Infusion - songs, sounds and tea

so...ever since having my sound world opened up, the palette of sounds i want to communicate with has expanded, and the format of singing songs one after the other no longer seemed to sit right with me.

i also wanted the experience of playing music to be new and different for me, and as fresh for me as it would be for anyone watching...

over the months i've been percolating on this and in the last week or so after reading a book about mind maps - i decided to mind map what an enjoyable concert would mean for me.

Mind maps are a lot better than I thought they would be - the very term conjurs up images of sitting in a corporate board meeting doing some 'brain-storming'...but actually the experience was very different and yielded some fab results. The basic premise with mind-mapping is that the brain doesn't think in logical steps or bullet points or narrative or sequentially as we think but creates and remembers through associations and invents through making new neural pathways.

Coincidentally, this is the very activity I'm trying to encourage through sound, song and performance - the creation of multiple associations...multiple experiences and the possibility for an idea or word or theme can be explored or re-explored within the context of a musical performance setting.

The term i came found that most closely resembles what it means for me at the moment is 'Infusion'. 

in - fu - sion

1. teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions (inculcate, instill)
2. fill, as with a certain quality (tincture)
3. undergo a process of infusing (steep)
4. let sit in a liquid to extract a flavour or to cleanse (steep, marinate)
5. introduce into the body through a vein

Thesaurus:
1. fill, charge, inspire, pervade, inundate, imbue, suffuse
2. instil, add, introduce, breathe, inject, implant, impart, inculcate
3. brew, soak, steep, saturate, immerse, macerate.

These words energised me when i thought about presenting sounds and songs...i wrote the following:

i want a music-making/playing experience which sets up an environment of sound - which fills, pervades  - which, like tea infusion draws/extracts a new 'flavour' through the process of sitting with...

- to fill, as with a certain quality.

This was written back in June - but the mind map I did last week shows that the ideas above are still there...

The amazing thing about this mind map is the way I was able to come up with new ways of seeing words and ideas - i even 'invented' a word - audiocaching - and other words became whole new concepts - Adventure was written Advent.ure or Add.venture...

It's pretty hard to see the whole thing so I will introduce a few close up portions of the image - i wanted to note the types of recurring images/themes that happened even in the making of this map...it became very much about tributaries and pathways as opposed to structure...even the cracks in a pathway (mistakes) more likely resemble the organic meanderings found in rivers and tree branches and splashes of light - much more in tune with how life is than a constructed brick pathway...