Creative isomorphism between object, idea and states of consciousness

Abstract

An artist’s report on the composition of ‘The Green Lion Eats the Sun’ (2014) for double bell euphonium, in which a severe case of ‘writer’s block’ was resolved in unusual circumstances. The work was largely composed in a busy airport lounge during a 7-hour delay in which I switched into a trance-like state of high creative focus. The subject explored in the composition is that of parallel structures of consciousness in which one can only gain access to one world at a time through a switching mechanism. This idea partially relates to Benjamin Libet’s experiments showing that there are gaps perforating the weave of our consciousness and in which perception is seen to be a discontinuous phenomenon (Massumi, 2014). The musical work is realized through a parallelism between the structure of this dual interior life and the morphology of the instrument with its two bells or sound sources that can only be activated alternately. The report looks at the isomorphic relation between an object (the musical instrument), the artistic concept (conscious and unconscious layers) and the state of mind in which the composition was carried out, speculating on ways in which external representations help to amplify and prompt creative thinking in music