelation, does not di justice to the unmistakably sensuous value of tone, the vital nature of its effect, the sense of personal import which we meet in great composition every time it is repeated to us. Its message is not an immutable abstraction, a bare, unambiguous, fixed concept, as a lesson in the higher mathematics of feeling should be. It is always new, no matter how well or how long we have known it, or it loses its meaning; it is not transparent but iridescent. Its values crowd each other, its symbols are inexhaustible." "... the true nature of music, which is unconventionalized, unverbalized freedom of thought." "The real power of music lies in the fact that it can be 'true' to the life of feeling in a way that language cannot; for its significant forms have that ambivalence of content which words cannot have." "The assignment of meanings is a shifting, kaleidoscopic play, probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. The imagination that responds to music is personal and associative and logical, tinged with affect, tinged with bodily rhythm, tinged with dream, but concerned with a wealth of formulations for its wealth of wordless knowledge, its whole knowledge of emotional and organic experience, of vital impulse, balance, conflict, the ways of living and dying and feeling. Because no assignment of meaning is conventional, none is permanent beyond the sound that passes; yet the brief association was a flash of understanding. The lasting effect is ... to make things conceivable rather than to store up propositions. Not communication but insight is the gift of music.... Its entire record is emotional satisfaction, intellectual confidence, and musical understanding." "Music is the myth of the inner life ...." (S. Langer, Philosophy In A New Key)

Music giving "insight," "a flash of understanding," music's connection with the inner life of the mind and soul--"intellectual value," "the force of mental life,"concepts," "revelations"--, the personally "assocative" quality of music, the "musical message," the illuminated mind plus the "satisfied heart"--all these attest to and highlight my preoccupation with "philosophy" and popular music, and the reflection on these that eventually lead to my intuitions and independently conceived ideas, which evolved into a radio program--Re-Vision Radio'sTower of Song.

If my heart could do my thinking
And my mind begin to feel
I’d would see the world anew
And know what’s truly real.

(Van Morrison)

Therefore, Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack and its Musekal PhiloSophy turns out to be, metaphorically and literally-- PhiloSophy In A New Key

"Like so many of my generation, I can landmark my life with songs." (Sting)

"It came out perfect. It came out gold. I was conscious I was writing . . . you have to speak in metaphors . . . that there was gold dripping out of the pen." (Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead singer-songwriter)

"Which brings up another topic--songwriting. I've always felt that ideas for songs are falling on us everywhere, like rain. If we are open to those ideas, feelings, etc... then we will catch them like buckets and at some point, whether in the middle of the night, or in the middle of our lives, the song (art in any form, visual, verbal, etc.) will come to life."

"Songs slip into your consciousness at a significant moment of development." (Patrick McCabe) "When the thoughts unroll in the mind with the effortlessness of music and the percision of geometry." (Paul Bowls)

Compare Langer's profound observations on music and philosophy with a sixties singer-songwriter:

"It is always new, no matter how well or how long we have known it, or it loses its meaning; it is not transparent but iridescent." (Langer)

"It was about the way a you want to hear certain words. The way certain things in music were appealing to the ear. For me, as a songwriter, it was about hitting that target every time .... And it has to do with reaching a certain vulnerable spot within each listener. You have to hit it there--I like to call it the 'sweet spot'--, and the minute you hit them with that little taste of sweetness . . . well, ya know, they can't bear it; they can't have just one hit, they have to go out and buy it so they can play it all the time."

Now compare all these with ancient and nineteenth-century writers:

"Now when a man abandons himself to music, to play upon him and pour into his soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and direlike airs of which we were just now speaking, and gives his entire time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he had it, is softened like iron and is made useful instead of useless and brittle." (Socrates, The Republic)

"Music as it exists in the old tunes or melodies . . . is Inspiration and cannot be surpassed. Nature has no tune, but Imagination has." (William Blake)

"The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it were clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. I do not wonder at the miracles which poetry attributes to the music of Orpheus, when I remember what I have experienced from the varied notes of the human voice. They are an incalculable energy which countervails all other forces in nature, because they are the channel of supernatural powers." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Musekal Philosophy: The Orphic Synthesis

The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack--a kind of “Visionary Recital”--mixing the noetic texts of Philosophy with the poetic texts of Song, broadcasts a sonorous literary texture and a “speculative” musical texture--a radio-text--that is an Orphic medley of the esoteric and the popular; the high and the low--the sub-textuality of a Soul-text. Remembering that “Philosophy” for Plato is a “care for soul” and begins in “wonder,” Re-Vision Radio, in mixing dialectics and song, puts the logos of scholarship in service to the god Eros. The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack’s “soul-music” spans both logos and mythos; both the critical analysis and the enraptured intuition, both the down-to-earth investigation and the flight of poetic inspiration; the fusion of scholarly acumen with poetic reverie; philosophical aptitude with musical amplitude.

Therefore, the Musekal PhiloSophy of Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack (argument/song) finally leads not to ponderous academic desiccation but to ecstatic Dionysian celebration—to the "Joyous Science” (of Emerson and Nietzsche). This means it offers a mood of trance, enchantment, and ecstasy. However, it is not the brain-dead, new-age elation, but rather, because Mueskal PhiloSophy is both logos and mythos, what the Orphic Scholar, Emerson, knew as "Reason in its most exalted mood," which issues in "music that can deepest reach.” Re-Vision Radio, then, carries on the great Platonic synthesis (between the earlier mytho-mystical, as it was transmitted through the Greek Mystery Religions, and the newer rationalist development in Philosophy that had broken away from it: "Intellectual rigor [read: "the logical"] and Olympian inspiration [read: "the mytho-poetic"] no longer stood opposed.”) of logos and mythos. Because Plato’s dialectic became--“after it has risen, with an incredible impulse, through the mania [madness] of Eros to the heights of philosophy”--mantic (poetic-prophetic) vision, Re-Vision Radio’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack would energetically channel philosophy back through the medium of radio, where it rises to the heights of enraptured song. This Musekal Philosophy, then, is what one sixties songwriter said the music of that time promised: "A deep ecstasy that can be had." If the Romantic Movement’s project of reuniting philosophy with poetry (reason and imagination, head and heart) meant that “the end of Philosophy is poetry,” then Re-Vision Radio would make music the end of philosophy.

Musekal Philosophy: Scholarship as Performance Art

Because everybody knows that Re-Vision Radio broadcasts Musekal PhiloSophy, Philosophy is recognized as more musical and, conversely, Music is recognized as more philosophical. Thus, Re-Vision Radio's hermeneutics discovers the song hidden in the essay and, conversely, the essay waiting to be written out of the lyric of song. However, Re-Vision Radio's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, not content to push the boundaries of academic form by simply inserting popular song lyrics into the essay as epigraph, would follow the Orphic muse and let the lyric lusters of snatches from song break out between the lines of prose--all over the page. Thus, its Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is thoroughly song-haunted--memorable song lyrics fading in and fading out between the written lines, generating a steady stream of correspondences between the ideas and the music. In reading between the lines of dialectics and song, moving back and forth between the prose and musical text, the Soul-text of the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack relocates the listener in the middle of an ancient philosophical Quest-Romance:

"Then, as I leaned, hearkening to that first sound, / Methought a voice sang ... / sweetly interwound / With music; and its image in my ears / Left such impression as one often catches / From songs sung to an organ, when one hears / The words sometimes and sometimes not, by snatches.” (Dante, Divine Comedy)

Thus, Re-Vision Radio's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack allows the listener to not only to "hear" the essay's meaning amplified through song but, after the song has been run back through the dialectic of the essay, to "hear" the familiar song in an entirely new way. Was this what that musical philosopher, Socrates, meant when he declared: "don’t we know that all of this is a prelude to the song itself . . . the song itself that dialectic performs? And, thus, because Re-Vision Radio practices a new rado art-form--scholarship as performance art--I would echo this Socratic question:

Don't you know that the prose of my Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack--all of this--is really a long lead-in to the Song itself, the song that the dialectic performs?

Musekal Philosophy & the Troubadour's "Joyous Science": Scholarship as Performance Art

To reiterate: in the Tower of Song, the Orphic Scholar's address becomes more and more inspired and rhapsodic ("Reason in its most exalted mood"), until the Dionysian energy can no longer be controlled:

"... one, two, three, four ... But all joy wants eternity,—wants deep, deep, deep eternity!" (Nietzsche)

Little village baby, ain't large enough to be a town
From a little village baby, ain't large enough to be a town
Gotta get away from the city
It's gonna bring you down

Heard the voice of the silence, in the evening
In the long cool summer nights
Heard the voice of the silence, in the evening
In the long cool summer nights
Telling me not to worry
Everything's gonna be all right

There's only two kinds of truth
Baby let's get it straight from the start
There's only two kinds of truth
Let's get it straight from the start
It's what you believe
Baby in your head and your heart

Heard the bells ringing
Voices singing soft and low
Heard the bells ringing
Voices are singing soft and low
Way up in the mountain, little village in the snow

Raining in the forest
Just enough to magnetise the leaves
Raining in the forest
Just enough to magnetise the leaves
We’ll go walking baby with the moonlight shining down through the trees

Little village, way up on the mountainside
Little village baby, way up on the mountainside
Way across the ocean with you by my side

--Van Morrison, 'LittleVillage'