Content, Meaning and Form, Part Two

A Meditation on Robert Bly's Form That is Neither In Nor Out While Thinking of Composing For Improvisors

Part Two: Meaning

There is an occult flavor to the word meaning. Truth and meaning come from a mysterious source. It may come through a teacher or intuited or maybe from a master you’ve only met through the medium of recording or the printed page.

Meaning is what is handed down through a lineage. Not the tricks of the trade, rather let’s say Pythagoras did pass down technical information relating to where the nodes on the monochord are, but to his most intimate students he passed on something more. This something more is meaning.

To approach meaning is to begin the journey inward and downward. Jungian analyst James Hillman says we need to grow down.

Antonio Machado said,

Mankind owns four things

That are no good at sea

Rudder, anchor, oars 

And the fear of going down

To do this we need much patience. The alchemists said that haste is the devil. In his sonnets to that primordial musician Orpheus, Rilke wrote this:

All that is hurrying

Soon will be over with

Only what lasts can bring

Us to the truth

It is clear that ancient works of art were constructed or written with layer upon layer of metaphor. This is most evident in myths and fairy stories, but it is there, analogous to the chakra system, in the ancient writing from the Vedas through Shakespeare.  We won’t even touch number symbolism that runs through these writings as well as through music, particularly Bach’s.

What this all means is that in a work of art there is the surface level which simply tells the story in a literal way, but as you delve deeper into the work more and more subtle  meanings appear. Gurdjieff, in speaking of his three volume masterwork All and Everything, suggested that it should be read at least three times. First, as one would read any book. Second, aloud, as if reading to someone else and third for real understanding.

So we are associating with content words like grief, mortal, friends and with meaning we see words likes truth, master, patience. Form is perhaps the harder of the three aspects to understand.

Next - Part Three: Form

Copyright ©1995 - 2011 Jack DeSalvo

Antonio Machado