If we are going to think about music in terms of relationship, it will be useful to understand some of the forces that come into play when things are juxtaposed, In particular, the binary of Eros, or creative joining force, and Logos, or analytical dividing force.

      A binary is a pair of abstract concepts or concrete images that are opposite and complementary, that is, two halves that put together make a whole. Man and woman together form a binary, as do Yang and Yin, Light and Dark, Energy and Matter, and Body and Soul.(1)

      Through the resolution of the opposites in a binary, a third entity comes into being that is composed of the two opposites and yet more than the sum of the two. Thus, man and woman produce child, light and dark, color, and so forth. The tension of opposites provides the impetus or creative force necessary for anything to come into being. Eros and Logos is one of the most basic binaries.(2)

      Logos is familiar to people in the western world in its adjectival form "logical." Something that is logical is within the realm of Logos. Logic is a formal method of separation - good from bad, right from wrong, truth from falsehood. It is familiar because most of western civilization is founded on it. The educational system of the western world uses logic as its basic virtue. To learn something means to reason it through, to chop it up neatly into its subdivisions, to put names on all the parts, and then to memorize those names. We don't get close to the real thing, and it becomes a concept rather than something real.

      Eros is a concept that is less familiar to Westerners. We know it in its adjectival form, "erotic," a word that carries many taboos. An erotic experience is one that joins, that connects. So when we speak of an erotic sexual experience, we are referring to the sensation of being joined as one.

      Eros is what makes us feel that we are all parts of a cohesive whole. Logos is what makes us feel that we are separate beings with no apparent connection.

      Lately, feeling the lack of Eros in their lives, Westerners have been turning to the East, for the oriental way of life pays more attention to this much needed force. Meditation is the latest craze because it gives us what we lack - a sense of connection to the world without the conceptualizing that takes us one step away.

      Music is essentially a joining force, rather than a separating one. While analytical, dividing skills are needed to compose and analyze music, they are not essential to it. They are not the aspects that make it music.(3)

      Being a musician requires a delicate balance between these forces. From Eros comes raw creative power. Logos is the force that organizes and directs this energy, putting it into a form the audience can appreciate. Without Logos, music is ecstatic free improvisation that is satisfying for the performer, but that alienates the listener. Without Eros, we get computer-performed radio "hits" written on proven formulas and designed to transport the listener in a predictable way in order to sell records.

      Improvisation within a musical framework - a jazz tune, for instance - requires the musician to split himself; to experience both forces at once and to synthesize them in order to create music that is at once a unique creative expression and an ordered statement that has a logical relationship to a fixed set of harmonies. This is not an easy task. Balancing these forces in order to bring forth music can tear the psyche apart (similarly, a psyche already torn could lend itself to musical expression. I would not be surprised to find a high degree of correlation between musical talent and psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome).

      I see the destructive side of the Eros/Logos binary as indicative of cultural, rather than musical, problems. Western culture is so strongly identified with the logical process, and so lacking in the erotic, that anybody who embraces Eros does so at the risk of cutting himself off from society. The high incidence of drug use and violent deaths among musicians is an indicator of this splitting effect. Associated with the power of Eros, a musician can take on the appearance of a high priest or even a god. If the musician identifies with this archetype, he becomes split off from his own humanity. The deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and John Lennon, among others, shows the effect this alienation can have.

      This book attempts to approach the musical experience from a balanced perspective. Eros and Logos together make up a binary, and the two must both be present to balance each other and make a whole. Logos is the function that deals with symbols, and symbols are what we use to communicate and record with. Eros deals with images, which is how the music comes to us from the unconscious. Eros is necessary for the music to exist at all, but we need to manipulate symbols to pass on the music to others. And we need the Logos function to put any kind of structure on the music. To experience the whole of music there must be a balance of controlling the music and being controlled, between composition and improvisation, between playing by ear and reading notes.

      The majority of music education in the west approaches music from the Logos perspective, what I call the "learn about it first and then you can play it" school. I am trying to provide an alternative viewpoint from the Eros perspective, or the "learn what it feels like to play before you go conceptualizing it" school. Both sides are necessary to fully appreciate music.

      Writing a book from the Eros perspective is a contradiction in terms. To get my ideas across to you, I am using logic. I am separating what I'm talking about into compartments and naming them in order to give them to you in a form which you can understand. Learning from a book is Logos activity.

      That is why the text of this book is peppered with exercises. Learning by doing is closer to Eros than book learning. The material will be more meaningful from an experiential viewpoint.

      It is important to do the exercises, not just read them, because you will experience them differently than I do. If you do nothing but read, you get only my subjective experience of music, which you may not be able to understand. To understand without being able to describe your understanding, though frustrating in this world of logical analysis, is typical of the Eros experience. Many people can experience the same thing and describe it very differently. Because words are not able to describe experience as fully as the experience itself, people are always disagreeing on what words will sufficiently describe what they see and feel. So, you should do the exercises and then put the experience into your own words. Take the exercises seriously, discuss them with the other people who do them with you, and think about what, if anything, you learned. without this active participation, this book will be only a nice set of ideas. With it, you have the tools to look at music in a new way, one that is more harmonious with the spirit of music itself.