9/2/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Preface:

This entry in particular I am hesitant to share. It feels incomplete and perhaps unhelpful to me now, as I sit in 2020; or at least it feels unhelpful in it’s current state. Throughout this writing, I believe my intention was to explore how practicing my guitar could relate to a logical and almost mathematical way of thinking. I was especially interested in how I could break down the seemingly complex task of succeeding in a collegiate Jazz performance program. The problems I see with my old writing now? It feels young and earnest, though only partially informed. If you are in for a few chuckles or head-scratchers, followed by a reframing of the ideas, I would invite you to read on. If not, I don’t blame you for passing this one over.

At a few moments in the original entry, I sprinkle in some current reflections in italics.

Original Entry:

Bite Sized Functions:

I get tired, so I rest. I get hungry, so I eat. I get energetic, so I move. Any of these “Functions,” when overstretched create tension, gyrations (so to speak), a lack of balance. I overcompensate, spill the beans, tip the scale; I must to experience myself. I am aware of tipping points, “highs,” as well as deficiencies, “lows.” I gravitate towards releases of energy (dopamine?), then inhabit their “niches” like tube worms clustered around hydrothermal vents. I love energy.

According to the first law of Thermodynamics, energy is considered constant in the universe, implying that…what? Either energy is infinite? Finite? Nothing? Speculations. Energy feels quite certainly like something, and from that something, somehow, I emerge. Learning to recognize form and balance is a life-long process; language, physical balance, motor skills, social interaction, music, arranging color, space and sound, drawing, and focus are all activities that I still actively shape and hone, even to this moment. From the entropic haze of reality I emerge, aware of the mess.

Energy transfers are like functions; variables and constants interact and changes occur. For example: a tree grows a fruit, which eventually gains more weight than the branch that birthed it, and it falls down, down, down. Splat. Potential for new tree, nourishment for the creatures below. (Now I try to frame my idea into a concept, which, in the present at 2020, seems a little less certain and concrete.)

The parent tree is constant (within it’s own relativity) and is responsible for producing fruit. The fruit, it’s weight, it’s health, it’s shape, it’s self, is variable, as it’s breaking point. Gravity is constant. The fruit falls.

Learning vocabulary on guitar is a situation composed of the same elements, constants and variables. Or, perhaps it is useful to consider how the situation of learning guitar could map onto the schema of constants and variables.

As I observe exchanges of energy, not only on guitar, but between musicians, I observe uniquely operating functions.

I am my ability to observe and interact with infinitely varied functions. (This technique of language shows up a lot in this era, as I tried to frame my intentions with Empowered Language, something that Mark England exposed me to at Gratifly Music and Arts Festival (Turns out Gratifly experienced some hard realities too). His website is linked, though I honestly have no idea what he has going on now days. Here’s a Tedx Talk he gave.)

Because I am my ability to observe and interact with infinitely varied functions, I choose to engage with small and manageable functions that promote opening, deepening in every Dharma that arises, like a tree fruiting to nourish and plant seeds.

Current Reflections:

As my Great Uncle John might say, “Boy, oh Boy.” If I could, I would pat this past version of myself on the shoulder and say, “Good try kid.”

I was really trying to take my experience of moments, framed in a dichotomy of yin and yang, (linked here is the Britannica encyclopedia’s cursory entry), as an interplay of opposites. I was attempting to boil my experience into a simple if/than, dualistic, ‘profound,’ or even worse, ‘informed‘ equation-esque way of thinking. This I would plaster over my growing sense of discomfort at the scope of material that I was constantly demanded to learn, memorize, and execute during my college years.

The problem? Life is way more messy than simple “constant and variable” dichotomies, and perhaps much deeper than a “this” and a “that.” My graph above makes me shudder. Any of the constants that I listed in those neat columns could easily be variables, and vice versa. And my imagery of the apple tree makes me groan a little bit. The tree is a variable. It could grow in any way depending on the weather, the environment, the people who live nearby, etc.

As I continue to live, practice, and grow, I’m starting to recognize that maybe life is one big variable, one giant expression of change. Sure, some things seem to stay the same. We can use them as a reference point for measurements and calculations. For example, we can use the sun to measure time. People have been using sundials forever. I just looked up how they work with this cached Yale Scientific Article. The sun is pretty apparently constant, but one day, you know, that fucking thing is going to burn itself out. Sundials won’t work for shit without a sun.

Maybe the universe is constant flux. And maybe it’s useful to consider how ancient spiritual wisdom, like that of the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang applies to our lives right now, whatever our current endeavor.

But this original entry? Trying to frame some ultimate constants and variables? Pssh. There are thousands of different kinds of guitars. That’s a variable. You can tune the damn thing however you want. That’s a variable. Inherent notes? Eh…? Some systems of music use measured micro tones that fit into the cracks and spaces between our piano keys. Even Bach tempered his clavier so that the natural harmonics of the instrument would sound more in tune in all keys. And so on and so forth for the rest of that list above.

For me at the time, I was looking for some discipline. I was searching for a way to regiment and integrate the information I was encountering at music school – and it was a fucking lot of information. I needed to sit down and decide, “Okay, I am going to do it this way, with this tuning, with this feeling, with this approach and form.”

I needed this. I still do now, in a way, but especially then. Because before this time, I was just trying to figure out how the guitar worked with my own thoughts, ability, and mind.

Turns out there are a lot of heavy duty teachers and musicians in the lineage of Jazz, as there are across other musical traditions.

For me, deciding to learn music through the framework of jazz was a way to take the bull by the horns and say “listen here, Sam, you are going to learn the fuck out of this information in this particular tradition;” because ambling around noncommittally for a year was exciting and creative, but wasn’t really yielding the results I wanted. So I took it up and, by gum, I got myself through it. I’m still growing, struggling, and giving it my best; and, I actually use some principals of Yin and Yang in my guitar practice, but in a much more pragmatic way. Bows to my teacher for the practice.

So, the biggest take away from this, for me? My life is a constant process. Maybe change is the truth of the universe. And maybe intentional, critically-examined, and earnest ritualized effort is a vehicle for growth and actualization. And I see now that, not every stop along the way is the greatest place ever.

Sometimes I can be wrong.

8/27/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry

Magnetic Learning:

I learn in a very mysterious way, through experience over time. I reference a knowledge body and relate new information to it. This information becomes magnetized towards me and my neural network and energetic library, or is repelled away from me and forgotten.

The emotions I create open gates for my soul, my center, my essence to draw experiences through.

“Negative” emotions are valid and insightful, creating a space of contrast for novel experience to emerge from.

Engaged and excited emotions quickly magnetize and charge, making learning embody a state of flow.

Lusting and “greedy” emotions draw towards a specific desire and nullify opportunities of opening and flowering in preference of one specific release. My question is this: can this ability for desire be harnessed in either a more helpful or less helpful way?

If I desire to play “better” or “cooler” music than what I already create, I disengage from reality and engage with impossible fluctuating standards. This is neither an excuse to curb the desire to expand and grow, nor is it necessarily helpful to catalyzing or enabling myself to expand or grow.

I define my standards and project them on reality.

I create a projection onto reality, reality creates an impression on me.

I am my ability to project and impress upon reality.

Because I am my ability to impress and project upon reality, I create harmony, commUNITY, and inspiration for the benefit of all sentient and unaware beings throughout all space and time.

Samuel Kogen Rugg

Projecting is giving energy, impressing is receiving energy.

Giving, receiving, and energy are empty.

I am silence, emptiness, nothing.

I am everything.

I am.

I III 3 delta

(Well, there was that Empowered Language Trip from Mark England showing up again, followed by some free association.)

Current Reflections:

Upon a few years of steeping and ripening, as I look back upon this entry, I can see that my focus in this writing is clearly focused on memory and learning. Questions like:

• How do I learn new things?
• Why do I forget some things, but remember other things so vividly?
• Can I unearth a way to help ritualize the process of encountering new forms and practices?
• Can I ritualize a way to integrate new forms and practices into my being and then directly apply them to my life in this moment?

At the time of this writing, I was intrigued with the idea of magnetic learning. What exactly does this mean, magnetic learning?

In my experience, it seems that the human creature has a very special ability. We can encounter new information, something we have never seen before, something that requires our body and mind to engage in a particular way, and something that then creates a specific novel result when actualized with experience. As we practice, it seems that this new form can become easier and easier, until it suddenly seems like it seems to show up on it’s own accord, with a mind and inertia of its own.

It’s almost like we this: We can engage so fully, so consistently, so consciously, and so regularly with a practice that we can literally wire up a new habit and plant it into our subconscious. All of our conscious effort and attention becomes so ritualized that we can offload it to automatic or subconscious action, but not mindlessly. Rather, we can offload it with full mindfulness. It’s like all of the hours of our consistent work, all of our full-contact, engaged, and present awareness – it never stops. We have created a version of our self that has no beginning or ending, but is always engaged in this particular form of our practice. And once it’s subconscious and automatic, we can engage with the process again and build on it.

Oh lord stop me.

Starting to sound like a Bill Evans quote my teacher Jay Rinsen Weik has taped to his office door at the University of Toledo:

“It’s better to do something simple that is real. It’s something you can build on. because you know what you’re doing. Whereas, if you try to approximate something very advanced and don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t build on it.

The whole process of learning the facility of being able to play Jazz was to take these problems from the outer level in- one by one and to stay with it at a very intense conscious concentration level until that process becomes secondary and subconscious… Then you can begin concentrating on that next problem which will allow you to do a little bit more.“

The full article is here. And it comes from a video called “The Universal Mind of Bill Evans,” here linked to the YouTube video.

For me, back in my undergraduate years at the University of Toledo, I was extremely interested in how our emotions effect our ability to learn. Do strong emotions help me learn and remember things more deeply?

If so, how can I cultivate a deeper emotional connection to the musical forms that I want to integrate? An amazing pianist, Josh Silver once told me that he likes to sit, close his eyes, and listen to a new tune he’s working on, imagining a film playing in his mind along with the music. This deeply struck me. At the time he delivered this wisdom, I was overwhelmed and out of my mind scrambling to get my shit together to just pass my finals. I tried his idea out once while I was learning the standard, “Here’s That Rainy Day,” Here from my senior recital.

A better one is Bill Evans, Here.

I haven’t forgotten the tune.

If I’m being honest, it’s likely rusty, but man, Josh’s insight really helped me out. And if you listen to him, he’s a, (pardon my language) a MOTHER FUCKER of a player. Deep respect Josh.

How can we create a powerful emotional connection with our art and craft, whatever it is? How can we make it personal, real, and meaningful? How can we use the building blocks of our craft and electrify it with our life? Maybe it’s time to take some of Rinsen’s, Bill Evans’, and Josh’s insights to heart.

8/19/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

3.

Original Entry
Ethereal and Physical Bodies in Music:

My mind is part of a non-physical, energetic continuum that merges with a physical expression of this energy.

Before I play, I engage and focus my mind in sitting; I engage and focus my body in juggling, stimulating an experience of rhythm and harmony in motion.

Guitar is an intricate interaction of my physical and non-physical aspects of being, through time and space, in sound. Warming up and engaging both aspects of my being awakens fresh clay to mold with my intention and awareness.

Current reflection:

This is another short entry, so I thought I might unpack some of the ideas.

Around the time that I wrote this little snippet, I was first encountering some wisdom from my teacher, Jay Rinsen Weik, who was encouraging me to think about the different roles I inhabit in my life and the responsibilities associated with each. For example, at the time, I was inhabiting the active roll of undergraduate music student at the University of Toledo. Some of my responsibilities included: showing up to classes on time, finishing homework, and practicing. Pretty easy. I was also inhabiting the role of Zen Student, practicing with the community at the Buddhist Temple of Toledo; here I had a different set of responsibilities and roles, some of which included: taking care of my daily meditation practice, or Zazen, showing up to physical services when I could (this was back before the entire world was shut down from COVID), and sometimes filling liturgical roles, like clomping on a drum or playing certain bells during chants and moments of ceremony.

This entry, Ethereal and Physical Bodies in Music, was an extension and exploration of these, ‘The Roles of My Life at This Current Moment in Time – Sam Rugg, Undergraduate, early 2010’s’

Within my first sentence, “My mind is part of a non-physical, energetic continuum that merges with a physical expression of this energy,” I was appreciating the recognition of the apparent dichotomy that my body and mind seems to share. Clearly, if I sit and just think about how nice it would be to have a cheeseburger, alas, no cheeseburger will arise. But If I get my ass up and take some initiative with my body, I can bring my cheeseburger vision to life. As I continue to live, breathe, and practice my craft and engage with my Zen Training, my understanding keeps evolving and changing, but at its heart I think was really trying to acknowledge, “Hey I have a mind that thinks and a body that acts.”

At the same time that these two aspects of myself, mind and body seem to inhabit different spheres, I was also beginning to realize that, “Hey, maybe this mind/body split is less concrete than I have believed up to this moment.” I was starting to sense that my mind and body were woven into the same continuum, that their apparent separateness might actually be an incomplete perception. I started really diggin’ the thought that my mind and body were expressions of the same thing, but just across multiple dimensions.

“Maybe my body is the manifestation of my life through space, and my mind is the manifestation of my life through time!” I might think to myself.

Is it?

I don’t know.

But, however these two aspects of my being map out onto reality, I was feeling a deeper connection that I wanted to acknowledge, a seed of awareness that I wanted to cultivate.

The next line: “Before I play, I engage and focus my mind in sitting; I engage and focus my body in juggling, stimulating an experience of rhythm and harmony in motion.” Here, I am invoking some intentions that, if I’m being honest, sound really great to me from this current vantage point. I definitely have not been regularly framing my musical practice with these two warm-ups, meant to engage my ethereal and physical bodies before I hunker down to practice my instrument.

I reasoned that, if I took five or ten minutes to practice Zazen (my seated meditation), then I could effectively focus my mind and bring myself back to my center, internally. If I took another five or ten minutes to roll this focus into my juggling practice, (yes, I definitely have a juggling practice that I have been cultivating since late 2011) then I could engage my body with the natural rhythm of throwing and catching objects, spatial and temporal awareness, and the feeling of flow.

Focus the mind, focus the body, then hit the wood shed to sharpen my musical craft and training? Fuck yes. That still sounds great to me. Definitely have NOT been doing this over the last 5 – 7 years.

It’s funny, in this moment, I’m recognizing how wonderful it would be to intentionally frame my guitar practice with these specific, and almost liturgical practices: Focus mind, Focus Body, Warm Up on the Guitar, Shed my craft at the edge of my ability, then cool off, offer the merits, log the work, and close the book. Perhaps I was writing this entry, from all those years ago, to me now. I have the capacity and time to take this up. I wonder what this ritualized practice might yield for my life?

“Guitar is an intricate interaction of my physical and non-physical aspects of being, through time and space, in sound. Warming up and engaging both aspects of my being awakens fresh clay to mold with my intention and awareness.”

The coda. As I read over this entry and unpack it, I’m recognizing more and more the liturgical nature of this compact entry. In this last set of lines, I am tying up all of my intentions, tuning my mind and heart to a particular feeling-tone and quality that I would like to cultivate as I continue to engage with my spiritual, physical, and musical practices. In our own way, I think we each want to bring the best aspects of ourselves forward to the activities we cherish most in our life, striving to do the best we can with the circumstances we are given. Can we cherish all of the circumstances, not just the super-cool and most engaging moments, bringing our best to the most mundane and the most difficult moments of our lives?

May it be so.

_/\_

Sam
Kogen

Musical Liturgy #1

“My mind is part of a non-physical, energetic continuum that merges with a physical expression of this energy.

Before I play, I engage and focus my mind in sitting; I engage and focus my body in juggling, stimulating an experience of rhythm and harmony in motion.

Guitar is an intricate interaction of my physical and non-physical aspects of being, through time and space, in sound. Warming up and engaging both aspects of my being awakens fresh clay to mold with my intention and awareness.”

8/12/20

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

2.

“On Emotion: From the Evolution of Consciousness by Robert Ornstein:

[Emotions] are at the frontline of experience. Since they evolved to short-circuit deliberations, they spring quickly into action before rational deliberation has time to function (92).”

I am my ability to reflect my emotions onto guitar and musical ideas.
I am my ability to feel and remember emotion encoded in music.
I am my ability to direct and harness emotion with my experience.

This entry is extremely short, so I figured that I might reflect upon the inspiration that moved me to write this several years ago.

I was incredible intrigued when I first read the above passage in Ornsteins’ book. The entire work is a trip, “The Evolution of Consciousness.” To see in writing, this claim that our emotions have an evolutionary nature that allows them to bypass our conscious thought, this hit me deeply. And looking back into time, doesn’t it make sense that emotions would allow our evolutionary ancestors to automatically react out of, say, mortal fear of a tiger in the bushes. To sit and contemplate whether or not the tiger was in the bushes, whether or not the tiger was real, or whether or not the tiger is actually just a perception existing in my own mind, all of these thoughts are going to quickly remove this ancient hominid’s genes from the pool.

These aren’t my thoughts. I’m sure I’ve heard Joe Rogan talk about this too. It’s not a new idea.

But the capacity to engage with music, interfacing with my emotions? That’s interesting. Because if I can engage with music, interfacing with my body and my emotions, can I tap into this instinctual capacity to bypass my logical thought? If my emotions are engaged, if I am deeply feeling something, anything, and then I engage with art, if I channel my feelings into what I’m doing, isn’t that so much richer and deeper than simply hacking apart all of music theory and spilling all the guts and appendages of my instrument’s technical nature onto the music stand in front of me? I went to school for Jazz studies. I am endlessly fascinated by the inner-workings of music theory, harmony, melody, voice leading, rhythm, and how all these elements show up through the instrument in front of me. I can pull up my rubber gloves and pick at things with my tweezers all day. But lord, I sounds pretty dry and boring if that’s all there is when I play.

So what is this about emotions short-circuiting our deliberations? What does it really mean to “play with feeling?” And that’s not rhetorical. Seriously. How does that feel? How do you do that? Are there some ways that I can always emerge from a place of deep feeling, visceral emotion, living vibration when I perform? Can I make a marriage of my arduous effort to organize shapes, structures, cells, intervals, scales, chord voicings, harmony, voice leading, and the whole musical catastrophe with raw-fucking-throbbing-emotion?

This is why I wrote this entry. This is the impulse behind my, perhaps corny, affirmations – how can I harness my biology to help my ego and my thoughts and my sense of self get the fuck out of the way? How can I bring my life and the reality of my successes and failures, the constant turmoil of emotional waves, my fears and insecurities, my power and strength, the still and unmoving ocean of my being, and everything I have into my art. What the fuck does that feel like?

8/6/20

I’ve decided to share my musical inspiration notebook from my college years, one entry at a time. Some entries are carbon copies right from my notebook, others have current reflections added into the original entries, marked with italics.

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

1.

Seeds of a Mental Construct:
My short time with Vector literally changed my entire perspective on reality and colored my subconscious. In 24 hours of “intense” periods of training, I was firmly enough enough rooted and wired efficiently enough to begin selling a product that I previously knew nothing about. Through a mix of listening and conscious interaction and practice, I was able to develop a strongly magnetized mental construct. I even dreamed of CutCo knives.
Maddie familiarized us to the product and the company. She taught us all about the sales approach, the marketing approach, had us practice from the manual, and gave us hands on experience cutting food.
I can utilize this approach to build my own musical and mental constructs. At this point, it is a scientific process; I am just trying things out, but with a cocktail of integrative practices and perspectives, I can develop and cultivate my musical intuition and my hearing-mind.
Perhaps instead of attempting to digest the entire of field of music, instead I could gear this first perspective towards digesting new tunes and material.

• For new tunes, I can familiarize myself to it through listening to a variety of versions of the song.
• Dissect the chord changes and read them aloud
• Play the melody with the recording
• Play the chords with the recording
• Establish a flow of scales with looper
• Play with triads through changes
• Play with seventh arpeggios through the changes.

Paving, excavating, polishing, building

This is a culmination of all I know. Each one of these bullets have infinite ways to open endless possibilities; is is a 3-day, 5 hour-a-day block of experience.

Each bullet should be practiced and thoroughly appreciated; there is no rush, but there is.

Hands-on playing can be balanced with critical (attentive) listening.

This approach can be geared towards classical materials as well.

I steep in exercise to promote growth.
I play as a listener.
When anger arises, I observe it and diffuse it by tracing and acknowledging its roots. For every anger, there exists a construct for translating, transmuting, and transforming emotion into motivation and understanding.