HEARILIZATION IS NOT A WORD

I continue to be captivated by Philip Glass’ use of the word visualize in his book Words Without Music when describing his creative process. Before this, I had never thought that music composition employed visualization. Yet before the music is put together, before the music is heard, there is some sort of phenomenon. And I guess the best word that we have on this is visualization. Certainly there is no word like hearilization.

For many years, I dabbled in music composition. If you can call it that. I never wrote a note on a piece of paper. Rather it was a process dictated by electronics. It may very well be that I lacked the vision. But as I think back, I would not apply the word visualize to whatever it was that I was doing. Sometimes when I play the piano now, I have a very blurry sense about what I want to get out of the piece that I am about to play. Visualize. Blurry. Is it really true that we must employ visual terms to describe musical process?

I would also use the word blurry to describe what I see before I start a drawing. The visualization is certainly not clear. The first visualization is not in any way predictive of the outcome. Yet there is an idea. Some sort of approach which serves as a starting point. What I find important is to not deviate from that first visualization. Stay with it.

The process of drawing, science and music, to just name three, all involve a moving from the general to the specific. Many involved in this process have described it as an out of body experience. People will say that they don’t really know how they did it.

Yet the true source for the creation is the body of knowledge, experiences, impressions, feelings, etc., that the artist has amalgamated. What we draw or compose truly stems from what is inside of us. And the creative process therefore is fundamentally one in which we suspend belief. As Mr. Glass writes, we trick ourselves “into gaining that extra attention that (is) needed to do the work.”

Mr. Glass continues, “When I’m making a sketch, I’m hearing something, but I don’t know exactly what it is. A lot of writing is the effort made in trying to hear. The question for me always is ‘Is that what I’m hearing?’” (Note another visual term, sketch, when describing the musical composition process.)

As we draw, our question should be, is that what I am seeing? Or at least is that what I saw? Is this what I visualized? As always, our drawing is a process of seeing, just as Mr. Glass’ process is all about hearing.