Re: [Harp-L] martial arts, music theory, pop music, and harmonica.

["Dave Murray" <dlmurray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Several of the latest threads compel me to finally chime in on this. I've 
been a martial artist for a long time and one of the things that I observed 
long ago was that martial arts, dancing, music, and "bedroom wrestling" have 
far more in common than most people realize. They are all ultimately about 
relationships. You can do all of these activities by yourself. Music becomes 
the relationship of pitch, and time that you can enjoy alone, or other 
people can enjoy listening to. Martial arts practiced alone is the 
relationship of time and distance with the movements of your own body that 
you can enjoy and people can enjoy watching. You can dance alone and your 
time and distance also relates to the music. No need to describe wrestling 
alone. With all of them repetitious practice, putting movement into muscle 
memory improves us.

All of that can stand alone, as practice or as art, but when it's with 
someone else it is at it's highest form. Most martial arts practice is 
practice, without bad intentions, with a partner. In the beginning it is 
extremely cooperative, as you advance it gets turned up a bit to bring out 
the best in your training partner, and in yourself. Same with dancing, two 
moving as one, with grace. I can easily teach martial arts to a dancer 
because they already know how to move gracefully while controlling time and 
distance with respect to someone else. Playing music with someone else; now 
you are doing what you do with someone else. Gotta pay attention to them, as 
well as what you want to do. You can be leading them one moment and 
responding the next. You must cope with their breaks in rhythm just like a 
martial artist or dancer. No need to describe bedroom wrestling.

All of these beautiful arts can go to the dark side if someone has bad 
intentions. For the martial artist the level of non-cooperation goes from 
bringing out the best to doing harm, or protecting yourself from harm. 
Dancers can hurt each other physically, or press their partner to hurt 
themselves. Dancers who are also martial artist know that they can use their 
dance movements for martial purpose. The sensual tango is extraordinarily 
martial. Music, friendly competition, can become an attack at an emotional 
level. Once again, no need to describe the dark side of bedroom wrestling.

Sometimes words fail us. I have never observed bad intentions in the parties 
involved in the burying a kid on the stage controversy. I never got the 
impression of bad intentions and assumed it was a reference to turning up 
the intensity to bring out the best. Sometimes things can go beyond the 
intended level, or we can miscalculate the ability of that other person in 
the relationship. Too bad when it happens, hopefully instead of it being a 
bad experience it can be a valuable learning experience. I've certainly 
learned many a valuable lesson in martial arts where I picked myself up from 
the ground and limped home to my bottle of dit-da jaow (Chinese liniment). 
We can't control how the other person perceives "defeat" and how they will 
respond. The best that we can do is keep our intentions good when we do our 
best.

The music is with a harp of course :0)

Peace and music,
Dave