14. In The Woods

Knee 3b (In The Woods)

Welcome back again. This week I’m talking about the fourteenth track to be released from ‘You Could Be Happy’. It’s called ‘Knee 3b (In The Woods)’.

A much-loved children’s book

This week I’m going to talk a little about another much-loved children’s book. The story begins with the discovery that a young boy has particular magical abilities, and he is taken away from his family to study magic at a special school for wizards. His masters at that school each specialise in different disciplines, and part of the plot of the books is driven by the way he learns new spells and techniques. He also acquires a powerful enemy at school, who gifts him with a very specific scar that binds the two in a tumultuous struggle played out over the course of several books. Of course, I’m talking about the Wizard of Earthsea books by Ursula Le Guin, the first of which was published in 1968.

In fairness, the similarity between Le Guin’s Earthsea books and the H**** P***** universe isn’t super strong beyond my deliberate fake-out above (in my humble opinion - I think there is still internet blood being spilled on the matter as we speak). Le Guin’s universe has a very different feel to it. Her interest in taoism in particular is reflected in the fact that magic has consequences in this universe that it doesn’t in the world of Hogwarts. Sure, you can conjure up a wind to help your boat sail in a particular direction, but what you’re actually doing is taking a wind from another part of the world that is now without that wind. Everything has to exist in equilibrium, and no energy is lost or gained. Magic is a serious business; you’re messing with the fabric of the universe, not just playing around with invisibility potions.

I like this idea of the world. There is definite sense as the books progress that the more powerful a wizard becomes, the less likely he is to use magic. The older and wiser they become, and the deeper their understanding of the consequences of magic, the more likely they are to leave the world as it is, and understand that simply being in it is the best way to live. I don’t really know a great deal about taoism, but this idea also sounds quite buddhist to me, and is very appealing. (Clarification - I also know next to nothing about buddhism, but maybe a little more about that than I do about taoism).

Finally, we bid an official and fond farewell to Wittgenstein as we note that words are incredibly important in Le Guin’s universe. In particular, names. Everything in Earthsea has a ‘true’ name, usually kept a very closely guarded secret. You can control a thing by knowing its true name, whether that thing is a tree, a rock, or a person. In other words, it’s a world where words are the opposite of metaphors. They are materially linked to the objects they describe. This opens the intriguing possibility of a world where music also has meaning, although that world is not as alien as one might think. The song of the sirens, or the pied piper’s flute, both have some of these characteristics.

Patterns

I mentioned the wizard teachers in the Earthsea world. The school is on an island called Roke, and there are nine masters of Roke. My favourite is the Master Patterner. He lives in a woody grove on Roke, and apparently stays there almost all of the time. Generally, when all the masters of Roke meet, they need to do so in the Master Patterner’s grove, because he refuses to leave. The stubbornness alone is pretty cool.

I was interested to discover, when going back to the books to check various bits and bobs for this post, that Le Guin actually says very little about the Master Patterner directly. Nobody really knows where he was going, or what he was doing (to coin a phrase). The internet has a bit of a shrug. This is a surprise to me, because it was pretty obvious to ten year old Richard what The Master Patterner was up to the first time I met him. He is making and remaking the world by speaking or invoking its patterns, tying the fabric of the cosmos together by actively meditating, chanting, thinking, and doing what is simultaneously the most important and most quotidian magic. I’m not sure why this was obvious to me, but so much of Le Guin’s phenomenal writing takes you to very clear conclusions by very subtle implications. The credit is hers.

It is worth noting that the Master Patterner at the time of the Earthsea novels began life as a Kargish prince. The Kargs in Earthsea are basically vikings (blonde, violent seafarers), and given the amount of norse mythology present in the books, it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to me to imagine the Master Patterner actively knitting Yggdrasil anew each day, especially given his woody location.

This is very special magic indeed. It’s the magic that makes our world. It’s also magic that belongs to all of us. I like to think that this act of making is something we all do, and we all can do. Every day we tell stories, about ourselves, about others, and about the way the world is. We know that the world as far as we are concerned tends to conform to those stories; this is the basis of therapies such as CBT. We can use that magic to make the world again, and make it differently to the day before if we choose. This music that I’ve written is magic of that kind. I hope it makes the world a little different.

Circles

This kind of piano music will be familiar to you if you’ve followed the album this far. I think this piece has maybe even more of Debussy and Ravel’s Japonïsme in it than the previous piano knees. It is short, and says what it needs to say before leaving. But I hope it is no less powerful because of that. Sometimes in the western art tradition we talk about music being ‘pastoral’, which means something like an idealised picture of the bucolic joy of country life. Both Beethoven and Vaughan Williams wrote pastoral symphonies, and I’m sure I could think of a few others given a few minutes.

This piece is not pastoral so much as arboreal. It is intended to summon up the cool, quiet aspect of walking through ancient woods. It calls to mind for me two of my favourite places. One is Kōinzan Saihō-ji, the moss temple in Kyoto, which I’ve been lucky enough to visit. It is a place of incredible peace and tranquility. The image of this track looks a little like the gardens at the temple.

The other is the Master Patterner’s grove itself, which also, I think, looks a little like the cover image. If you stand at the back of my house, it looks across a valley, and on the ridge line at the opposite side of the valley there is a grove of trees. This is the Master Patterner’s grove. I realise I don’t live on Roke, and New Zealand isn’t really Earthsea, but I’ve decided this is where the grove is, and if anybody disagrees, they should go and disagree with somebody else because I really don’t care.

The trees in the grove become most clearly visible when the sun goes down over the ridge line at the end of the day. I like to think about the Master Patterner at those moments, weaving his eternal magic, keeping the world together. Maybe next week we can walk through the woods in the valley and visit him.

What next?

Glad you asked! Firstly, thanks for reading this far. You’ve already been part of the creative journey of this album, and I very sincerely thank you for paying attention. All I’d really like is for people to listen and be part of what I’ve made. Job done. However, if you have friends or people you think would enjoy this, please encourage them to sign up to these updates via www.thesixteenth.net. It would mean a lot. And maybe actually listen to the songs in whatever way you enjoy!

You can listen to the music here, or through the links below.