The Stone Piano
Music made from the earth’s living lines
The Stone Piano is an ongoing collaboration exploring the inner sounds of landscape and dream between artists Tim Arnold and Kate Alderton. The project was created by working with the Laisen method, developed by master Luang Pur Charoen at Thamkrabok Monastery in Thailand.
Laisen is a method created to reveal music hidden deep inside the earth, and natural world. Practitioners find a natural formation (rock, trees, earth), then look for living lines created over time naturally by exposure to wind, rain and sun. These lines are carefully traced onto paper, and transcribed into musical notes.
Laisen is a practice of creating without ego. The principle artists are the land and the elements. The humans are being led by nature, rather than leading. They serve as facilitators, bringing the music, and its healing potential into the world. It’s a beautiful way of re-dress the balance between human voice and the voice of the natural world.
Land speaking through dreams and rock
In The Stone Piano, Kate and Tim introduced a further element to the Laisen process, using Kate’s research into how the land might communicate to humans through their dreaming,
Guided by a vivid dream of ethereal music emanating from deep within a natural flat rockface, they used the dream as a compass which led them to the exact site of the dream in the waking world.
The resulting piece of music began its journey emanating from a dream. By carrying the dream across the border of sleep back into the waking world, the journey led Kate and Tim to a rock face in Glastonbury.
The lines uncovered were then traced and translated into musical notes, revealing the earth’s music emanating from deep within the land. Tim Arnold wrote and produced the final piece.
The art of patient listening
The practice reflects the practices of the monastery’s values: a place of self-reflection, service and a profound dedication to the land and more-than-human world.
There is a patience needed to work this way. Every element of the process needs you to be slow and steady: from attuning to the land or the dream, finding and travelling to the site, and finally transcribing the lines into melody. The earth’s music reveals itself slowly, which is part of it’s healing quality.