Encounter: A Surrealist Game of Empirical Perception
Dedicated to Jack Whitten & Surrealism
Got Flows? I asked myself aloud, listening to an audio recording of my ensemble playing a concert the night before. The question is one that is asked of a person claiming to know how to rap. The metaphoric use of the word “flow” in this context refers to the uninhibited, creative, and improvised use of language uttered by a lyricist over a beat or unaccompanied. This day at dawn silence was broken, not by vocals but by the cadence of a saxophone.
The year was 2019, the borough was Brooklyn, the venue was Public Records, and the instrumentation was piano, bass, drums, and my tenor saxophone. The band and I brought a memorable amount of funk and groove that night, somewhere between the music of James Brown and A Tribe Called Quest. The next morning I made myself a coffee and reflected on the music. In order to understand my musical behaviors, as a saxophonist and composer, my creative practice involves deep listening to recordings of my improvisations and compositions. Analyzing recordings always sparks questions: Was my pitch okay? Was my sound projecting? Did I use enough dynamics? Am I communicating with the band? But this listening session was more than thrills, frills, and groovy music — it was one of encounter, and forever changed my perception of music. This act of encounter ignited a realization and thus transformation of self, and as saxophonist Charlie Parker once said: “I came alive.”
Charlie Parker, bored with stereotyped changes (chord structures of music) being used at the time kept thinking there was bound to be something different. He could hear it sometimes, but could not play it.¹ In his book, Carl Woideck quotes Parker: “Well, that night I was working over ‘Cherokee,’ and as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.”² His account depicts encounter as a process of transformation.
That morning in 2019 I heard two notes oscillating back and forth, and saw a spiral in my mind’s eye. Determined to figure out what kind of spiral I was visualizing, I rushed to my computer and searched for the word: S... P…I…R…A…L. Various spirals popped up, but few matched exactly what I saw in my head, and what I bodily felt was right. Suddenly there it was: the spiral of a double helix appeared. I was filled with instant gratification as light bulbs went off in my head and my brain began making connections between music and science. As my research continued, the topic of molecular biology kept appearing. I started to investigate the study of DNA, its spiral shape, the double helix.
My encounter with this visual metaphor, where notes became atoms, led to the creation of Molecular Systematic Music: the use of science as a metaphor for how to construct music. Metaphor became the catalyst of my work, gesturing at other ways of thinking about the human experience, knowledge, and the reinterpretation of music. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.³ I searched for artists similarly utilizing metaphor, finding visual artist Jack Whitten and writer and poet André Breton.
In his book Notes from the Woodshed, Whitten suggests we “Use science as Metaphor.”⁴ He often used scientific terminology to describe his process for dreaming up artwork, commenting that the perceptions of artists are similar to those of scientists. Newly fond of anything related to molecular biology, I was naturally drawn to this idea, and embodied his statements. “Molecular Perception,” he states, “is a process of dealing with form down to its elemental levels, to the unit of what makes that form visible to the naked eye. Matter through Molecular Perception encodes information for the artist—we’re not scientists we are artists, we depend on our feelings, we depend on our intuition. We penetrate in the same sense that scientists penetrate deep down into molecular structures. In doing that, I found something extremely concrete. Through intuition and feelings we have access to other dimensions.”⁵
The reality of my music was being changed by the metaphor of science, and as I investigated the role of perception, I felt it necessary to strengthen the connection between molecular biology and music using poetry. While working on an album, An Unruly Manifesto, I became familiar with the 1920’s art movement of Surrealism and the manifesto written by its founder, Andre Breton. Breton was influenced by Arthur Rimbaud’s expression “alchemy of the word,” the idea of changing reality through the use of language, and felt it should be taken literally. One of the conditions of alchemical: the surrealist object in itself contains the transforming properties of metamorphosis, and is able to be one thing and another at the same time.⁶ I became familiar with the surrealist game of One inside Another, which helped me understand my visual encounter with the double helix and its use as metaphor within my music. This game, created by Breton and Benjamin Péret in 1954, dealt with areas of surrealist thought in metaphor, analogy, and image. The primary aspect of the game was the metaphorical coupling of two terms—the further apart the two terms were from one another, the greater the metaphor.⁷ This coupling of two terms not normally associated with one another is an essential part of the surrealist idea of beauty, and is intended to signify the possibilities of relationships existing in the world other than those usually perceived.⁸
A description of the rules of One into Another: “For a minimum of three players, although a large number is preferable. One player withdraws from the room and chooses for himself an object (or a person, an idea, etc.). While he is absent, the rest of the players also choose an object. When the first player returns, he is told what object they have chosen. He must now describe his own object in terms of the properties of the object chosen by others, making the comparison more and more obvious as he proceeds, until they are able to guess its identity. The first player should begin with a sentence such as ‘I am an (object)…’”⁹
An example given by Czech painter Toyen:
“I am a gleaming NECKTIE knotted around the hand so as to run across those throats at which I’m placed. (Answer: Sword.)”¹ᴼ
I began experimenting with this game to gain insight into my own perception. Inspired by its premise of describing one object in terms of another, I created the following poem fusing the terms of music and molecular biology. Within the poem, I explore the poetic freedom of language, investigating the experiences of being an artist while also examining music and molecular biology as a singular entity. Using poetry as a tool, the visual in my mind’s eye was then brought into the physical realm, and what had been abstract was now tangible. Rather than using the minimum of three people as the rules suggested, I created a poem divided into two parts, playing the role of coder and decoder. The point of this exercise is to strengthen the perception and understanding of each medium as now one.
Surrealist Game (Code)
I am an artist. An elephant’s foot on a neck resulting in murder is the equivalent of history suffocating an artist expected to be beholden to it. Upon entry an outer perspective provides fresh eyes sustenance while an inner perspective fosters dilation. It’s hard to believe the society of nothing new under the sun can be malleable enough to understand the joy and naivety of a child first walking because walking must be derivative. The creativity of a teen succumbs to death or deaf by nostalgia and the sound of individuality collapses under the weight of cemented ears.
An adult now, observing the consequences of non-conformity, a person becomes one of many sheep singing the same tune because it’s easier. How long can a sprouting voice be loyal to yesterday while wanting to reveal its own idiosyncratic nature. To rise above the hierarchy of buried idols is a feat deemed impossible as their notes are in a different weight class and time continues to create a perpetual caste system of myth, legend and then God. The curious relinquish being to have ideas lay dormant within the coffins of their mind. The skull is now a cemetery full of dead brilliance.
The pendulum of respiration is communal, but its singularity is the authenticity of tempo. The edifice of taught understanding crumbles under the ascension of tabula rasa as the guide to finding true self. It began with an act of breathing, simplicity, complexity, and the oscillation of oxygen expiring toward a reed remembrance as stylus to my cuneiform. The sonic reflection is the sound of carbon nurturing flora.
A morning epiphany occurred after listening to an audio recording. A note exhaled as indivisible as an atom forms molecules of melody creating a multicellular opus. My mind’s eye reveals a double spiral staircase as the fabric of quilted ancestry, as a code of being and the interweaving theme of old-world ways and its counterpoint as the departing of veil toward the otherworldly. An avant-garde reality now in constant motion because becoming begins with movement, memory, and metaphor unlocking the door of correlation. A reverence for a figure of speech would birth an endless horizon of possibility serving as the bonding agent and primary building block between two mediums drawing inferences into a singular fingerprint. With new lenses my perspective departs from linguistic exercise toward literary devices as an embedded code fundamental to the birthing of an artist and untapped depths of creativity.
A motif as an idea, seed, unit, kernel, or cell will blossom. A reverberant manuscript is littered with spheres. My existence is pixelated. The contour of a line ascending is a radiant speck of arms conducting circadian rhythms of awakening. The contour of a line descending is an elastic measure of rest, its duration is a void of silence. The conical cylinder now bellows out a symphony of cells or intervals as basic units of understanding, its composition is of first importance with life as its motive. The nucleus as primary orchestrator sketches bond line notation with a quintet sounding the elements. A tetrad is the base of all living things. A mechanistic band of acceleration propels kinetic blots of vitality, its beat subdivided into triplet of partials or sub particles aggregating across ensuing bar lines insinuating trinity. Hieroglyphics of clef or chem as ontological indicators reveal the identity of periodic or frequency.
Surrealist Game (Decoded)
As an artist the pursuit of authenticity is often met with the weight of nostalgia held by peers and the lay person. Embracing their mindset will result in the death of my own creativity. A healthy reverence for artists of the past is admirable. I feel suppressed by the past if I am expected to be beholden by it. I arrived on the planet wild and free only to be later indoctrinated by societal norms. As an infant I was told no for survival; my parents’ earliest intention was not to stifle my creativity but to protect me from inadvertently killing myself. I was told I could do and be anything I wanted when I got older. Imagination and creativity was at the foreground of my parents’ earlier conversations. As I became a teenager, my voice was not heard and the openness of earlier conversation had now become filled with rules and restrictions and I like so many teenagers felt, to quote lyrics by rapper Will Smith: Parents just don’t understand.
As an adult, I understand the consequences and benefits of making non-commercial music. Those who followed the crowd of art trends did it because maybe it appeared easier than facing the fear of being ostracized for following their voice. Every year unearthed are “secret” recordings of Jazz Greats whose legacies seem to never die or make room for those just trying to speak their voice within their time. I find myself in the ring again fighting the suppression of those lovers of the past and my music must now live up to their expectations of what God sounds like. We all share the commonality of breathing: inhale & exhale but we overlook the tempo of each individual breath.
In order to understand myself, through remembrance I began peeling back the layers of my understanding, introspectively examining what I was taught as right and wrong regarding music. What I was told was wrong about me musically I made a part of my musical DNA, feeling as though that was my natural tendency. I needed to reach a state of tabula rasa in an attempt to reach the original essence of self. As I began learning who I was as an artist and exploring the vast world of music I began to see parallels between science and music. Carbon makes sound (the process of exhalation through an instrument) and it also nurtures flowers.
My sense of peace, morning, the break of day, of solitude, and meditation. An atom was once thought to be indivisible. My mind has metaphorically transformed notes into atoms as melody as molecules as composition as cells. I began drawing inferences between two mediums realizing that abstraction is deliverance. I departed from linguistic exercise and the old-world idea of separation. I embrace the vast world of metaphor and the creative spark it provides. The DNA code, a reminder of the African American quilting tradition as a patch work of messages. Music and Molecular Biology are now interwoven into a singular fingerprint.
The shape of atoms are now everywhere. A saxophone instructor once expressed to me, you don’t need to have dynamics written down on sheet music in order to understand how to play it. If you follow the contour of a line, it gives you the dynamic level. If the line is ascending you gradually raise your volume and if it’s descending, you gradually lower your volume. A place of rest is a void of potential energy awaiting the next measure for music to enter. Circadian rhythms are the drums of the body, keepers of time. They are activated by the sun and control when it’s time to wake up and go to sleep.
The saxophone is a conical shaped instrument. The basic unit of the human body is a cell. The basic unit in music is an interval. An understanding of cells gives an understanding about how the human body is constructed. An understanding of intervals provides an understanding of how a melody or harmony is constructed. The nucleus is the control center of the cell like a conductor of an ensemble it guides function. The saxophone is activated by kinetic energy. The musical staff consist of 5 lines & 4 spaces, a container of representational structures of music. In molecular biology bond line notation is the representation of molecular structures consisting of the 5 basic atoms within DNA: Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and hydrogen. There are 4 basic chemicals in DNA: adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine. There are 4 basic harmonic environments in most music major, minor, augmented, and diminished. The musical staff is a container indicating frequency. The periodic table is a container, indicating elements and their atomic numbers.
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1) Carl Woideck “A Biological Sketch” in Charlie Parker: His life and Music, University of Michigan, 2020 pp. 55-56
2) Ibid
3) George Lakoff & Mark Johnson,” concepts we live by” in The Metaphors We live By, The University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 5
4) Jack Whitten, Notes from the Woodshed, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018
5) Boston University, “School of Visual Arts Contemporary Perspectives Lecture with Jack Whitten.” “October 17, 2016, Video, 1:20, https://youtu.be/bxskFjQZc0o?si=PV8WoALtRjjzf9Nj
6) Inez Hedges, “Surrealist Metaphor”. Poetics Today, Vol. 4:2, 1983, 275-295, Download on Sat, 21 Oct 2023, https://about.jstor.org/terms
7) Alastair Brotchie & Mel Gooding, “Documents” in A Book of Surrealist Games, Shambhala Publications, 1991, p. 145
8) Ibid
9) Alastair Brotchie & Mel Gooding, “Language Games” in A Book of Surrealist Games, Shambhala Publications, 1991, p. 31
10) Ibid
EMPIRICAL PERCEPTION by James Brandon Lewis
To check out the full album, visit:
https://jamesbrandonlewis.bandcamp.com/album/transfiguration
James Brandon Lewis is a critically- acclaimed composer, saxophonist, and writer. He has received accolades from NPR, ASCAP Foundation,Macdowell, and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He has been described as “ a saxophonist who embodies and transcends tradition” by The New York Times, and a promising young talent having listened to the elders by Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins. The saxophonist has balanced a deep, gospel -informed spirituality with Free-Jazz- abandon and hard-hitting funk-meets-hip-hop underpinning - Rolling Stone Magazine. He has released several critically-acclaimed albums, most recently highly touted 2021's Jesup Wagon and tours internationally leading several ensembles, and is a member and co-founder of American Book Award winning Ensemble Heroes Are Gang Leaders. James was recently voted Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist by Downbeat magazine's 2020s International Critics poll and most recently named top Tenor Saxophonist for 2021 by Jazz Times Magazine. Lewis attended Howard University, received his M.F.A from California Institute of the Arts and was recently named the Inaugural recipient of the Phd Fellowship in Creativity by the University of the Arts in collaboration with The Balvenie, drummer and Academy Award-Winning Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.