Sing, O Muse
Voice, singing + the sonority of poetics
Sing, O Muse...
Begin where it begins
Sing as you have always sung
Tell it for our time
— My original poetry / lyrics excerpt from my song ‘Muse’ 🎶 inspired by Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.
The Muse as Mystery:
An energy signature of a creative discipline
A metaphor for the impulse and inspiration behind creative work
A relationship with music
A real anthropomorphic spiritual presence and guide
The teacher as the instrument itself
The voice
The body
The creative process
As a singer who works closely with the sonority of words—that is, the meaning-making present in the sound of language beyond-before denotative or referential meaning:
Poetic sonority vibrates through my body and out into the world
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writing beautifully points this poetic ineffability and our delicate and ephemeral, existence.
Breath wakes the voice and moves sound through my being to meet yours:
‘poetry…is essentially a variety of existence’ (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2002: 174).
That Merleau-Ponty citation realized as a Misha Micro-Opera:
‘How does the musician open themselves to this relationship with music? And for that, one needs a discipline, that is, a body of techniques which enables you to develop this relationship with music: training the body, mind, and the heart.’ (1982; 03:32) — Robert Fripp
Adapted from my article, ‘Sing, O Muse: Vocality as Contemplative Practice’, published in Dance, Movement & Spiritualities (Intellect).
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Fripp, Robert (1982), ‘Interview: Toad's Place (New Haven , Ct. March 4, 1982)’, Bill Bruford YouTube.
Homer, The Odyssey (trans. R. Fagles 1996), New York: Penguin Books.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice ([1945] 2002), Phénoménologie de la perception (The Phenomenology of Perception) (trans. C. Smith), London, New York: Routledge Classics. Gallimard, Paris (1945).
Penton, Misha (2023), Sing, O Muse: Vocality as Contemplative Practice, Dance, Movement & Spiritualities ‘Voice as Movement and a Spiritual “in-between”’, 10:1. Journal ed. J. Chambers-Coe; issue ed. E. Belgrano. (Intellect, 2023). Full article here.
Penton, Misha (2022), ‘Muse’, original lyrics and art song composition.
And no, I don’t use AI in my writing or music.
DM if you’re curious how I do use my robot.
“Breath wakes the voice and moves sound through my being to meet yours…”❤️❤️❤️