EVOS Music and ELISION Ensemble in association with The Festival of Perth present

Bar-do'i-thos-grol

(The Tibetan Book of the Dead) Domenico De CLARIO and Liza LIM

Midland Railway Workshops, Perth, Western Australia
as part of the Midland Centennial Celebrations

Performers:
Deborah KAYSER voice, Andrew MUSCAT CLARK voice, Timothy O'DWYER saxophones and voice, Carl ROSMAN contrabass clarinet and voice, Rosanne HUNT violoncello, Chris LOCKHART-SMITH violoncello, voice, Michael HEWES sound designer

The Tibetan Book of the Dead traces a series of preparatory instructions given traditionally, in Tibetan Buddhism, to individuals nearing death. These instructions guide the individual through the journey between death and rebirth, a journey of purification and clarification, one in which the baggage of ego-projections that have been gathered up in life can be `played out´, and used to gain `liberation´, or insight, into the trappings and limitations of the ego. This process traditionally takes a metaphorical seven days.

But beyond its function as a manual for the journey beyond, the fundamental teaching of this book encourages also an increasing recognition of the extent to which our `everyday reality´ results from our incessant ego-projections. The teachings ultimate goal is to foster an ever increasing ability to allow our sense of self to dissolve in the sight of a `greater´ reality, free from the obfuscations of the limited ego. It teaches us how to live so as to minimise the ego-baggage we initially carry through the Bardo, on to next birth. It underlines that this book is not only a message for those who are going to die and those who are already dead, but it is also a message for those who are already born; birth and death apply to everybody constantly, at this very moment.

The conceptual structure of this work refers to a number of aspects discussed in The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Liberation Through Hearing, or Understanding in the Between. The experience of engaging with this performance cycle takes one through the whole of seven days and seven nights, even though the performance on each of seven evenings lasts only two hours. Given that the Bardo journey can be described as the experiencing of an infinite number of ego-projections in the space between Death and Re-birth, then the first performance begins at the end of the Day (Death) at sunset; on subsequent evenings the performances begin at 9pm, 10pm, midnight, 1am, 2am and finally, at the pre-dawn time of 4am (Re-birth). These two-hour performances constitute a nexus between two worlds, or two perceptual states: the Visible World, the world of cognition as we perceive it in our daily lives, and the invisible World, an unquantifiable world in which our intellect plays no part, and cannot decipher, and in which we are free to experience the paradoxical (see Merleau-Ponty extract at the end of these notes).

If we can define Paradox as a reconciliation of opposites, or, as Darryl REANNEY explains in his Music of the Mind `Things which seem opposite in ignorance are reconciled in knowing´, then the form this `knowing´ takes can be manifested through an integration of the Visible and invisible Worlds. On either side lies the province of our ordinary lives: this province constitutes the screen on which we project our illusory and delusory ego-states, and is therefore a necessary part of the Bardo experience.

The structure defining this performance-cycle comprises the entirety of the seven days and nights spanning 155 hours and 34 minutes between the sunset time of 6:47pm on the 5th of March [1995] and sunrise at 6:13am on the 12th March. Thus, the Bar-do'i-thos-grol includes in its conceptual and perceptual framework, the experiences undergone by the audience when they are not at the Midland Railway Workshop viewing the performance. These experiences provide the illuminations that could be described as constituting the potential for a liberation through Hearing. By the end of the entire seven-day cycle some provisional conclusions may be reached, by those who have undergone this experience, about the relationship each has developed between the inner, invisible world, and the outer cognitive one.

The `work´ as a result, includes a collaborative process, firstly with the audience and then with the wider context. By extending the inclusive framing as widely as each of us can; the `work´ allows us an opportunity to re-define the seamlessness of the art-experience/life-experience landscape. The `works´ potential is not activated until the moment the audience participates by walking through the chakras, and later, by venturing back into each life-frame.

The cycle's structure is defined by the six Betweens (Bardos), comprising in turn the life-cycle of each soul between death--rebirth--death. The Betweens begin with life, (experienced between birth and death); dreams (experienced between sleep and waking); trance (experienced between dualistic consciousness and enlightened awareness); death point (experienced between life and reality); reality (experienced between death point and existence) and existence (experienced between reality and death). Thus, the six Betweens (the days from Monday through to Saturday), constitute the inner essence of this cycle, and the seven two hour performances function as portals, transmutation points, sign-posts and regenerative periods. They constitute the matter and the subject of investigation and re-assessment.

The coloured light connects each portal/transmutation point if the journey to that particular point within the traveler's body (chakra). This particular Bardo-cycle being presented in Midland, being the second in the series, focuses on the emotional feeling aspects of the Bardo-journey (second chakra energy). Thus the special function of the seven portals in this particular cycle is to affirm feelings of nurturing and protection.

The performances serve to restore balance and to clarify the ritualised entry and exit into the Betweens through the connection of the portals to each chakra-centre within the visitor's body. The role of creative understanding and visualisation is handed to the collaborators (audience) so that the `success´ of the work is defined by each one of us, according to our desire and willingness to experience. The Performances can act as catalysts to as many different `created´ bardos as there are viewers.

The performances are not re-constructions of yet another projection by the performers as to what might constitute a possible Bardo state; none but each of us can define this. To add yet another projection rather than encourage an individual experience would be to obfuscate, not clarify. No `ideas´ of success/failure, theatricality, picturesqueness or otherwise can enter into the framing of the work.

Ida and Pingala energy (Male + Female, Sun + Moon) is generated on the first night at the Root Chakra by the two Condensers and this energy current emanates sound and light through the subsequent evenings until it reaches the two Compressors in the Crown chakra. The transpersonal boost through the third and largest Compressor in the Crown (understanding) serves to bridge the evolutionary spiral to the next birth. These Compressors once furnished the entire 78-hectare site with high pressure air for use in various workshops. The large antenna on the inaccessible balcony serves as reminder of both the Powerhouse's former function and its role as the Transpersonal Chakra, whilst the chandelier placed beyond the locked iron gate lights the way into the Subterranean passage that descends into the earth back to the Root Chakra.

Midland Railway Workshops have been in existence since the end of last century. At its most functional period the workshops employed over 3,000 workers. They shut for the last time on March 4, 1994. The Workshops' major function was to service and build all sizes of rolling stock for the Western Australian rail system (transportation and transmutation of matter through the function of different energy-points (workshops) by a `rolling´ on wheels (chakras)).

The entire workshops can be perceived as the physical body: the steelmesh compound in which the Bardo takes place can be perceived as the `essential´ body/within; the specific workshop buildings and their associated former functions act as the chakras--[Root Chakra/red/generators; Spleen/orange/water-towers; Solar Plexus/yellow/coppershop/hearth; Heart/green/panel shop; Throat/blue/sand-shed; Brow/violet/steel-shop; Crown/white/Powerhouse]; the performers as the Indestructible-Drop that carries `clear-light of awareness-transmitting substances (transmutation point energies). The chants/sounds/colours carry the manifestations of this indestructible drop through their vibratory rates as they increase in frequency from chakra to chakra, from the red, (lowest in frequency), to the white (highest). Finally the audience provides the Ida-Pingala current energy as they walk through the Chakra pathway.

In the light of the potential for such a device, the willingness to examine the possibilities for a re-definition of our belief structures becomes a matter of personal responsibility. The purpose of this work is to provide opportunities for such issues to be identified and addressed, thus allowing for a possible re-assessment of ones relationship to the inner self.

--Domenico de Clario

Extract from The Visible and the Invisible Maurice Merteau-Ponty

With the first vision, the first contact, the first pleasure, there is initiation, that Is, not the positing of a content, but the opening of a dimension that can never again be closed, the establishment of a level in terms of which every other experience will henceforth be situated. The idea is this level, this dimension. It is therefore not a de facto invisible, like an object hidden behind another, and not an absolute invisible, which would have nothing to do with the visible. Rather it is the invisible of this world, that which inhabits this world, sustains it, and renders a visible, as own and interior possibility, the Being of this being.

At the moment one says `light´, at the moment that the musicians reach the `little phrase´, there is no lacuna in me; what I like is as `substantial´, as `explicit´ positive thought could be--even more so: a positive thought is what it is, but, precisely, is only what it is and accordingly cannot hold us. Already the mind's volubility takes a elsewhere. We do not possess the musical and sensible ideas, precisely because they are negativity or absence-circumscribed; they possess us. The performer is no longer producing or reproducing the sonata: he feels himself, and the other feel him to be at the service of the sonata; the sonata sings through him or cries out so suddenly that he must `dash on his bow´ to follow it. And these open vortexes in the sonorous world finally form one sole vortex in which the ideas fit in with one another. `Never was the spoken language so inflexibly necessitated, never did it know to such an extent the pertinence of questions, the evidence of the responses.´ The invisible and, as it were, weak being is alone capable of having this close texture. There is a strict ideality in experiences that are experiences of the flesh: the moments of the sonata, the fragments of the luminous field, adhere to one another with a cohesion without concept, which is of the same type as the cohesion of the parts of my bow, or the cohesion of my body with the world. Is my body a thing, is it an idea? It is neither, being the measurant of the things. We will therefore have to recognise an ideality that is not alien to the flesh that gives it its axes, its depth, its dimension. (pp. 151-152)

Sources for the Musical Performance

The diamond song melodies give rejoicing to the Glorious Great Black One, his Consort and Retinue; by clearly seeing and understanding them, magical rites will succeed and bring blessings.

The `Great Black One´ refers to Mahakala, the chief of the seventy-two (or seventy-five) forms of Mgon-Po. His character and powers are equivalent to the Hindu God, Shiva, the Creator and Destroyer. His Consort is called Lha Mo, equivalent to the Indian Goddess Sri Devi. These two `protectors of religion´ form a union, expressing the tantric concept of the indivisible male-female Principle, manifested here as the deity Mahakala embracing he female energy, or Shakti. The Songbook contains Seventy-nine pieces which are used in tantric rites. When performed in succession, the songs are begun at midnight and end, after numerous repetitions, seven days later. As the texts of the songs often appeal to various terror deities and the songs form part of the `terrible rites´, the night is deemed the most appropriate time for their performance.

The seven selected chants are as follows:

the function [or resonance] is the elimination of boundaries because it brings the wave forms it integrates into direct union. It results in a loss of `edges´ leading in the case of cognitive awareness, to the dissolution of the sense of `self´
--from Darryl REANNEY Music of the Mind

The function of the musicians' performance is to provide a vibrational field to support the personal bardo journeys undertaken by everyone that visits the Midland sites. The bardo state defines a gap which can in fact be experienced at any moment between life-death-rebirth. Every moment is a potential `still-point´ between apparently opposite states where there is the possibility of transcending dualistic understanding, The `between´ state is the mandorla touching these opposite points in which the insight of their complementary unity can be directly experienced.

--Lim Swee-Lyn

When action is freed from all assessment, another, deeper, `action-self emerges; that action-self can be used as both music and instruction, as an inner map. Once that first step is taken into that inner landscape, liberation may be experienced not as revelation or joy, but as a silent boundary-less desert, in which, free from all ego constraints, the Self can neither see nor desire a `preferred path´ all points being of equal value on this reverse side of the kaleidoscope's inner membrane.

The Greater Performance is on-going; the Bar-do'i-thos-grol at Midland Railway Workshops acts only as a reminder of the continuum's complexity, the endless opportunities it affords us for experiencing increasing awareness, and subsequent liberation.

Domenico de Clario and Lim Swee-Lyn
Perth, March 1995

Daryl BUCKLEY, Artistic Director, ELISION Ensemble; Sarah COLLINS and John HINES, co-ordinators, EVOS Music.

Special Thanks to: Belinda PRINGLE for technical assistance; Les, Ron, Domenic and Bill from Westrail; Laura ADAIR from Landcorp; Simon AMBROSE from Midland Shire Council, Brian and the Security Guards, Mr. and Mrs. TRAVERS, Rob MUIR, Mike NANNING, Andrew EVANS, Jim ATKINS, Cliff GREET.

EVOS gratefuily acknowledges the assistance of Westrail, Landcorp and the Midland Centennial 1995. EVOS and ELISION Ensemble gratefully acknowledge support from the The Festival of Perth and the Performing Arts Board, Australia Council. Domenico de Clario gratefully acknowledges support from the Visual Arts/Craft Board, Australia Council. Liza LIM gratefully acknowledges support from the Michael Vyner Trust U.K.