I wrote this original piano composition for the first New Age Salon performance hosted by The Schubert Club. This group of musicians, painters, poets, dancers, and composers was organized by Fidelis Odozi and inspired by the salons of centuries past. We tried to capture that same feeling of artists collaborating and sharing their ideas in a relaxed setting.
My randomly-assigned partner was Gail Marie Kern, a painter with a very distinct and fascinating style. She had started her Buddha painting and was finishing it at the same time I was composing “Buddha on the Road.” We sent ideas back and forth as they came. I didn’t necessarily want my piece to be a “soundtrack” to her painting, but rather something that makes the audience draw their own conclusions about how the painting and composition are connected.
A huge thanks to the talented pianist Franco Holder for performing my piece. In the spirit of collaboration, I left most of the dynamic and tempo choices to him, and he breathed life into the music.
Gail’s artist statement:
There is a saying “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.” This saying has been interpreted may ways. My interpretation is that the Buddha on the road is a false prophet. Buddha drives his lotus flower car at top speed on the fast track to enlightenment. This is a contradiction, the quicker you wish to become enlightened the longer it will take. His problems with traction in the mud represent this dilemma.
The lotus flower headlights “enlighten” Buddha’s path but he seems detached from the possibility of harming the lesser life forms on the reincarnation scale: the ants, a dung beetle, and monarch butterflies; along with the monarch’s primary life source, milkweed.
Buddha is in a hurry to deliver a vegetarian pizza (desire). This is a reference to Buddha in advertisements that wish to sell you something. The pizza attracts the attention of a hungry dragon (suffering). But, if you look closely, you will see the dragon is tethered to the Rogue Buddha’s toe like a pet. Now look again and see that the dragon lacks substance. It could be only a paper kit. Suffering is still an illusion, even when Evil Buddha brings it. The general point of this painting is to question all religious figures, all bringers of light. Especially since another word for bringer of light is Lucifer.
I work primarily with reclaimed materials because I wish to demonstrate consciousness about waste and challenge the belief that things of value must be pristine in appearance. This painting is on wood panel adhered to a bulletin board. The sides of the bulletin board are intentional worn to show the wood material underneath. Because of technology we may as individuals reproduce almost any image we come in contact with. My technique of creating acrylic paintings on unusual surfaces and extended the image onto the frame is intended to differentiate the original painting from future reproductions.
As an artistic collaboration, for the first New Age Salon Event held at the Schubert Club Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 9, 2013 Charlie McCarron, a contemporary composer, and I worked together. Charlie composed a piece of music entitled “Buddha on the Road.”
When listening to Charlie McCarron’s first draft of his composition I thought of Buddha getting caught in the mud because of the changing tempo. When I listened to his composition after its completion I had a feeling of Buddha with remorseful thoughts for his misguided acts, yet he continues on his way.
