Virtual Choir

Eric Whitacre (b. 1970), American composer and conductor

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VIRTUAL CHOIR:

A Wonderful New Way to Create Music

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Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D.

Imagine joining  with hundreds of singers from many different countries, in a virtual choir linked by their computers to an inspirational experience of creating sublime music that embodies the very essence of inter-being. Eric Whitacre  has created just such an experience and in the process has brought into being several works of choral music that are unsurpassed in their beauty and ability to inspire.

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Video posted to YouTube by EricWhitacresVrtlChr.

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In addition to enjoying the sublime music,  I invite you  take in the rich visual feast he creates as the music to patterns of color, visual scenes taken from nature, and  glimpses he provides of the radiant faces of the singers as they make the music.

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Video posted to YouTube by EricWhitacresVrtlChr

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I find all of the above very congruent with our purpose in creating Into the Bardo.  Into the Bardo celebrates the possibility of breaking down boundaries that separate us from each other and our intimate connection to web of life.  It also acknowledges the possibility that there is a rich field of experience and wonder beyond what we imagine is possible.   We are just beginning to appreciate the many new forms of expression and connection offered by the computer.    The Virtual choir  embodies an exciting new realization of the possibility of inter-subjectivity and inter-being with the seen and unseen in nature.

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Photo credit: VocalEssence Ensemble Singers licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license via Wikipedia.

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Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D. ~ is a life coach and grief counselor living and practicing in Los Altos Hills California. He is a Buddhist and a long-time practitioner of self-relations psychotherapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. With an abiding interest in music, art, yoga, nature, shamanism, and mind-body practices, Rob has sought for many years to find ways to apply meditation and mindfulness in his spiritual practice and his life. Rob is a husband, father, and grandfather. He plays violin and viola. Rob is Senior Consulting Editor to and one of the founding partners of Into the Bardo.

Gaia Is Weeping

GAIA
1989 Oil on linen (96 x 144 Inches)

Gaia Is Weeping

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Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D.

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Previously our own Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day, the journey in poem) and Amy Nora Doyle (SoulDipper) have shared moving  posts on the state of our beloved planet earth with their posts Ultimately Dirt and Tilth of the Earth. Upon seeing  them I was reminded of the moving picture by Alex Gray in the book Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Gray. The original oil on linen canvas, Gaia, our mother earth the world soul can be viewed HERE. I think Alex Gray’s comments are nice complements to  the sentiments of Jamie  and Amy in their previous posts.   Here is what he shared on the powerful painting.

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“The day after our daughter, Zena, was born I had a vision of Gaia, the World Soul.   Gaia was the tree of life or web of life with her root in the subatomic, atomic, molecular, and cellular levels of matter (mater/mother) reaching up through the oceans, stones, soil, grass, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, air, and atmosphere to nurture all plants and creatures.  A natural cycle of birth, sustenance, and death was woven into the tapestry of Nature. Gaia continuously  gave birth to life through the love energy in her heart. The future generations of humanity were symbolized by a human mother nursing in Gaia’s cave.

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Gaia’s body was being ravaged and destroyed by man, reflecting the present crisis in the environment. A diseased and demonic phallus had erected structures all over the earth to suck dry Gaia’s milk and turn it into power and money.  The wasteland of a disposable culture was piled high and was seeping into the microgenetic pool causing diseases and defects in the Great Chain of Life.

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Emerging also from that microgenetic level—but on the side of Nature– was an evolutionary alarm represented by a large “seeing” hand which catalyzed the collective will of the people, enabling them to see, with eyes of unobstructed vision, the actions necessary to stop the destruction of the world soul.” Alex Gray, Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Gray.

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© cover art and book excerpt, by the author/artist/publisher, All rights reserved, used here under fair use

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Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D. ~ is a life coach and grief counselor living and practicing in Los Altos Hills California. He is a Buddhist and a long-time practitioner of self-relations psychotherapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. With an abiding interest in music, art, yoga, nature, shamanism, and mind-body practices, Rob has sought for many years to find ways to apply meditation and mindfulness in his spiritual practice and his life. Rob is a husband, father, and grandfather. He plays violin and viola. Rob is Senior Consulting Editor to and one of the founding partners of Into the Bardo.