05 – Ring of Life

I had been thinking about making an Album dedicated to holistic disciplines for about five or six years, designed to allow its use also by professionals in the sector. I want to be clear, “Ring of Life” is not a simple album of meditation music. This work is the product of a synthesis of all my musical and human experiences, it is the meeting between ancient and remote musical worlds, with current modernity. R. of L. presents itself at first listening as a more peaceful Album, I would almost say “pacified” but without excessive sacrifices.
From a sound point of view it can be useful in relaxation activities, it can be a good background to combine with massage techniques or other types of holistic treatments.
The choice of the title “Ring of Life” that is the Ring of Life, was born from the need to describe the path of existence, woven into a great sound blanket, a background that lets Nature itself emerge as the protagonist. It all comes from the conjunction of atmospheric events now lost: the song opens with the sound of a spring storm recorded by me in May of the now distant 1995.
A conjunction of natural and completely ineffable sounds, a fusion that wants to represent the difficulty of arriving in this world and at the same time make it clear that water is the true protagonist of the games. So water and fear narrate and describe the emotional state that here comes to represent the “difficulty”.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine we operate within the energy of the Kidney, the Jing, the main source of our vital capacity and which, through Qi, manifests itself.
Continuing in the song, the storm and the wide sounds begin to calm down, transfiguring the previously described environment into an easier and clearer path: the wind sweeps away the clouds and introduces “the energy of the Liver”, representing youth and adolescence.
About a third of the way through the Album, the “Fire” phase appears with a succession of sounds and light rhythms, to represent the Element, or our maximum “organic” capacity, the maximum expression of our organism and reproductive potential. Then the slow descent begins: the life of a human being, as is known, is divided into three seasons. Youth, maturity and old age. The full maturity of the organism occurs around the age of 25 / 27. Subsequently, the organism begins a slow descent, a slow and inexorable decline that will however be compensated by the arrival of psychic maturity, cognitive capacity and the interrelation between all experiences: this will make the person solid and credible.
Lastly, if the path has been correct and conducted with the necessary attention, wisdom will arrive. This dimension of the human journey is narrated and musically resolved by evoking the simplicity of a field, where a sweet breeze (the mind) moves and makes metal bells resonate.
The last part of the Album lasts about 25 minutes and is the most “complex” part of the entire work. The path tends to the end of the journey which, however, in the end, will not reveal an end. In truth, with this part of the album I intended to close the “ring” represented in Taoist philosophy and well schematized in the symbol of Taiji, a path that I myself have been proud to follow for many years now.
Everything comes to show itself with the imprinted image of a dawn, a sun that rises from the horizon and illuminates the path that, in reality, is the last phase of (physical) existence, also represented here by the movement of Water.
Even if this sound is not present in the CD, since the water is represented here as still, motionless, it is ready to regenerate its eternal, circular movement, as it opens in the same Album, with natural and unrepeatable sounds, eternal and unresolved like every storm, like every season of existence.
And all this, I deliver to the listener, leaving free the interpretation on what I would really like to convey.

jarguna