PAINTING WITH THE VOICE (OR CHANTS)
A Little while ago I got the urge to start making sounds with my voice almost as if I were singing, except that the sounds that were coming resembled simple vibrations rather than music. What I felt was happening was more an allowing of vibrations in my chest and vocal chords than actual singing. All my life I had shied away from singing because I was always told and was convinced that I could not do it. I could never keep a tune, or sustain any kind of melody. I still think I do not sing. What comes out are not songs, and I wouldn’t even call it music in the sense of what we normally call music. I find them interesting and powerful collections of sounds. And I do feel that like my paintings, the sounds and vibrations that come out are an expression of what is to be human, and that it comes from the depth of my being. I have called this type of expression PAINTING WITH THE VOICE, because they are generated in the same way as my painting when it arises. It happens without knowing or even anticipating which sounds will be made by my body, and I only have a notion of what they are when they have been heard by my ears. And even that is not completely true, because what it feels like when it is happening, is that the allowing the sounds to be made, the actual making of the sounds and the hearing of the sounds appear to be actually a single event that can’t be separated into the three parts we fell we experience each time we do something: first, the preparing to do, second, the doing and third the observing what was done. In this singing, just as it happens in painting, or in making sculptures, those three parts of the experience of doing become one inseparable event that paradoxically contain all three parts but fused and sensed as a unifying whole.
These collections of sounds because they resemble in a small way ancient chants I sometimes call them CHANTS.
All I know about these chants is that when I am “singing” or chanting, it is the body itself that in a way is deeply involved in the creation of the piece. When I observe what is happening (and I am always observing) I sense that the body is in a way searching up and down the scale, for vibrations that will resonate within the body itself and this resonance is felt in two different ways. The ear, on the one hand, senses that each sounds appears to be composed of more than one note (I know nothing of music and have no better way of explaining what is observed) and the full body, on the other the body feels that it has reached a comfortable place when it has reached the place of resonance. From this, I get the feeling that these sounds represent or express something intimately related to the way our body is made up in us humans, and that because of that these chants appear so mysterious. But that is not all, I also feel that these “songs at the same time convey to us, just like painting does, something from beyond our senses and this material realm, something that cannot be expressed by words but that is as real as this world we can touch directly with our senses.
For quite some time I just engaged in chanting following an inner urge to make sounds, and sounds were made and were only heard by me and whatever surrounded me. But one day I also got the urge to record some of them for no reason at all.
Recently I got the urge to share these sounds and that compelled me to include them in this site.
Here is a sample of various Voice Paintings.
Some of them (Marked with a *), came out while I was looking and visually interacting with that painting. I believe these point in a different way at the essence of that painting and in my view help one relate to, and understand the painting it in a more profound way.
The others (without an *) correspond to chants that came without looking at anything in particular. These were first recorded as audio and only later paired at random with paintings. I believe that pairing them also helps one get more out of the experience than if we look at the painting and of listen to the audio separately. One of these was recorded as a video and shows the allowing a chant to arise while looking at the camera.
Click on the images or names to listen. I hope you enjoy them.
These collections of sounds because they resemble in a small way ancient chants I sometimes call them CHANTS.
All I know about these chants is that when I am “singing” or chanting, it is the body itself that in a way is deeply involved in the creation of the piece. When I observe what is happening (and I am always observing) I sense that the body is in a way searching up and down the scale, for vibrations that will resonate within the body itself and this resonance is felt in two different ways. The ear, on the one hand, senses that each sounds appears to be composed of more than one note (I know nothing of music and have no better way of explaining what is observed) and the full body, on the other the body feels that it has reached a comfortable place when it has reached the place of resonance. From this, I get the feeling that these sounds represent or express something intimately related to the way our body is made up in us humans, and that because of that these chants appear so mysterious. But that is not all, I also feel that these “songs at the same time convey to us, just like painting does, something from beyond our senses and this material realm, something that cannot be expressed by words but that is as real as this world we can touch directly with our senses.
For quite some time I just engaged in chanting following an inner urge to make sounds, and sounds were made and were only heard by me and whatever surrounded me. But one day I also got the urge to record some of them for no reason at all.
Recently I got the urge to share these sounds and that compelled me to include them in this site.
Here is a sample of various Voice Paintings.
Some of them (Marked with a *), came out while I was looking and visually interacting with that painting. I believe these point in a different way at the essence of that painting and in my view help one relate to, and understand the painting it in a more profound way.
The others (without an *) correspond to chants that came without looking at anything in particular. These were first recorded as audio and only later paired at random with paintings. I believe that pairing them also helps one get more out of the experience than if we look at the painting and of listen to the audio separately. One of these was recorded as a video and shows the allowing a chant to arise while looking at the camera.
Click on the images or names to listen. I hope you enjoy them.
