Benjamin Boretz
Auteur de Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory (The Perspectives of New Music Series)
A propos de l'auteur
Crédit image: Mary Lee Roberts & Ben Boretz in Fargo
Œuvres de Benjamin Boretz
Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory (The Perspectives of New Music Series) (1972) 34 exemplaires
Perspectives on Notation and Performance (The Perspectives of new music series) (1976) 14 exemplaires
Perspectives of New Music: Vol. 47.1, Winter 2009 4 exemplaires
Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought. (and) Compose Yourself: A Manual for the Young. 3 exemplaires
8 pianosolo soundsessions 1 exemplaire
OPEN SPACE 15/16 1 exemplaire
OPEN SPACE 21 THINGS THAT MATTER 1 exemplaire
inside in. . . outside out 1 exemplaire
BLACK/ NOISE I 1 exemplaire
Perspectives of New Music - Volume 43 No. 1 1 exemplaire
An Experiment in Reading (Samuel Beckett's Cascndo) 1 exemplaire
Three for composer's ensemble (1991) 1 exemplaire
Four for composer's ensemble (1992) 1 exemplaire
Music columns from the Nation, 1962-1968 1 exemplaire
OPEN SPACE 12/13 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- male
Membres
Critiques
[This review is NOT elegant]
review of
OPEN SPACE 15/16
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Practicing Promotextal - January 19-27, 2014
Once upon a time there was a reviewer who had too much to say. His reviews were inelegant (ie: LONG). This one's no exception, you shd really read the whole thing, really:
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/357236-this-review-is-not-elegant?chapter=1
In Elaine Barkin's OPEN SPACE 15/16 article "Telling it SLANT or In Search of the Early Years or 'A Sitting on a Gate'", a remembering of her involvement w/ the magazine Perspectives of New Music (reprinted from the same as it appeared in Volume 20, Nos. 1 & 2 (2012)), she describes PNM in a way that cd just as easily be a description of OPEN SPACE:
"In 1980, the Big Fat White issue included complex theoretical-philosophical discourse by Robert Morris, John Clough, David Lewin, and John Rahn, sitting in the same pew with Arthur Margolin's evocative "Mozart's D major String Quartet / k 593 / mm. 53-56" (four measures to die for: ERB), preceded by Wallace Berry's "Symmetrical Interval Sets and Derivative Pitch Materials in Bartók's String Quartet No. 3", my own "A Dedication / Five ADmusementS, & A Digression", all coming after a 250 page riot of texts celebrating Kenneth Gaburo" - pp 350-351
"Ben's stunning "TALK. If I am a Musical Thinker." melding with Naomi's arresting Rohrschachian ink-blobs, its layout created with the assistance of Bruce Huber, beckoning reader-viewer-listener. But many had been crying "foul", hiss-filled air reeked again; several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance; did "IT" belong in The Academy, in Music-Talk? Did they—or whoever they were speaking for—think that they "owned" Perspectives?" - p 351
"For many of us, Perspectives had become a utopian vision, communitas. Why not dream of better ways of doing things?; being inclusive, responsible but not narrowly responsive to any one way" - p 351
"It was more like a Crazy Quilt, each unique patch from a different expressive-investigative corner of the emerging, diversely un-unified multicultural music-analytic-theoreticspeculative-soundscape." - p 351
Now I, alas, don't have any issues of Perspectives of New Music in my otherwise very substantial personal archive/library - probably b/c it was mainly aimed at academia where high prices cd be pd for its sustenance & where the majority, if not the entirety, of its readership & contributors lived anyway. The same observation cd be aimed at OPEN SPACE as well: after all, single issues are priced at $45, double issues (like the one being reviewed here) at $80, & even the student rates price per issue is $38! The "utopian vision, [the] communitas" definitely doesn't include people outside that financially luxurious environ as far as purchase access goes.
Nonetheless, many OPEN SPACE recordings, tapes & CDs, had cheaply wended their way into my collection before I ever made contact w/ OPEN SPACE's editors & I've since found these folks to be generous & exceptionally open-minded. If they weren't, I wd've never been included in 2 issues so far - occupying, as I do, a place in what many wd consider to be a 'lunatic fringe'.
In many ways that are important to me, I IDENTIFY w/ Barkin's statement: consider this seemingly trivial instance: she places commas after quotation marks - something that some people to this day find almost insufferably heretical even tho I, personally, do the same thing & find it quite logical. & there are many things in Barkin's descriptions above that resonate w/ my own experiences in different environments. Take, eg, "several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance": in the mid 1990s I was a participant in a list-serv for improvisors called PhiBa, for Philadelphia-Baltimore, where I had similar experiences to those that Barkin had w/ the Yale students.
In one thread I participated by cutting & pasting other people's comments & reorganizing them into a more experimental text wch I then posted as a continuation of the thread. My logic was that I was playing w/ the list-serv as a way to improvise, using, of course, the musician's common imitation & recontextualization technique, thinking that I was moving the discourse onto a level on a par w/ everyone's purported interest. There was an uproar, a strong voicing of disapproval to the effect that 'I didn't join this list-serv for poetry!!' I didn't get the impression that anyone even noticed that I was quoting from previous postings. Ironically, 2 of the people who protested the most were 2 Pittsburgh-based musicians that I'd encouraged to join the list.
Since I'd been a prime mover in the improvisation community in BalTimOre before moving to Pittsburgh where I once again became involved w/ improvising, it seemed fit to me that the participation of PGH peops justified renaming the list-serv PhiBaPit or some such. I even went so far as to propose that the Washington DC participants be acknowledged in the name as well. My proposal was met w/ stony silence. This was clearly a snobbish closed circle.
I repeatedly submitted info about an upcoming event I was organizing to the PhiBa improvising calendar: the Anonymous Family Reunion to take place at Ringing Rocks State Park & at the Sonambient Theater where Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures are housed. Both locations are in eastern Pennsylvania w/in fairly easy driving distance of Philly & B-More. These locales were chosen for their extraordinary potential as places for site-specific improvising. But, apparently since they weren't 'conventional' improvising events at a club or gallery, my promotion was ignored by the administrator of PhiBa & not posted in the calendar. When I finally complained about this, the moderator acted frostily as if I were just being an asshole. When the Anonymous Family Reunion finally happened in the late summer of 1997, only one participant came from PhiBa. He & I are still friends 16 yrs later. It probably wasn't much after this that I dropped off the list-serv. W/ the exception of the very few friends & collaborators that I met thru it, it was mostly a waste of time.
OPEN SPACE 15/16 begins w/ a memorial from Benjamin Boretz, the founder of PNM & coeditor (& presumed cofounder) of OPEN SPACE , for composer/teacher Harold Shapero (1920-2013). As Barkin writes about the 1st issue of PNM from the Fall of 1962 it had a "memoriam to Irving Fine who died way too young and also with whom Ben and I had studied at Brandeis" (p 346) &, Lo & Behold!, here's another tribute to a Brandeis music prof that Boretz studied w/ who managed to hang in there until 51 yrs later after the 1st issue of PNM! Long live longevity!
Boretz describes Shapero as a "local young-turk jazzpianist all-music wunderkind, [who] was not yet 35, inconceivably young for an actual official professor." (p 1) To quote Wikipedia: "The Young Turks [..] was a Turkish nationalist reform party in the early 20th century, favoring reformation of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire." "The term "Young Turks" has since come to signify any groups or individuals inside an organization who aggressively pursue liberal or progressive policies, or advocate for reform." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks )
I 1st recall encountering the term as, perhaps, the tile of a publication from the late 1970s or early 1980s by artist Stephen Seemayer about artists that he appreciated in LA & its rough urbanity, including himself. More recently, however, in a 2005 record called Totalitarian Sodomy by punk band "World Burns to Death" I encountered a song called "All the Young Turks" about wch they write "This song is inspired by a poem called "The Bride", written by poet Siamanto (real name Atom Yarjanian) who was born in 1878 and died in 1915, one of the first of the 1.5-million people murdered by the Young Turks movement during the Armenian genocide." That puts quite a different spin on things, eh?!
Back to Boretz: "Harold himself wrote about "the musical mind" as a manifestation of subconscious processes". (p 1) while this article is brief, it's still highly welcome to me b/c I only have 2 records w/ Shapero's music on it & don't really know his work at all. One of these is on the Columbia Masterworks series - one of the highest recommendations - & is a playing of his "String Quartet No. 1" (I'm listening to it now). The other is on The Louisville Orchestra's First Edition Records & is his "Credo for Orchestra" (I'll listen to it next). Boretz praises Shapero's "Symphony for Classical Orchestra". Perhaps I'll get to hear that someday.
Perhaps the person whose articles herein excited me the most is James Hullick, or ")-(Ull!c]Meditating on sonic art as an act of social conscience can lead to philosophy; and specifically the interabilities agenda. "Interabilities" is a term that denotes the interaction of people of all abilities. As an agenda for sonic practice, it describes people of varying abilities working together toward some sonic outcome. In and of itself, the term "interabilities" does not have anything to do with the quality of a sonic outcome. People of all abilities could be working together to make absolute rubbish and the term "interabilities" would be met. But the ethics behind interabilities activities elevates the activities beyond this broader blanket term. In the case of sound, for example, if people of all abilities work together to produce a truly dreadful concert, then the positive ethic and social benefit of the interabilities agenda can be lost. The audience may have suffered. It lies at the heart of the interabilities agenda that interabilities activities will eventually strive to inspire participants and audiences alike to our greatest vision of humanity — where all people stand equal in society, and where all abilities are considered of equal worth to the wider human mission." (p 6)
Now, I very much like this statement & laud the term "interabilities" wch I've never encountered before & wch )-(Ull!c]truly dreadful concert" is & will someone's opinion be more privileged in relation to this? ()-(Ull!c]if people of all abilities work together to produce a truly dreadful concert, then the positive ethic and social benefit of the interabilities agenda can be lost"? & that "The audience may have suffered"? &/or even that this 'suffering' is a bad thing? I've been told by 'friends' of mine who know close to nothing about what I do that my 'obvious' intention is 'just to irritate people' - this b/c I produce dense & challenging work that people find difficult to process - hence, it 'must' be 'sadistic'. NOT.
Cf this excerpt from my own article in this issue, "30 4 5 97.9": "my 1st reel-to-reel recorded audio piece from 1976: dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada A part of the significance of this latter was that it is a piece designed to be easily performable by almost anyone & that what wd distinguish one performance from another cd just as validly be the performers' incompetence or other foibles as well as their skills & strengths. This was an important 1st step for me in stepping outside of the disciplines of classical music into what I usually now refer to as "Low Classical Usic"." (pp 200-201)
The idea being here is that this, too, is an example of an interabilities situation but there is no such thing as a "truly dreadful concert" & whether "The audience [considers itself to] have suffered" or not is irrelevant - unless actual nonconsensual physical pain (psychological pain can be a bit harder to assess) is being induced. &, of course, I am the d composer here &, despite the extreme d liberate simplicity of the score/title, my function as such places me in a unique unequal position in relation to the performers.
)-(Ull!c]So while I think an interabilities agenda should be open to the experience of darkness that many people feel, I also think that we can find ways of embracing both the darkness and the light, that don't end in murder." (p 10) "The project responded to the story of Milarepa, a Buddhist saint from the 11th century (c. 1052-1135) who had started life out as a mass-murderer." (p 10) I'm reminded of an interview w/ John Waters from several decades ago. He'd made Pink Flamingos in wch his drag queen star, Divine (named after a Jean Genet character), actually ate dog shit. Waters remarked about changing the direction of his filmmaking b/c 'To be more shocking I would've had to kill somebody and I wasn't going to do that.'
In a promotional email sent out announcing this issue, the OPEN SPACE editors proclaimed:
"As a longtime supporter, you already know something of our guiding aspiration to extend the boundaries and horizons of the community of creative thinkers and artmakers. After fifteen years of publication, we believe our new issue has broken through to a significantly new level toward that goal; we have produced a 364-page panoramic, kaleidoscopic book which is composed in a meaningful way to lead you through a huge diversity of subjects treated with consummate seriousness, personal investment, and creative originality.
"The current issue of The Open Space Magazine includes an introduction to magical practice"
& it's this latter sentence (chopped off in my excerpting of it here) that leads to my next comments. Robert Podgurski provides a "Graphic: First Enochian Call to Spirit" that I find interesting to look at in a similar way to the way I enjoy Visual Poetry or a score. Peteris Cedrins also contributes things occult-relevant. I particularly like his imagistic writing:
"'Twas the night before feminism, & all through the hows ... ... ... the stirrings of rats, & at night there are bats in your hair. The colibri of hope are finally kaput, to be eaten like ortolan. Laima's lord tells of the south wind, wch years ago brought blistering heat to the village. Between two to four hundred prostitutes were deported to northern Kazakhstan as anti-Societ elements. Kiss the doorknob, kids would say, & you'll see Riga. It was an iron doorknob, of course, In the dead of winter. Lick it. Eat the bunting." - p 33
Other Podgurski sigils & a poem close the issue. The PNM logo in White's article quoted above looks very much like a sigil too. I'm reminded of my own fanciful theory that sigils are actually circuit diagrams for controlling energy flow (both metaphorically & directly). Maybe someday I'll actually build circuits somehow based on them & see what happens when electricity is introduced.
As w/ White's recalling that "several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance" & can easily imagine that happening here in reference to "an introduction to magical practice". But, to me, it's the mindset that I'm interested in. One ex-girlfriend who was a poet was interested in experimental writing but her tastes in relation to music were pop all the way. I've never understood that. Why differentiate so between disciplines? It's the experimentation that does it for me.… (plus d'informations)
review of
OPEN SPACE 15/16
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Practicing Promotextal - January 19-27, 2014
Once upon a time there was a reviewer who had too much to say. His reviews were inelegant (ie: LONG). This one's no exception, you shd really read the whole thing, really:
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/357236-this-review-is-not-elegant?chapter=1
In Elaine Barkin's OPEN SPACE 15/16 article "Telling it SLANT or In Search of the Early Years or 'A Sitting on a Gate'", a remembering of her involvement w/ the magazine Perspectives of New Music (reprinted from the same as it appeared in Volume 20, Nos. 1 & 2 (2012)), she describes PNM in a way that cd just as easily be a description of OPEN SPACE:
"In 1980, the Big Fat White issue included complex theoretical-philosophical discourse by Robert Morris, John Clough, David Lewin, and John Rahn, sitting in the same pew with Arthur Margolin's evocative "Mozart's D major String Quartet / k 593 / mm. 53-56" (four measures to die for: ERB), preceded by Wallace Berry's "Symmetrical Interval Sets and Derivative Pitch Materials in Bartók's String Quartet No. 3", my own "A Dedication / Five ADmusementS, & A Digression", all coming after a 250 page riot of texts celebrating Kenneth Gaburo" - pp 350-351
"Ben's stunning "TALK. If I am a Musical Thinker." melding with Naomi's arresting Rohrschachian ink-blobs, its layout created with the assistance of Bruce Huber, beckoning reader-viewer-listener. But many had been crying "foul", hiss-filled air reeked again; several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance; did "IT" belong in The Academy, in Music-Talk? Did they—or whoever they were speaking for—think that they "owned" Perspectives?" - p 351
"For many of us, Perspectives had become a utopian vision, communitas. Why not dream of better ways of doing things?; being inclusive, responsible but not narrowly responsive to any one way" - p 351
"It was more like a Crazy Quilt, each unique patch from a different expressive-investigative corner of the emerging, diversely un-unified multicultural music-analytic-theoreticspeculative-soundscape." - p 351
Now I, alas, don't have any issues of Perspectives of New Music in my otherwise very substantial personal archive/library - probably b/c it was mainly aimed at academia where high prices cd be pd for its sustenance & where the majority, if not the entirety, of its readership & contributors lived anyway. The same observation cd be aimed at OPEN SPACE as well: after all, single issues are priced at $45, double issues (like the one being reviewed here) at $80, & even the student rates price per issue is $38! The "utopian vision, [the] communitas" definitely doesn't include people outside that financially luxurious environ as far as purchase access goes.
Nonetheless, many OPEN SPACE recordings, tapes & CDs, had cheaply wended their way into my collection before I ever made contact w/ OPEN SPACE's editors & I've since found these folks to be generous & exceptionally open-minded. If they weren't, I wd've never been included in 2 issues so far - occupying, as I do, a place in what many wd consider to be a 'lunatic fringe'.
In many ways that are important to me, I IDENTIFY w/ Barkin's statement: consider this seemingly trivial instance: she places commas after quotation marks - something that some people to this day find almost insufferably heretical even tho I, personally, do the same thing & find it quite logical. & there are many things in Barkin's descriptions above that resonate w/ my own experiences in different environments. Take, eg, "several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance": in the mid 1990s I was a participant in a list-serv for improvisors called PhiBa, for Philadelphia-Baltimore, where I had similar experiences to those that Barkin had w/ the Yale students.
In one thread I participated by cutting & pasting other people's comments & reorganizing them into a more experimental text wch I then posted as a continuation of the thread. My logic was that I was playing w/ the list-serv as a way to improvise, using, of course, the musician's common imitation & recontextualization technique, thinking that I was moving the discourse onto a level on a par w/ everyone's purported interest. There was an uproar, a strong voicing of disapproval to the effect that 'I didn't join this list-serv for poetry!!' I didn't get the impression that anyone even noticed that I was quoting from previous postings. Ironically, 2 of the people who protested the most were 2 Pittsburgh-based musicians that I'd encouraged to join the list.
Since I'd been a prime mover in the improvisation community in BalTimOre before moving to Pittsburgh where I once again became involved w/ improvising, it seemed fit to me that the participation of PGH peops justified renaming the list-serv PhiBaPit or some such. I even went so far as to propose that the Washington DC participants be acknowledged in the name as well. My proposal was met w/ stony silence. This was clearly a snobbish closed circle.
I repeatedly submitted info about an upcoming event I was organizing to the PhiBa improvising calendar: the Anonymous Family Reunion to take place at Ringing Rocks State Park & at the Sonambient Theater where Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures are housed. Both locations are in eastern Pennsylvania w/in fairly easy driving distance of Philly & B-More. These locales were chosen for their extraordinary potential as places for site-specific improvising. But, apparently since they weren't 'conventional' improvising events at a club or gallery, my promotion was ignored by the administrator of PhiBa & not posted in the calendar. When I finally complained about this, the moderator acted frostily as if I were just being an asshole. When the Anonymous Family Reunion finally happened in the late summer of 1997, only one participant came from PhiBa. He & I are still friends 16 yrs later. It probably wasn't much after this that I dropped off the list-serv. W/ the exception of the very few friends & collaborators that I met thru it, it was mostly a waste of time.
OPEN SPACE 15/16 begins w/ a memorial from Benjamin Boretz, the founder of PNM & coeditor (& presumed cofounder) of OPEN SPACE , for composer/teacher Harold Shapero (1920-2013). As Barkin writes about the 1st issue of PNM from the Fall of 1962 it had a "memoriam to Irving Fine who died way too young and also with whom Ben and I had studied at Brandeis" (p 346) &, Lo & Behold!, here's another tribute to a Brandeis music prof that Boretz studied w/ who managed to hang in there until 51 yrs later after the 1st issue of PNM! Long live longevity!
Boretz describes Shapero as a "local young-turk jazzpianist all-music wunderkind, [who] was not yet 35, inconceivably young for an actual official professor." (p 1) To quote Wikipedia: "The Young Turks [..] was a Turkish nationalist reform party in the early 20th century, favoring reformation of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire." "The term "Young Turks" has since come to signify any groups or individuals inside an organization who aggressively pursue liberal or progressive policies, or advocate for reform." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks )
I 1st recall encountering the term as, perhaps, the tile of a publication from the late 1970s or early 1980s by artist Stephen Seemayer about artists that he appreciated in LA & its rough urbanity, including himself. More recently, however, in a 2005 record called Totalitarian Sodomy by punk band "World Burns to Death" I encountered a song called "All the Young Turks" about wch they write "This song is inspired by a poem called "The Bride", written by poet Siamanto (real name Atom Yarjanian) who was born in 1878 and died in 1915, one of the first of the 1.5-million people murdered by the Young Turks movement during the Armenian genocide." That puts quite a different spin on things, eh?!
Back to Boretz: "Harold himself wrote about "the musical mind" as a manifestation of subconscious processes". (p 1) while this article is brief, it's still highly welcome to me b/c I only have 2 records w/ Shapero's music on it & don't really know his work at all. One of these is on the Columbia Masterworks series - one of the highest recommendations - & is a playing of his "String Quartet No. 1" (I'm listening to it now). The other is on The Louisville Orchestra's First Edition Records & is his "Credo for Orchestra" (I'll listen to it next). Boretz praises Shapero's "Symphony for Classical Orchestra". Perhaps I'll get to hear that someday.
Perhaps the person whose articles herein excited me the most is James Hullick, or ")-(Ull!c]Meditating on sonic art as an act of social conscience can lead to philosophy; and specifically the interabilities agenda. "Interabilities" is a term that denotes the interaction of people of all abilities. As an agenda for sonic practice, it describes people of varying abilities working together toward some sonic outcome. In and of itself, the term "interabilities" does not have anything to do with the quality of a sonic outcome. People of all abilities could be working together to make absolute rubbish and the term "interabilities" would be met. But the ethics behind interabilities activities elevates the activities beyond this broader blanket term. In the case of sound, for example, if people of all abilities work together to produce a truly dreadful concert, then the positive ethic and social benefit of the interabilities agenda can be lost. The audience may have suffered. It lies at the heart of the interabilities agenda that interabilities activities will eventually strive to inspire participants and audiences alike to our greatest vision of humanity — where all people stand equal in society, and where all abilities are considered of equal worth to the wider human mission." (p 6)
Now, I very much like this statement & laud the term "interabilities" wch I've never encountered before & wch )-(Ull!c]truly dreadful concert" is & will someone's opinion be more privileged in relation to this? ()-(Ull!c]if people of all abilities work together to produce a truly dreadful concert, then the positive ethic and social benefit of the interabilities agenda can be lost"? & that "The audience may have suffered"? &/or even that this 'suffering' is a bad thing? I've been told by 'friends' of mine who know close to nothing about what I do that my 'obvious' intention is 'just to irritate people' - this b/c I produce dense & challenging work that people find difficult to process - hence, it 'must' be 'sadistic'. NOT.
Cf this excerpt from my own article in this issue, "30 4 5 97.9": "my 1st reel-to-reel recorded audio piece from 1976: dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada A part of the significance of this latter was that it is a piece designed to be easily performable by almost anyone & that what wd distinguish one performance from another cd just as validly be the performers' incompetence or other foibles as well as their skills & strengths. This was an important 1st step for me in stepping outside of the disciplines of classical music into what I usually now refer to as "Low Classical Usic"." (pp 200-201)
The idea being here is that this, too, is an example of an interabilities situation but there is no such thing as a "truly dreadful concert" & whether "The audience [considers itself to] have suffered" or not is irrelevant - unless actual nonconsensual physical pain (psychological pain can be a bit harder to assess) is being induced. &, of course, I am the d composer here &, despite the extreme d liberate simplicity of the score/title, my function as such places me in a unique unequal position in relation to the performers.
)-(Ull!c]So while I think an interabilities agenda should be open to the experience of darkness that many people feel, I also think that we can find ways of embracing both the darkness and the light, that don't end in murder." (p 10) "The project responded to the story of Milarepa, a Buddhist saint from the 11th century (c. 1052-1135) who had started life out as a mass-murderer." (p 10) I'm reminded of an interview w/ John Waters from several decades ago. He'd made Pink Flamingos in wch his drag queen star, Divine (named after a Jean Genet character), actually ate dog shit. Waters remarked about changing the direction of his filmmaking b/c 'To be more shocking I would've had to kill somebody and I wasn't going to do that.'
In a promotional email sent out announcing this issue, the OPEN SPACE editors proclaimed:
"As a longtime supporter, you already know something of our guiding aspiration to extend the boundaries and horizons of the community of creative thinkers and artmakers. After fifteen years of publication, we believe our new issue has broken through to a significantly new level toward that goal; we have produced a 364-page panoramic, kaleidoscopic book which is composed in a meaningful way to lead you through a huge diversity of subjects treated with consummate seriousness, personal investment, and creative originality.
"The current issue of The Open Space Magazine includes an introduction to magical practice"
& it's this latter sentence (chopped off in my excerpting of it here) that leads to my next comments. Robert Podgurski provides a "Graphic: First Enochian Call to Spirit" that I find interesting to look at in a similar way to the way I enjoy Visual Poetry or a score. Peteris Cedrins also contributes things occult-relevant. I particularly like his imagistic writing:
"'Twas the night before feminism, & all through the hows ... ... ... the stirrings of rats, & at night there are bats in your hair. The colibri of hope are finally kaput, to be eaten like ortolan. Laima's lord tells of the south wind, wch years ago brought blistering heat to the village. Between two to four hundred prostitutes were deported to northern Kazakhstan as anti-Societ elements. Kiss the doorknob, kids would say, & you'll see Riga. It was an iron doorknob, of course, In the dead of winter. Lick it. Eat the bunting." - p 33
Other Podgurski sigils & a poem close the issue. The PNM logo in White's article quoted above looks very much like a sigil too. I'm reminded of my own fanciful theory that sigils are actually circuit diagrams for controlling energy flow (both metaphorically & directly). Maybe someday I'll actually build circuits somehow based on them & see what happens when electricity is introduced.
As w/ White's recalling that "several Yale graduate music theory students hassled me in 1981 with: "it's just poetry"—as if "poetry" was a dirty word, as if expressive verbal language was an irrelevance" & can easily imagine that happening here in reference to "an introduction to magical practice". But, to me, it's the mindset that I'm interested in. One ex-girlfriend who was a poet was interested in experimental writing but her tastes in relation to music were pop all the way. I've never understood that. Why differentiate so between disciplines? It's the experimentation that does it for me.… (plus d'informations)
review of
OPEN SPACE's Things That Matter
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 4-22, 2019
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1130473-things-that-matter?chapter=1
I've praised OPEN SPACE's publications before & I'll do it again. This is a h(e)aven for open-minded & caring intellectuals. Given that the majority of the contributors are composers/musicans & that they've been given the theme of "Things That Matter" a situation is created where responses to the theme are, perhaps, less predictable than they wd be if everyone solicited were exclusively political activists.
From Steve Cannon's portion of Russell Craig Richardson's early 2018 interviews collected under the title "On Ornette Four conversations around Ornette Coleman":
"What it was, is a whole bunch of artists and musicians, they lived there, what had happened, the City had abandoned that schoolhouse, so it was empty, and they just — you know — moved in and took it over, that's all. You know, and they did a combination of things, meaning they made it habitable in terms of a performance space, an of course rehearsal space at the same time, you follow?
"And they fixed it up. You know, brought in the heat, brought in the air conditioning, all that kinda stuff, that was needed to make the place habitable, and stuff like that, you know? Didn't last that long, they ended up arguing among themselves, fighting among themselves, but by that time Ornette had moved out" - p1, Steve Cannon
[I quoted the above for this review on July 9, 2019 — the same day I went to my friend's place for a BBQ in the afternoon. My friend said: "Have you ever heard of Steve Cannon?" I replied: "The name sounds familiar but it's probably not whoever you're about to tell me about." "Cannon was a beloved NYC poet who founded A Gathering of the Tribes, or something like that, who just died 2 days ago." "Yeah! That's the same guy!! I just quoted him in a review I was writing this morning!!" We were both very impressed by the coincidence.]
From Leonard Easter's portion:
"At one point, Ornette acquired a 'sweetheart option' to purchase a former school building on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. He wanted to form a community center, of sorts, encompassing a musical recording and educational space that would appeal primarily to kids. Of course, he took up residence and rehearsed there, loft style - it was kind of funny because each classroom had a distinct function: he lived in one, performed in another, etc. However, it was tough for him to raise the necessary funds to finalize the eventual purchase of the building. I know that he wanted to form a non-profit for this project but eventually everything fell through and he had to relocate.
"It was difficult because he not only lived there, but he tried to renovate and maintain it himself. He became a bit discouraged when, late one evening, someone broke in and smashed him across the back with a crowbar causing one of his lungs to collapse. He did eventually recover, but there was that lingering fear factor for a while that he wasn't going to be able to ever play again." - p 6
Notice the differences between the 2 versions: In the 1st, Coleman was squatting; in the 2nd, Coleman had a financial deal w/ NY City. The latter seems more likely to me but what do I know? Then again, the 2nd description quoted is from a lawyer talking so it's probably a lie, eh?!
From Jack DeJohnette's portion:
"You know, Ornette's concept of Harmolodics, I think it was a need for him to take charge of what his music was, so that critics wouldn't brand it. Cos the critics were branding music all the time. And so, I had my music - I called it multi-directional music - and Ornette... you know, that was a way of the musician taking charge fo what that music was being called, so when anybody referred to Ornette's music they would say 'Harmolodic'." - p 9
I can relate. I've spent most of my life self-defining. I think it's important. The 'problem' is that lazy perceivers (the vast majority) lose interest in things that don't have pre-fabricated contexts. It's too much trouble to 'think' outside the box., in other words it's too much trouble to THINK at all.
Then there's a "Review of Baraka & Taylor at the Poetry Project (2000)" by Christopher Funkhouser. Given that Amiri Baraka is at least someone of interest to me & that Cecil Taylor is one of my favorite pianists AND that I gave a performance at the Poetry Project way back on Monday, May 27, 1985 ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOutline1985.html ), this catches my interest considerably.
Baraka "continued by reading a series of shorter poems, including "Pilgrims Progress" (where both god & the devil are addressed as "motherfuckers"), and "Lo-Ku's" ("the african-american version of haiku", e.g. "you can pray all day/and get no answer/but dial 911 and the devil will be there in a minute"), all interspersed with AB scatting." - p 14
Are there any creative people anywhere in the world who get enuf respect to enable them to speak for awhile w/o having their audience get restless? I truly wonder. Take Funkhouser's commentary on Taylor's part of the reading.
"Since he was speaking of vibratory essences, I shouldn't have been surprised when, after 30 minutes or so, cell phones began to ring. Half the audience was visibly agitated because of the reading's duration; there was restless commotion in the back. Others traveled about in the space of the poem and moment. An artist was sketching. When Cecil sensed people's impatience, did he stop? Hardly: A false ending, followed by a sigh of relief from the beleaguered, was followed by more poetry. Cecil kept going, lightly prancing behind the podium! By the time he quit, the audience was 1/3 of what it had been." - p 17
Ok, these are 2 amazing guys, they're not going to live forever, maybe this is their last reading. Still, it was too much for people: Ho Hum, there are so many amazing people in the world, I'm impatient to get out to my favorite bar. Whatever. Maybe they were both being self-indulgent old bores. Maybe if the audience lllooooovvvveeeedddd them I'd be sickened by reading about it. I hated it when full houses at the Andy Warhol Museum hung on every word of Stan Brakhage's self-aggrandizing bullshit.. on every word of Kenneth Anger's insidious psychic vapirism & con artistry.
This publication is more vast than my review will adequately touch on. This review will skip over sections. Another reviewer cd only focus on what I leave out & still be very thorough. There is no chase to cut to. Next I quote Benjamin Boretz, perhaps THE elder of this astonishing cluster of minds.
"So are the things that matter not things at all? Or are they things metaphorically separated from the mattering attributed to them, the mattering which they are felt to have occasioned? When I play music for you, and it doesn't matter to you, I know by something that happens in my being that we have together conjured a space of mutual nonconsonance, that where we each are is not quite in the same world, or at least not the same room. That kind of experience (which one has had) makes me think of that primal shock of originary cognitive dissonance which simultaneously and instantaneously forces every infant's revelation of other, self, and the world; the moment that compels the discovery, really the invention of thought, as an emergency tool conjured in panic to restore sanity, equilibrium, cohesion. From the outside, ontological creativity appears to be volitional, "the chosen"; but from within it reads like Stravinsky's "I do not seek, I find". And, "I know there's a real world out there, because not all of my fantasies work" (-BB) - pp 26-27
Then there's David Lidov's take on the theme:
"The THINGS-THAT-MATTER gauntlet would have been easier to snatch in '68 or '72. I might have said stopping the war matters. My late wife was chronically ill and couldn't take the air downtown. I might have said not living downtown mattered.
"Matters to whom? Even back then, I would have quickly yielded if challenged. With less than a minute of reflection, I would have been ready to acknowledge that my concerns didn't matter outside my personal world's time, didn't matter to the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond." - p 29
When Dorota Czerner, one of OPEN SPACE's editors, offered the opportunity for me to contribute to the issue that will hopefully follow the one I'm reviewing here she sd I cd address the issue of "THINGS THAT MATTER" if so inclined. I find the issue dauntingly large given that almost everything I've ever invested energy in in my whole life might be THINGS THAT MATTER to me. I'm an anarchist, a political activist — but I'm also a writer, a critic, a d composer, a usician, a performer, a moviemaker, & a person who's been many other things as well in order to make a living. All of these things MATTER to me & to other people.
The idea of "THINGS THAT MATTER" strikes me as a human scale idea. I'm not convinced that "the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond" have any sense of THINGS THAT MATTER so, unlike Lidov, I have no problem w/ addressing the issue on a human scale. I was completely opposed to the Vietnam War in 1968 & 1972. I have no problem or hesitation saying that such opposition was one of the THINGS THAT MATTERed to me then. I'm still opposed to ALL war. I'm still opposed to the mind-boggling tendency of human beings to cause suffering for other life, both to the same species & to non-humans. I think THAT MATTERs. If one watches the Robert H. Gardner History Channel 'documentary' about the Vikings then one hears the dramatic narrator intone at the end something to the effect that, yeah, the Vikings were brutal but they expanded world trade, etc. My reply is: anything that 'requires' mass murder isn't worth it. Certainly there cd've been less-greed-&-murder-based ways of expanding trade. Today's 'Free Trade' was yesterday's Viking raid. We still live in a world of state-sponsored terror (what was once the Roman Empire) & Barbarian terror (the Huns). It still sucks for the rest of us, the ones who get killed &/or traumatized who really don't care about having a golden goblet. This MATTERs to anyone caught in the crossfire & to plenty of the rest of us who can actually feel sympathy for our fellow human beings.
Lidov continues:
"Years later, I understand that that false question of mattering to the cosmos has never been anything but a cover-up for discouragement. When young, I could quickly push it away with fantasies of what WE could accomplish: Stop the War! Care for all the children! Empower the workers! At my present age, the "We" progressively gets pretty diffuse for the standard reasons, plural is shrinking toward singular. I will not be able to clean up the plastics in the oceans. I will not be able to stop Netanyahu from wiping out the Palestinians or Assad from gassing folks. I will not be able to stop global warming. But, Ah-Hah, I may well be able to enrich your understanding of that crazy piece by LvB—if only I don't get discouraged!" - p 30
"that crazy piece by LvB" being Ludwig van Beethoven's last Bagatelle in his last set, Op. 126. Somehow, Lidov gets to Nero:
"Was the matricidal and Christian-slaughtering Nero Claudius, rumored to be plucking his cithera through the great fire of 64, really not distraught by the plight of Rome? Wikipedia says he was quick to organize food relief. As with Richard M Nixon, some good points surfaced afterwards." - p 39
Well, let's consult Suetonius about that little myth about Nero, shall we?
"But he showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said:
"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,"
he rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume. Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals." - http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html
I trust Suetonius's account. As for Nixon? Wasn't he responsible for the deaths of huge quantities of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, & Laos? Whatever "good points" might've "surfaced afterwards" must be very small in contrast. THINGS THAT MATTER to me often involve fariness.. kindness.. Cruelty begets misery begets cruelty begets misery. It's literally a vicious cycle. Guilherme Zelig:
"From age fifteen João was a mason. Ebony black, already by that age he had lost his parents. Had to go to work. By twenty-three he'd started a family of his own. The only thing he knew how to write with a pen was his name. He would leave home for work early having taken his morning coffee, made by his wife. Would get back late, and sometimes stopped by the bar to take a couple of beers. But one time João lost his life. The police mistook him for someone else, they had assumed he was involved in a robbery in the posh area of the city." - p 60
So they killed him. Just like that. No chance to prove that he was at work at the time of the robbery. Ignorance, stupidity, hatefullness, racism, quickness-to-kill, impunity. More suffering added to the world. This is one of the THINGS THAT MATTER.
Russell Craig Richardson appears again starting on page 64:
"THNGS THT MTTR
How It Is
All women are the property of all men. Any one man. Any man
All children are the property of all adults. Any adult at all
All poor people are the property of any wealthy person
(All black people are the property of any and every white person)
Set against which, Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact" - p 64
I find the How It Is section to be deliberately provocative. Richardson may believe it's true. There are certainly many people eager to complain about being victims that wd at least profess to believing the parts relevant to them to be true. In my personal experience, many women are very successfully domineering & control the men in their lives w/ a mind-boggling viciousness. Children are hypothetically protected by adults to help them grow past dangers they're initially unaware of. But I wdn't exactly call them "property", as Richardson does. Anyone who's spent time around young children & their parents might find the parents being led around by the nose as the child subjects them to violent selfish mood-swings. All poor people are likely to be ordered around by most wealthy people as servants regardless of the circumstances but does that make them "property"? Wealthy people might not want "property" that has to be cared for, poor people are cheaper than slaves when we can be used as disposable tools. Even at the height of slavery in the US & elsewhere there wd've always been 'white' people who refused the attitude that 'black' people, or ANY people, are "property". I find these generalizations of Richardson's unproductive & offensive. For one thing, it posits all the power in the oppressor but I think we all have power. But I like Richardson & I'm interested in his writing so I read on:
"Once Upon A Time, there was an artist who decided to incorporate danger into his art." - p 64
I think of Chris Burden having himself shot &/or SRL having machines fight each other in ways dangerous to any observers.
"The artist gets on with his life, sleeping, reading, writing, eating, thinking, making art. The artist's movements are restricted to a space no more than six feet in front of this wall. A red line is drawn on the floor to make this zone visible." - p 64
I think of Tehching Hsieh & his one yr long performances such as the one where he lived in a small jail cell for a year without any entertainment materials, without communicating, eating only bread & water twice a day.
"The target area is potentially 50 feet wide x 10 feet high. The artist will always be in this area. When the klaxon sounds, the artist must freeze in his current posture and wait until the shot is fired. Or not fired." - p 65
I think of the Soviet propaganda cartoon, "Shooting Range" (1979) by V. Tarasov, in which desperate US citizens resort to being human shooting range targets to make a living.
"Once Upon A Time, I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master. Each time I came upon a word whose meaning was not clear, I noted it down, and tried to guess the meaning from its context. Later, I looked up the words thus listed, and verified their meanings."
[..]
"adoquines (n) something to do with a dark street at night? "cobblestones" - p 68
I read this OPEN SPACE over what was probably a few mnths, always reading multiple other bks during this time. I finished reading it on May 24, 2019. Today is July 14, 2019. 51 days have elapsed since I finished reading the whole thing, at least another mnth since I read Richardson's article. What his opening provocations have to do w/ his 'fairy tales' that follow is beyond me. It's tempting to at least skim the article to refresh my memory. This wd be easy & wd enable closure. Instead, I think I'll finish this part of the review in a way inspired by "I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master." Unlike Richardson, I won't check the correctness of what I speculate.
Richardson's grim provocative beginning, which I don't agree with, is countered by:
"Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact""
His "Three Miracles" are the 3 fairy tales he tells. These "Three Miracles" are not only NOT "Miracles" b/c they're not outside the possibilities of human nature & 'laws' of nature & they do nothing to counteract the grim 'laws' of oppression. They are, however, far more likely to inspire positive action in a world that's all too often like walls closing in on victims whose destruction is watched for the entertainment of people who've long since lost their connection to others thanks to the privilege that's cauterized their humanitarian potential.
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1130473-things-that-matter?chapter=1… (plus d'informations)
OPEN SPACE's Things That Matter
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 4-22, 2019
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1130473-things-that-matter?chapter=1
I've praised OPEN SPACE's publications before & I'll do it again. This is a h(e)aven for open-minded & caring intellectuals. Given that the majority of the contributors are composers/musicans & that they've been given the theme of "Things That Matter" a situation is created where responses to the theme are, perhaps, less predictable than they wd be if everyone solicited were exclusively political activists.
From Steve Cannon's portion of Russell Craig Richardson's early 2018 interviews collected under the title "On Ornette Four conversations around Ornette Coleman":
"What it was, is a whole bunch of artists and musicians, they lived there, what had happened, the City had abandoned that schoolhouse, so it was empty, and they just — you know — moved in and took it over, that's all. You know, and they did a combination of things, meaning they made it habitable in terms of a performance space, an of course rehearsal space at the same time, you follow?
"And they fixed it up. You know, brought in the heat, brought in the air conditioning, all that kinda stuff, that was needed to make the place habitable, and stuff like that, you know? Didn't last that long, they ended up arguing among themselves, fighting among themselves, but by that time Ornette had moved out" - p1, Steve Cannon
[I quoted the above for this review on July 9, 2019 — the same day I went to my friend's place for a BBQ in the afternoon. My friend said: "Have you ever heard of Steve Cannon?" I replied: "The name sounds familiar but it's probably not whoever you're about to tell me about." "Cannon was a beloved NYC poet who founded A Gathering of the Tribes, or something like that, who just died 2 days ago." "Yeah! That's the same guy!! I just quoted him in a review I was writing this morning!!" We were both very impressed by the coincidence.]
From Leonard Easter's portion:
"At one point, Ornette acquired a 'sweetheart option' to purchase a former school building on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. He wanted to form a community center, of sorts, encompassing a musical recording and educational space that would appeal primarily to kids. Of course, he took up residence and rehearsed there, loft style - it was kind of funny because each classroom had a distinct function: he lived in one, performed in another, etc. However, it was tough for him to raise the necessary funds to finalize the eventual purchase of the building. I know that he wanted to form a non-profit for this project but eventually everything fell through and he had to relocate.
"It was difficult because he not only lived there, but he tried to renovate and maintain it himself. He became a bit discouraged when, late one evening, someone broke in and smashed him across the back with a crowbar causing one of his lungs to collapse. He did eventually recover, but there was that lingering fear factor for a while that he wasn't going to be able to ever play again." - p 6
Notice the differences between the 2 versions: In the 1st, Coleman was squatting; in the 2nd, Coleman had a financial deal w/ NY City. The latter seems more likely to me but what do I know? Then again, the 2nd description quoted is from a lawyer talking so it's probably a lie, eh?!
From Jack DeJohnette's portion:
"You know, Ornette's concept of Harmolodics, I think it was a need for him to take charge of what his music was, so that critics wouldn't brand it. Cos the critics were branding music all the time. And so, I had my music - I called it multi-directional music - and Ornette... you know, that was a way of the musician taking charge fo what that music was being called, so when anybody referred to Ornette's music they would say 'Harmolodic'." - p 9
I can relate. I've spent most of my life self-defining. I think it's important. The 'problem' is that lazy perceivers (the vast majority) lose interest in things that don't have pre-fabricated contexts. It's too much trouble to 'think' outside the box., in other words it's too much trouble to THINK at all.
Then there's a "Review of Baraka & Taylor at the Poetry Project (2000)" by Christopher Funkhouser. Given that Amiri Baraka is at least someone of interest to me & that Cecil Taylor is one of my favorite pianists AND that I gave a performance at the Poetry Project way back on Monday, May 27, 1985 ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOutline1985.html ), this catches my interest considerably.
Baraka "continued by reading a series of shorter poems, including "Pilgrims Progress" (where both god & the devil are addressed as "motherfuckers"), and "Lo-Ku's" ("the african-american version of haiku", e.g. "you can pray all day/and get no answer/but dial 911 and the devil will be there in a minute"), all interspersed with AB scatting." - p 14
Are there any creative people anywhere in the world who get enuf respect to enable them to speak for awhile w/o having their audience get restless? I truly wonder. Take Funkhouser's commentary on Taylor's part of the reading.
"Since he was speaking of vibratory essences, I shouldn't have been surprised when, after 30 minutes or so, cell phones began to ring. Half the audience was visibly agitated because of the reading's duration; there was restless commotion in the back. Others traveled about in the space of the poem and moment. An artist was sketching. When Cecil sensed people's impatience, did he stop? Hardly: A false ending, followed by a sigh of relief from the beleaguered, was followed by more poetry. Cecil kept going, lightly prancing behind the podium! By the time he quit, the audience was 1/3 of what it had been." - p 17
Ok, these are 2 amazing guys, they're not going to live forever, maybe this is their last reading. Still, it was too much for people: Ho Hum, there are so many amazing people in the world, I'm impatient to get out to my favorite bar. Whatever. Maybe they were both being self-indulgent old bores. Maybe if the audience lllooooovvvveeeedddd them I'd be sickened by reading about it. I hated it when full houses at the Andy Warhol Museum hung on every word of Stan Brakhage's self-aggrandizing bullshit.. on every word of Kenneth Anger's insidious psychic vapirism & con artistry.
This publication is more vast than my review will adequately touch on. This review will skip over sections. Another reviewer cd only focus on what I leave out & still be very thorough. There is no chase to cut to. Next I quote Benjamin Boretz, perhaps THE elder of this astonishing cluster of minds.
"So are the things that matter not things at all? Or are they things metaphorically separated from the mattering attributed to them, the mattering which they are felt to have occasioned? When I play music for you, and it doesn't matter to you, I know by something that happens in my being that we have together conjured a space of mutual nonconsonance, that where we each are is not quite in the same world, or at least not the same room. That kind of experience (which one has had) makes me think of that primal shock of originary cognitive dissonance which simultaneously and instantaneously forces every infant's revelation of other, self, and the world; the moment that compels the discovery, really the invention of thought, as an emergency tool conjured in panic to restore sanity, equilibrium, cohesion. From the outside, ontological creativity appears to be volitional, "the chosen"; but from within it reads like Stravinsky's "I do not seek, I find". And, "I know there's a real world out there, because not all of my fantasies work" (-BB) - pp 26-27
Then there's David Lidov's take on the theme:
"The THINGS-THAT-MATTER gauntlet would have been easier to snatch in '68 or '72. I might have said stopping the war matters. My late wife was chronically ill and couldn't take the air downtown. I might have said not living downtown mattered.
"Matters to whom? Even back then, I would have quickly yielded if challenged. With less than a minute of reflection, I would have been ready to acknowledge that my concerns didn't matter outside my personal world's time, didn't matter to the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond." - p 29
When Dorota Czerner, one of OPEN SPACE's editors, offered the opportunity for me to contribute to the issue that will hopefully follow the one I'm reviewing here she sd I cd address the issue of "THINGS THAT MATTER" if so inclined. I find the issue dauntingly large given that almost everything I've ever invested energy in in my whole life might be THINGS THAT MATTER to me. I'm an anarchist, a political activist — but I'm also a writer, a critic, a d composer, a usician, a performer, a moviemaker, & a person who's been many other things as well in order to make a living. All of these things MATTER to me & to other people.
The idea of "THINGS THAT MATTER" strikes me as a human scale idea. I'm not convinced that "the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond" have any sense of THINGS THAT MATTER so, unlike Lidov, I have no problem w/ addressing the issue on a human scale. I was completely opposed to the Vietnam War in 1968 & 1972. I have no problem or hesitation saying that such opposition was one of the THINGS THAT MATTERed to me then. I'm still opposed to ALL war. I'm still opposed to the mind-boggling tendency of human beings to cause suffering for other life, both to the same species & to non-humans. I think THAT MATTERs. If one watches the Robert H. Gardner History Channel 'documentary' about the Vikings then one hears the dramatic narrator intone at the end something to the effect that, yeah, the Vikings were brutal but they expanded world trade, etc. My reply is: anything that 'requires' mass murder isn't worth it. Certainly there cd've been less-greed-&-murder-based ways of expanding trade. Today's 'Free Trade' was yesterday's Viking raid. We still live in a world of state-sponsored terror (what was once the Roman Empire) & Barbarian terror (the Huns). It still sucks for the rest of us, the ones who get killed &/or traumatized who really don't care about having a golden goblet. This MATTERs to anyone caught in the crossfire & to plenty of the rest of us who can actually feel sympathy for our fellow human beings.
Lidov continues:
"Years later, I understand that that false question of mattering to the cosmos has never been anything but a cover-up for discouragement. When young, I could quickly push it away with fantasies of what WE could accomplish: Stop the War! Care for all the children! Empower the workers! At my present age, the "We" progressively gets pretty diffuse for the standard reasons, plural is shrinking toward singular. I will not be able to clean up the plastics in the oceans. I will not be able to stop Netanyahu from wiping out the Palestinians or Assad from gassing folks. I will not be able to stop global warming. But, Ah-Hah, I may well be able to enrich your understanding of that crazy piece by LvB—if only I don't get discouraged!" - p 30
"that crazy piece by LvB" being Ludwig van Beethoven's last Bagatelle in his last set, Op. 126. Somehow, Lidov gets to Nero:
"Was the matricidal and Christian-slaughtering Nero Claudius, rumored to be plucking his cithera through the great fire of 64, really not distraught by the plight of Rome? Wikipedia says he was quick to organize food relief. As with Richard M Nixon, some good points surfaced afterwards." - p 39
Well, let's consult Suetonius about that little myth about Nero, shall we?
"But he showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said:
"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,"
he rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume. Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals." - http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html
I trust Suetonius's account. As for Nixon? Wasn't he responsible for the deaths of huge quantities of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, & Laos? Whatever "good points" might've "surfaced afterwards" must be very small in contrast. THINGS THAT MATTER to me often involve fariness.. kindness.. Cruelty begets misery begets cruelty begets misery. It's literally a vicious cycle. Guilherme Zelig:
"From age fifteen João was a mason. Ebony black, already by that age he had lost his parents. Had to go to work. By twenty-three he'd started a family of his own. The only thing he knew how to write with a pen was his name. He would leave home for work early having taken his morning coffee, made by his wife. Would get back late, and sometimes stopped by the bar to take a couple of beers. But one time João lost his life. The police mistook him for someone else, they had assumed he was involved in a robbery in the posh area of the city." - p 60
So they killed him. Just like that. No chance to prove that he was at work at the time of the robbery. Ignorance, stupidity, hatefullness, racism, quickness-to-kill, impunity. More suffering added to the world. This is one of the THINGS THAT MATTER.
Russell Craig Richardson appears again starting on page 64:
"THNGS THT MTTR
How It Is
All women are the property of all men. Any one man. Any man
All children are the property of all adults. Any adult at all
All poor people are the property of any wealthy person
(All black people are the property of any and every white person)
Set against which, Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact" - p 64
I find the How It Is section to be deliberately provocative. Richardson may believe it's true. There are certainly many people eager to complain about being victims that wd at least profess to believing the parts relevant to them to be true. In my personal experience, many women are very successfully domineering & control the men in their lives w/ a mind-boggling viciousness. Children are hypothetically protected by adults to help them grow past dangers they're initially unaware of. But I wdn't exactly call them "property", as Richardson does. Anyone who's spent time around young children & their parents might find the parents being led around by the nose as the child subjects them to violent selfish mood-swings. All poor people are likely to be ordered around by most wealthy people as servants regardless of the circumstances but does that make them "property"? Wealthy people might not want "property" that has to be cared for, poor people are cheaper than slaves when we can be used as disposable tools. Even at the height of slavery in the US & elsewhere there wd've always been 'white' people who refused the attitude that 'black' people, or ANY people, are "property". I find these generalizations of Richardson's unproductive & offensive. For one thing, it posits all the power in the oppressor but I think we all have power. But I like Richardson & I'm interested in his writing so I read on:
"Once Upon A Time, there was an artist who decided to incorporate danger into his art." - p 64
I think of Chris Burden having himself shot &/or SRL having machines fight each other in ways dangerous to any observers.
"The artist gets on with his life, sleeping, reading, writing, eating, thinking, making art. The artist's movements are restricted to a space no more than six feet in front of this wall. A red line is drawn on the floor to make this zone visible." - p 64
I think of Tehching Hsieh & his one yr long performances such as the one where he lived in a small jail cell for a year without any entertainment materials, without communicating, eating only bread & water twice a day.
"The target area is potentially 50 feet wide x 10 feet high. The artist will always be in this area. When the klaxon sounds, the artist must freeze in his current posture and wait until the shot is fired. Or not fired." - p 65
I think of the Soviet propaganda cartoon, "Shooting Range" (1979) by V. Tarasov, in which desperate US citizens resort to being human shooting range targets to make a living.
"Once Upon A Time, I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master. Each time I came upon a word whose meaning was not clear, I noted it down, and tried to guess the meaning from its context. Later, I looked up the words thus listed, and verified their meanings."
[..]
"adoquines (n) something to do with a dark street at night? "cobblestones" - p 68
I read this OPEN SPACE over what was probably a few mnths, always reading multiple other bks during this time. I finished reading it on May 24, 2019. Today is July 14, 2019. 51 days have elapsed since I finished reading the whole thing, at least another mnth since I read Richardson's article. What his opening provocations have to do w/ his 'fairy tales' that follow is beyond me. It's tempting to at least skim the article to refresh my memory. This wd be easy & wd enable closure. Instead, I think I'll finish this part of the review in a way inspired by "I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master." Unlike Richardson, I won't check the correctness of what I speculate.
Richardson's grim provocative beginning, which I don't agree with, is countered by:
"Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact""
His "Three Miracles" are the 3 fairy tales he tells. These "Three Miracles" are not only NOT "Miracles" b/c they're not outside the possibilities of human nature & 'laws' of nature & they do nothing to counteract the grim 'laws' of oppression. They are, however, far more likely to inspire positive action in a world that's all too often like walls closing in on victims whose destruction is watched for the entertainment of people who've long since lost their connection to others thanks to the privilege that's cauterized their humanitarian potential.
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1130473-things-that-matter?chapter=1… (plus d'informations)
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 21
- Membres
- 103
- Popularité
- #185,855
- Évaluation
- 3.9
- Critiques
- 9
- ISBN
- 12
The OPEN SPACE magazine issue 12/13
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 29, 2011
WARNING: Most people will find this 'review' unbelievably self-indulgent & tedious.
There are music magazines & journals galore in the world. Many of them interest me. Of the ones that I've had the most direct involvement w/, "Experimental Musical Instruments" & "MUSICWORKS" have been my favorites - w/ "H23", & "Noisegate" being close. Other notables that've sometimes been more connected to my social milieu than to my actual musical interests have been "OP", "OPtion", "Sound Choice", "Electronic Music Cottage", "UNSOUND", "Gajoob", & "the improvisor". "EAR MAGAZINE" & "SOURCE: Music of the AvantGarde" are 2 that I WISH I'd contributed to! I wish I even had a copy of the latter. "Terra Nova" & "BANANAFISH" are 2 other favorites. Alas, "Cassettera" never made it past one issue. I've never even read the issues of "Search & Destroy" that I have even though I liked the early issues of its successor "Re/Search". "Leonardo Music Journal" might be something that I'd like but they rejected an article of mine so they're probably too elitist academic. 2 reviewers from "The Wire" asked for copies of my 2nd record, Usic minus the square root of negative one, to review but then both decided against reviewing it. "The Wire", even though its subheading is "Adventures in Modern Music", strikes me as more 'adventures in modern music by mostly established people with money that don't challenge your notions of 'modern' too much.'
THEN there's The OPEN SPACE magazine. This may just join the ranks of my favorites. It's the size & shape of Cassette Mythos, one of my favorite music bks &, for me, the best one that I know of from the home taper scene. The OPEN SPACE magazine has come out slightly less than once a yr since 1999 but it's the product of a music scene that goes back much longer. The editors listed are Benjamin Boretz, Dorota Czerner, Mary Lee Roberts, Tildy Bayar, & Arthur Margolin. Of these, Boretz is the one whose work I'm the most 'familiar' w/ - but that's pushing things. Amongst the contributing editors are a plethora of more familiar names: my old buddy & esteemed collaborator Warren Burt, David Dunn, Kyle Gann, Daniel Goode, Paul Lansky, George Lewis, & my new friends (whose work I've know about for decades) George Quasha & Charles Stein. It's thru Quasha that I have something in this issue.
Boretz: According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Boretz , "studied composition at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger, at the Aspen Music Festival and School with Darius Milhaud, at UCLA with Lukas Foss, and at Princeton with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. He was one of the early composers to work with computer-synthesized sound (Group Variations II, 1970–72)" [..] "Boretz is a co-founder, with Arthur Berger, of the composers' music journal Perspectives of New Music" - a renowned publication that I've never seen.
My musical interests laying mostly on what I consider to be the 'cutting edge(s)', I've followed computer music since at least when I cd 1st get my hands on recordings of it - maybe starting w/ John Cage & Lejaren Hiller's "HPSCHD", wch I loved, in 1974, & the "Computer Music" LP I picked up as my 1st record purchased in 1976. This LP has work on it by J.K.Randall, Barry Vercoe, & Charles Dodge.
For those of us interested in the development of electronic music & musique concrete, there might be the tendency to categorize different locations as having produced different types of work. Much of what I've enjoyed the most has come from France. The RCA Music Synthesizer at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center where Milton Babbitt made his "Ensembles for Synthesizer" (1961-63) is historically interesting to me.. but I never liked the sounds much. Otto Luening & Vladimir Ussachevsky worked at Columbia's Tape Music Center. I've enjoyed their work too.. but often find it somewhat 'superficial' - not really obssessive enuf for me. Same goes for the work out of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In the us@, I've tended to be more interested in the work from the Project of Music for Magnetic Tape - where John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, & David Tudor worked in the studios of Louis & Bebe Barron for a brief while starting in 1951.
Now that I've probably made enemies of entirely too many nice people, I shd at least note that I've certainly pd substantial attn to the work of composers whose work I seem to've just dismissed! I frequently go thru my own archive of recordings & those of the local library's & pick out the work of a particular composer (or a theme) & organize that work chronologically onto tapes or CD-Rs as "Retrospectives". EG, I've compiled these:
Milton Babbitt (2 X 60 minute tapes):
Partitions
Ensembles for Synthesizer
Vision & Prayer
Relata I
Minute Waltz (or) 3/4 ± 1/8
An Elizabethan Sextette
Playing for Time
Quartet No. 5
It Takes Twelve to Tango
About Time
Groupwise
Tape Delay (5 X 120 minute tapes, 1 X 90 minute tape):
featuring the work of Terry Riley & Pauline Oliveros of the SFTMC.
Pauline Oliveros (1 X 110 minute tape):
Outline
Bye Bye Butterfly
Sound Patterns
I of IV
Alien Bog
Horse Sings from Cloud
Lullaby for Daisy Pauline
Rattlesnake Mountain
Jacob Druckman (Columbia) (2 X 100 minute tapes):
Dark upon the Harp
Antiphonies
String Quartet No. 2
Animus I
Animus II
Animus III
Synapse -> Valentine
Windows
Chiaroscuro
Aureole
Prism
Ilhan Mimaroglu (Columbia) (1 X 60 minute tape):
Bowery Bum (Visual Study No. 3 after Jean Dubuffet)
Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe
Intermezzo
Agony (Visual Study No. 4 after Arshille Gorky)
6 Preludes for Magnetic Tape
Prelude No. 8
Piano Music for Performer & Composer
Sleepsong for Sleepers
Now, if anyone's made it this far, you may be hoping I'll stop w/ the personal background & move onto the actual review. You, of course, can always skim ahead. The above list is just a SMALL sample - I know of far more work by most of these people & of many more besides.
Of the pieces on the aforementioned "Computer Music" record, I was probably most interested in Randall's "Mudgett: Monologues by a Mass Murderer" (1965) b/c its subject gets out of the purely formalist ghetto that characterizes most computer music. In retrospect, this piece of Randall's is a precursor to the work of Throbbing Gristle & of Industrial Music in general. & Randall is a contributor to OPEN SPACE &, seemingly, an intimate collaborator.
I probably hadn't run across much by Randall until my local Pittsburgh library was giving away a series of tapes called "Inter/Play". I like tapes (& have been publishing them since 1980: Widemouth Tapes: www.fyi.net/~anon/WdmUCatalog.html) & these seem to feature improvising (I'm an improvisor too) & they have Randall & Boretz so I got all that were left (24). Randall's on all but 4 of these & Boretz is on 10 of them. The style of the packaging is very similar to that of OPEN SPACE products: stark Black & White.
Somewhere else along the line I picked up 2 OPEN SPACE CDs:
#3 Elaine Barkin & Boretz Jill Borner Charles Stein
#13: Boretz & Randall
More recently, I got the "music for computers, electronic sounds, and players" record w/ works by Dodge, Bulent Arel, & Boretz. Now, a part of what's hard about writing this review is that I want to be, as usual, honest - w/o intending to be harsh or offensive. That's not always easy. I listened to all the "Inter/Play" tapes at least twice. I don't recall liking any of them. At all. It's well-known that classically trained musicians often have a hard time improvising. There are MANY exceptions. But these "Inter/Play" tapes seem to exemplify this. They're STIFF. I'll take the much wilder BalTimOre improvising from 1984 to 1993 anyday.
As for the pieces on the CDs? They also do almost nothing for me - although I DID use an excerpt from Elaine Barkin's "Anonymous Was A Woman" as part of the "Anonymous Family Reunion". & Boretz's "Group Variations (for computer)" on the "music for computers [..]" LP is very much of the same ilk as the Columbia-Princeton work that I commented on before by saying "I never liked the sounds much".
& yet.. & yet.. it was obvious that these folks constitute a close-knit group of dedicated composers & performers who're coming from a hard-core academic background that I don't identify w/ - but that I still respect - so I've never lost interest.
& THEN.. & THEN.. I got a piece memorializing Franz Kamin in this issue of The OPEN SPACE magazine & got a copy of it & all of the interests that I have in common w/ these folks came to the forefront & I got very excited. THIS ISSUE IS A HIGHLY CONCENTRATED LOOK AT AN ERA THAT SEEMS TO BE COMING SOMEWHAT TO AN END.
There're 3 pieces dedicated to the recently deceased Milton Babbitt. There's something by Randall re 2 bks re John Cage (1912-1992). There're 3 things that reference Franz Kamin (1941-2010) (including mine) one thing by him. There's a memorial to Henry Brant. There's mention of Lukas Foss (1922-2010). There's Hubert S. Howe's: "Max Mathews: A Remembrance for Open Space". There's David Hicks' memorial to Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet). All of these musical figures were important to me in some way - so to see them all memorialized in the same publication leaves me w/ a strange feeling of time passing, of mortality.
Throughout my life, esp from age 13 on, I've listened carefully to recordings, read bks & magazines re music, attended concerts, created my own (M)Usic, concertized myself, made movies about (M)Usic, etc.. - & there've always been major figures whose work I've admired & studied intensely. Many of them were alive at the time, some I got the chance to meet (if only briefly).
Then they started to die:
Tim Buckley (1947-1975)
Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
John Cage (1912-1992)
Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994)
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)
Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008)
Lukas Foss (1922-2009)
Captain Beefheart (1941-2010)
The list cd go on & on.. The gist of it is that time's passing & the passing of cultural figures important to me has become more pronounced as I've lived thru it. Of course, anyone who's culturally active, as I am, probably imagines from time-to-time how they might fit into someone else's chronology of cultural figures. The ideas & works don't die but the pioneering proponents & creators of those ideas & works do.
SO, The OPEN SPACE magazine seems like one of the last publications from a particular era that I both grew up w/ &, hopefully, contributed to the ongoing lineage of. & it's 293pp of material that I'm interested in & that I don't see often enuf. W/ contributions by Philip Corner & Charles Stein how cd I not be interested?! W/ descriptions of Charles Amirkanian's Other Minds festivals 15 & 16 how cd I not be interested?! W/ full scores by Benjamin Boretz & Elaine Barkin how cd I not be interested?! W/ Robert Morris & David Mott describing "Rapport" (1973), a piece of "live electronic music in which the performers mix and transform prerecorded excerpts of what is now called world-music", how cd I not be interested?! W/ Jon Forshee discussing Trevor Wishart's "Globalalia" how cd I not be interested?! W/ Daniel Goode's "Torture by Music: evidence from The Piano Teacher" how cd I not be interested?! W/ Elaine Barkin writing about Hollis Taylor & Jon Rose's playing of Australian fences how cd I not be interested?! (There's even a picture of Coober Pedy (White-Man in Hole) in there!)
Boretz even has an article called "Fourth and long in Baltimore", my place of origin. Apparently, "An invitation to invade a meeting of philosophically interested music theorists to engage the thought of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus with respect to its musical implications" took him there. I wonder if the participants realized that in the 1970s BalTimOre performance group CoAccident referenced D&G? I wonder if they realized that I used a text re Desiring Machines in a sound piece of mine in 1980 - that I had a Kurzweil reading machine for the blind read this text. Probably not: academia has always been largely oblivious to the more 'lunatic fringe' culture there.
& THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO THIS! I'm deeply honored to've been able to be a part of it.… (plus d'informations)