27.1.17

dream evolve

can one ever discern the overarching mood of one's life?

i guess that is a question not for the living

.

life's insolvability-as-solution 
continually reveals itself to me 
with each sensual mountain-shaped
peak and fall...

.


is each separate external creation
merely a representation of
yet another attempt at [truth]?

are the processes of searching
(i.e. artistic processes)
made [untrue] when abandoned? 

or is art [true] when
left alone as a window
to be looked through?

.

... eternally exploring the nature of eternity ...



.

i am more obsessed than ever with the combination of 

popol vuh psychedelic/kraut rock group
germany, 1969-2001

this band was formed by florian fricke, 
who became obsessed with 
the then-new array of sounds 
made available by the Moog analog synthesizer
 
 
and

werner herzog film director
germany, 1968-present

this director is fast becoming my favorite director
and documentary filmmaker, as well as favorite
human being.

popol vuh + herzog collaborated on six separate films.


it all began when i saw the documentary  
burden of a dream (1982).

it is about the incredible challenges
herzog faced in the production of
fitzcarraldo (1982), set in the amazon -

klaus kinski in fitzcarraldo

the "dream" of herzog's causing the burden
was his mad desire to manually pull a  
320-ton steamship up a hill.

the production took longer than five years
and faced countless setbacks.
   
werner herzog on set of fitzcarraldo

.

the soundtrack by popol vuh to the film nosferatu is
my favorite meditative,
transcendental work

here you will find the sound of space's vastness
assisted by instruments and musical styles
traditionally indian in origin

(1978)


. 

i next saw the film
aguirre, the wrath of god (1972)
 
i can honestly say
with no doubt

this is my favorite piece of film in the entire history of the universe


what makes it so great,
 
besides the incredible "acting" of klaus kinski 
(a force of nature, a completely unpredictable 
and almost uncontrollable element, whose work
for all intents and purposes is
not an act but real),

is
the respectful exploitation of
the natural world as being,
equal to the human

and sometimes

indisputably at odds with him
in control of him
laughing at him
in pain with him


i think more than all others done by popol vuh
the soundtrack to this film is most accurately
and beautifully portrayed here by herzog:

(speaking specifically about
florian fricke, a close creative friend)

"he was a poet first and a musician second - a composer.
his feel for the 'inner'  narrative of a cinematic story was infallible,
and his music had the ability to change our perspective as onlookers,
even though a picture always remains the same projection of light
in the cinema. he made visible what would otherwise have remained
mysterious and forever hidden in the images."


.


feldman the composer writes,

"i am interested in getting to Time in its unstructured existence.
that is, i am interested in how this wild beast lives in the jungle - not in the zoo."

.

i think the point of this post is that the truth i believe i have seen in this precise moment is of the jungle, the wild, the eternity

if i am to create art i wish for it to be a direct window with no surface, and

if i am to experience art i wish to not be deceived by the presence of surface

19.1.17

each is another and no other

in contact with the infinity ;

the music of klaus schulze

crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:


"tempus fugit: the age of shopping"
la vie electronique one (compilation, 2009)
recorded c. 1968

an ancient pipe organ à la j. s. bach filtered through the moonlight of a different dimension




klaus began his career in 1969 as the drummer in german electronic/psychedelic group tangerine dream

his solo work is extensive but from what i have heard and am hearing it is completely worth diving into,

headfirst,

with eternity as horizon

water, stone, wind

timewind (re-issue, 2006)
recorded c. 1975



topography of sound structures flowing and swirling like a river of time

. . .

蟲師

lately i have been absolutely obsessed with the piano music of federico mompou.

born in spain in 1893, mompou was trained as a pianist throughout his childhood but took up composition as a vocation in adulthood.

i do not associate him with any other composer that i have ever heard, not even debussy, ravel, or satie (although there are certainly audible similarities), because he was both a catalan and seemingly quite connected to the folk songs and identity associated with the catalan community.

these compositions are meditative and insular worlds. the images painted in my mind by mompou's delicate notes are abstract, lacking definite form or concreteness -

perhaps this very quality of untraceability is what draws me to him, how there are emotions being expressed but not in a way that can be spoken of.

,

one's expectations based on the sounds of mompou's world, the automatic associations with chords and rhythms commonly heard in both late 20th-cetury/early 21st-century (post-)impressionism and mid-21st-century jazz/popular music, and the sounds themselves are often distorted reflections of each other.

i am happy to know about this composer; entering his world to only find yourself lost on various dark and beautiful paths is proving to be a highly enjoyable activity.

,

música callada (1959-67)
en. silent music
federico mompou, piano



música callada is a work divided into four notebooks and totals 28 pieces. 

it is based on the poem cántico espirituel by 16th-century spanish mystic san juan de la cruz, in which there are the following verses:

"la noche sosegada
en par de los levantes de la aurora,
la música callada,
la soledad sonora" (source)

 

... the last two lines,  "silent music, sonorous solitude," according to mompou, are: "... trying to express the idea of ​​a music that would be the very voice of silence" (source, p. 45)

one of my favorite pieces in the work is @ 47:40
xxii. molto lento e tranquilo

,

impressiones intimas (1911-1914)
en. intimate impressions
luis angel martínez, piano



i have a recording of mompou himself playing impressiones intimas ripped to CD but i could not find it on yt.

i like it better than this video but it will do for now - these were the first of mompou's pieces i have heard and are therefore integral to my love for his music.

,

charmes (1920-21)
adolf pla, piano



these are piano pieces of perfect length - none of the six last much longer than two minutes. according to pianist stephen hough, the titles of these pieces are:

"strange signposts [which] head each piece to illuminate our path of perception - although these mottos are more like the light of flickering candles in their obscurity. they are literally 'spells' which are conjured up for specific purposes: 'to alleviate suffering' ... 'to penetrate the soul' ... 'to inspire love' ... 'to effect a cure' ... 'to evoke an image of the past' ... 'to call up joy'" (source)

.

further description on what else one may find during their audial stroll:

"the music of federico mompou is the music of evaporation. the printed page seems to have faded, as if the bar lines, time signatures, key signatures, and even the notes themselves have disappeared over a timeless number of years. there is no development of material, little counterpoint, no drama nor climaxes to speak of; and this simplicity of expression - elusive, evasive and shy - is strangely disarming. there is nowhere for the sophisticate to hide with mompou. we are in a glasshouse, and the resulting transparency is unnerving, for it creates a reflection in which our face and soul can be seen"

and

"he is inside the room looking out, with the glass partly clear and partly stained. indeed there is always an element of distance in mompou between subject and object - the children's games, the singing and dancing are seen and heard from the next street; and his music thrives indoors in the city, not in the sultry southern sun of moorish spain"

(source - although i dislike the author's brusque remark about mompou, saying it is "impossible to claim [that he was] one of the 'great composers'" ... )

. . .
 
félix vallotton
women drying laundry on the beach
1899

in the shadows of a deserted street, on a wall,
in the deep purple loneliness, who
hasn't seen himself on the way to or from some
      encounter,
and not felt the fear and wretchedness and fatal doubt?

the fear of being nothing but an empty body
that anybody - i or anyone else - could occupy,
and the wretchedness of watching yourself, alive,
and the doubt that it is - it is not - real.

xavier villaurrutia, "nocturne: fear" nostalgia de la muerte (1938)

6.1.17

snow could be 

warm like pale 

bear fur




i think i'm searching for

the place where sound

is ice and



warm 


like a fawn who has become 

the snow



 

lost and 

remaining lost

when you've cooked the marrow of the sun and moon,
the pearl is so bright you don't worry about poverty

4.1.17

enter the hero

to sit still and watch birds on trees is akin to sitting still and allowing the original brushstrokes of intelligence hidden by refuse to be illuminated.

.

birds, the sometimes-silent sometimes-singing watchers and doers of Earth, are life's constants, your relative minutiae of infinitude as projected into the external.

wind, sometimes-invisible sometimes-suggested-by-tree-branch-movements, is the unchanging universe.

.

so often do i find myself torn between something like two possible worlds.

much less often do i allow this opposition to combine as nothingness.


life is so vast, it carries the opposite in itself osho (1930-90)