5) The luminous wash of resonant piano strings,

Vac, Unstruck Sound

I have long adored the sustained long resonances where one plays the piano as if it is a gong, not only utilizing a melody of notes, or chords, in a sequence (see blog post on playing the piano on www.meditationalmusic.net). 

I discovered when much younger that playing the piano with the sustain pedal permanently down, or in a fascinating halfway position, (adjusted so that the sounds were teasingly suspended between sounding and clipped), can lead to a more spacious relationship with the sounds. Because the sounds keep resonating, this lends itself to music where modulation is absent or not compromised. A woman at a concert at Harvard said she felt that my playing is a reinvention of the instrument.

In the Vedas the feminine aspect of the logos is called Vac. The other aspects being Aksara and Brahman. Vac refers to the many levels of sound, the physical being only the lowest of many more refined yet powerful sounds.

Vac is described as ‘mystic speech’, a hidden potency of which ordinary sound is a faint reflection. 

Here are the four divisions of Vac:

1) vaikhari       audible, outer sound (vocal speech)   

corresponds to jagrat – waking consciousness

2) madyama    middlemost (level of dreams, emotion, inspiration, imagination)    corresponds to svapna – dream consciousness

3) pasyanti   seeing and hearing the truth  (higher visioning)  

corresponds to susupti – sleep of the senses

4) para   beyond all the four; transcendent     

corresponds to turiya  – fourth state of ecstasy

In Starmilk the full spectrum of Vac is suggested, although the music is of course “only” audible sound, it points by its behaviour, and its embedded devotional quality, to the higher levels. The sustained sounds allow one to attune in a sensitive kind of astronomical relaxation. In one sense Starmilk is like a sacred chant and a piano piece at the same time. It is ancient and future. 

Starmilk might also help meditation. 

The term “unstruck sound” in Indian music hints at this higher level part of Vac, the upper three quarters of Vac. The drone instrument, the tamboura is a strong and deliberate reminder of the unstruck (ie having no beginning) sound, of sounds in eternity, always there. Again this lends itself well to the music of stars, as the huge time spans of stellar existence suggest eternal sounds, changing only in small ways, very slowly.