30.11.18

a void

... and you say i want to be here.

i'm sorry, but it stings.

i know what you're thinking - after all the times i've come to you from this place, these depths, you can't help but shake your head. why do i keep putting myself there, you ask? there isn't much sympathy in your voice, but i suspect it's because you've been there too.

all i have to say in response is that i'm not putting myself here. whatever is giving the official go-ahead to keep burrowing down into the tunnels of sadness is not i; at least it is not that with which i would like to identify myself most of the time, anyway. i want to be happy, as anyone does.

is our culture the antithesis of my happiness? is there a deep-rooted infection inside this thing called i which jumps at any opportunity it gets to start eating itself, and is this process involuntary?

to be honest, the sadness inside me scares me. i guess it can be called by many names: the void, nothingness, meaninglessness,  death, eternity, infinity, emptiness. none of these things are inherently good nor bad, they are merely concepts we have devised to help understand certain unknowables about existence.

i'm not entirely sure whether my sadness is a part of the existential dread many claim to have felt at one point or another, or whether it's something of my own making. it doesn't go away. and it is what gnaws at me in the moments where i have very little remaining strength to fight against it.

sometimes i feel like if i were to let it have at me i would be torn to shreds, as would my ties to everything i love. it clearly likes to try and destroy the best things about my life.

but it is no other than i, and as painful as it is to accept that, accept i must.

some people find comfort in the void. like standing in a huge clearing, a desert or field maybe, underneath a vast night sky utterly aglow with stars. how can one feel sadness staring into that void, our true home? even i feel some strange warmth thinking about the emptiness and the depth of our origination, for in that infinity all the distraction of this life we have is cleared away, and we are faced with nothing more than our being.

maybe this intense clamor we humans are constantly making - with our noise, our activities, our business - is nothing but expressions of a base fear, that of death. perhaps our desires come from this fear, too, all of our concerns with more and every and all and increasing quantities of more.

at the core of this life there is pure survival. it doesn't cost money to breathe (yet) but it does to be healthy, to be beautiful, to be what society considers successful. we have devised a game where even survival is not a given for any child - we must submit to the rat race (give time = base needs met) or find ourselves on the outskirts, in the underbelly, inside the belly.

sometimes i have to shake myself out of the self-absorbed echo chamber where i think myself to death. i can't do that to myself anymore. i won't survive if i continue on in this manner, thinking more than saying, expelling energy towards cyclical, dead-ended thought rather than towards using my talents and skills for something outside of myself.

there are ways to gently let myself breathe, to let myself stare down from a great height, as from a mountain, and feel courage. these ways give me hope, and they almost always allow trusting in the ground beneath my feet, as well as the feet themselves, as well as the hands and minds and hearts of others. erasing the barrier and staring into eyes of those not unlike myself, seeing bravery in each other and in turn ourselves we collaboratively navigate together the waters.

overcome the fear that you don't fit and just be. society is no perfect puzzle where all the pieces fit perfectly, that's just what it seems like from the outside - that everyone has a specific role that they were born knowing and they are currently living in that role, happily. most people hardly know how to motivate themselves to get out of bed in the morning; usually someone else has to do it for them. don't be envious of that which you do not know. the world needs you to be solid. you need you to be solid. you need you to be whole and concrete and real.

real, as in real. as in honest. as in vulnerable. as in flawed and broken. as in dignified in your brokennness. as in aware of your brokenness. as in proud of your brokenness.

when we try to hide our flaws is when our flaws make themselves even more apparent.

flaws worn proudly are more beautiful than the most covered-up wound.

ross bleckner, birds

-writing music- for me is a space of endless mind channels; avenues and journeys; setbacks and moments of being lost. i certainly find myself waking up, as it were, from trance-like states after listening to certain pieces, and for some reason this is one of my absolute favorite activities.

getting lost in a sound world has to be one of the most abstract forms of entertainment and yet it's what i find myself doing 99% of my free time these days. i'll give you some examples of music that lets my spirit find a place to rest...

/

to begin with, i have recently re-visited an album which was recommended to me 5 or 6 years ago, and almost am at the point of not being able to find myself wanting to listen to anything else. i might have mentioned it in this blog somewhere before, but if i haven't here is where i will give this absolutely fucking incredible work its due diligence.

bark psychosis - hex (1994)


here is the song "street scene," but you can listen to the whole album as a playlist here.

my sister described the album as "post-rock with a point," and i would have to agree on many points with that sentiment, but there is no way one could merely sum up this band, or this album rather, with just the term post-rock.

(i'm not sure what the current consensus with "post-rock" is but the term as a genre makes me cringe more often than not. i mean, slow-building and atmospheric rock textures is one thing, but for the people thinking that spiderland somehow originated post-rock i'm going to have to ask you to leave. [the song "washer" is a different story, i suppose].

/rant over)

this is a pretty prog-y album. there are tons of different sounds you'll find in here and it's a beautiful musical collage if i've ever heard one. when i talk about "waking up" from a musical trance this album is a perfect example of how that is executed to a masterful degree. nothing sounds out of place, or on accident - and that effect is so difficult to achieve, especially when the sound is most definitely improvisatory so much of the time - so while there are hidden corridors within traditional song structures where the musical mind is left to its own devices, straying from the path as it were, somehow the whole is as cohesive as the tightest and most concise pop song.

if that makes any sense, i applaud myself.

i have once mentioned in here the entrancement i find myself having with music that screams of the night, or of howling in the night, even. this album explicitly references driving at night at 3AM, which has somehow always struck me as rather indicative of what is encapsulated in the spacey, warm, and gently-fluctuating textures exhibited by a fairly wide of variety of instruments on this album.

so yeah, i can't speak highly enough about how beautiful and lovely and warm and dark and lonely and delicious the spaces and places explored on this album are, and i am grateful to the nth degree for its existence.

ross bleckner, architecture of the sky

i must also credit bark psychosis' second studio album, codename: dustsucker, released in 2004, as having some moments worthy of allie's adoration.

here is the song "400 winters"... (i also really recommend "burning the city")


it's like a mix of one of my bloody valentine's most rare tracks with some beautiful bossa nova vibes. the album is different than hex, and will require many (i repeat, many) more listens before i can adopt it as one of my close musical family (that place where i entrust my spirit almost more than any human), but is most assuredly worth love, consideration and appreciation.

felix vallotton, sunset


breathe, and remember that everything in this life is woven with impermanence.

6.11.18

spiderbite

i wanted to write something in honor of the spider currently living in my mailbox. i see her every time i open my mailbox (though i rarely receive any mail addressed to me at this new residence) and am thus reminded with a start of her small black-and-brown existence. as i sift through the letters, her tiny body scurries out from lying in wait and then remains still, unsure. i sense that she is assessing me - am i a threat? a friend?

and there is something in this gentle gesture of sizing me up, which i've seen in several different species of animals, that makes me smile and feel some sort of swelling in my heart. it's the most innocent thing, the desire to live, and as she is so very small in relation to me, it makes sense that she would be so still. though her defenses aren't anything to laugh at, i could easily squash her into nothingness.

but why would i?

i mean her no harm and never could. she is allowed to live just as i am. i would love for her to remain there as long as she can stay warm and dry and perhaps even mother some babies, who knows.

i'm reminded of this fear that we sometimes feel when faced with an unknown. we stop and stand still when looking into its eyes, expecting we know not what, but often believing somewhere inside us that pain awaits us. it must be some primitive defense mechanism acting up, rearing its ugly head as we navigate the world around us.

recognizing this process helps to discern what is protective and what is preventative.

the universe is capable of smiling back at me just as i smiled at my mailbox she-spider, looming over her like some sort of loony giant. i long for her to survive as long as she is able, for thriving is beautiful and miraculous. why would i expect any less of a reaction from that-which-looms-over-me?

it's a funny question, but we will be forgiven for tending to expect the worst. universe smiles aren't delivered in the way that we humans expect, which seems to more resemble a constant dopamine rush than anything else. i imagine that it is more, instead, along the lines of a tibetan buddhist monk's sand mandala, that slow-building ritual, than an endless stream of opening birthday presents.

it would appear that any warmth we might experience as we live in this roiling and ever-shifting tapestry of vibrant and electric unfolding is both an act of effort and an act of non-effort. in one sense we work to even be able to feel any sense of acceptance and belonging in the universe, but in another it's not really work. not really.

i keep thinking these words to myself, 'light feeds light.' it's strange, but ever more these days does it seem to be the only way to put it. positivity (or, whatever adds to as opposed to whatever takes away) is an all-inclusive entity which knows not our human-made divisions, even those divisions which appear to separate us as beings. positivity exists within and without, inside yourself and outside. once accessed it births itself, almost like some metaphysical cell reproduction, copying and re-affirming its existence, continuing on in its mission.

5.10.18

with the sun

not too long ago, but seemingly forever ago (the days melt together like candy stuck under a car seat), i was stuck in traffic.

i realize that as i grow older i hate driving more and more and find all the excuses in the world to not do it. being trapped in a metallic cage, a slave to my surroundings and to others in a way that chokes my lust for freedom (ironic, i know, as cars are a symbol of individual liberation) is not my favorite activity. admittedly, this sense of being trapped is most prominent within the confines of a city much too small to have such a large amount of people passing through daily and residing inside permanently.

alas, on this particular day, my head was spinning with the late afternoon heat. sun beating down and intensifying the claustrophobic atmosphere of my car, once a safe haven, i turned on the radio, hoping for some reprieve from the reality of my situation.

the sound of intricately-picked guitar met my ears, and my spirit became quite literally frozen. i pride myself in being able to identify within milliseconds what sounds resonate with me and which do not, and whether this is due to heightened musical senses cultivated by years of focused listening or to a deep and often-undermined understanding of my own self i am not sure. but i knew instantly that this perfect guitar sound, accompanied by a warbling and deep voice reminiscent of none other in the absolute best way, must be further investigated.

and so it was, and now you, too, may share in its glory.

i present to you sunny war, and her song "static," off of her album with the sun (2018).




she is classified as folk-punk and her lyrical content deals heavily with addiction, and that of alcoholism especially. 

she isn't trying too hard. she is a fantastic guitarist. every song on the album is just as lovely as this, although i have to say i enjoy her acoustic versions (as that is how i first encountered her music) slightly more than the fleshed-out texture of those tracks on her album, but this is a minor complaint.

thanks, sunny.


i've been writing, as a form of exercise or maybe therapy, and it feels circular and cyclical but somehow conclusive. i write myself into the state i wish to be.

something's been lost in the ebb and flow, and i'd like to find it again.


i'd like to come at this whole displaying-of-my-self-with-words thing from a standpoint of not knowing - hoping, maybe, that i'll come to some conclusions along the way in a reasonable manner.

after all, the ego is what allows the artist to feel any right to make any claim, to say anything with any certainty ...

(or maybe the SELF has all the right in the whole fucking world to claim anything at all and stick to that claim, as who could actually place restrictions on the SELF, anyway?)


creation is the wild and uncensored stream of input/output;
data collection/then processed;
filtered information/flowing outwards.
,
all purpose is either absurd or altruistic. something serves or it indulges itself. one may choose to act out of one or the other at any level of abstraction but i believe those are the most condensed forms of what we generally do as humans, as artists, as floating selves, as meat sacks.

i guess i struggle with purpose as i don't inherently find much of one in this existence. this (un)fortunate state of mine is perhaps more a result of years of intermittent depression than anything else, but even if that is the excuse i'm choosing to go with (there are perhaps plenty of other things which factor in?), it's a pretty uneventful way to go about life.

so maybe in writing meaning is found, is searched for, is created. i don't believe there really must be a meaning, as i don't know quite what we humans mean when we say the word. it is a concept that intends to, ideally, add more to that which we see than what is there. giving depth, placing into context, involving potential masses and linking together disparate cultures and traditions - meaning can bundle up a large group of people into collectively acting according to similar codes, and can help push forth the aspiration towards a specific, shared goal.

that sounds a bit too technical, convoluted. there must be a better way to explain meaning, because in explaining the meaning of meaning one could most likely decide whether or not it's something worth bothering with.

and in the case of it being a mere figment of human imagination (i mean, aren't the objective existences of our more abstract concepts completely impossible to prove?), what's stopping me or anyone from being abrasive, discordant, maddeningly mundane with my life, with my work?
.
the truth is, i don't want to upset anyone. in fact, i'd like to do the very opposite, if i can help it.


giving happiness brings happiness. that much is true, whether the philosopher in me wants to acknowledge it plainly or not.

this is plainly seen, but is more difficult when bringing the happiness to one's self, to legitimize the good feelings one feels the same way others so effortlessly do when you see a smile on their face. what about the smile on your face? what about the weight being lifted off of your shoulders when laying in your favorite meadow, unashamed, basking in the golden ocean of existence?

sometimes the simplest truths aren't so simple.


happiness might not belong only to the conscious.

doing something out of necessity, like creating art as an act of salvation, desperation, redemption, might bring about happiness. sometimes that satisfaction is felt much later along the road, at an unexpected or inopportune moment. and sometimes it is a private moment, never to be shared, but a blossoming all the same.

 日

constructing a happy state is not often a carefully-calculated thing.

i hardly think it can be - just as recipes followed to a t are kind of dead things, a fabrication of an original, perfectly imperfect motion.

"perfectly imperfect" is a concept i'd like to familiar myself with more.


the runaround of life, its ups and downs, its repetitive sunups and sundowns, has beaten me up lately.

i ought to allow the repetition a chance to charm me once in a while.

magic still exists, even in this far-off place.



it takes courage,
striving to see yourself as exactly what you are

21.8.18

moon

here as in every other where i am i and all is now:

words are vehicles for grand-seeming ideas which need not be so grand.

do i let myself be, do i let the vines climb?

not enough.


i title this entry moon for she is the elder sister i never knew i had - the sistermother living within me who knows no origin, knows no death.

she appears to me so frequently, so infrequently; at perfect intervals, i am guided through pitch-black dirt paths deep in magical forests. bird songs act as a constant thrumming accompaniment to the madness of this journey. i will never tire of their song.

(by the way, a bird revealed to me as my absolute favorite of all birds in the fading twilight hours of rural appalachia is the gray-cheeked thrush. its song can be heard here, and i have always thought it to sound like rustling jewels when heard twinkling distantly in the forest.)

what continually reveals itself to me, in all its various forms, is my passion for gaining knowledge about Nature and her wonders. what better way to spend time but laying beneath a canopy of trees, perhaps on a bed of rocks beside rushing water, identifying the trees based on their differing bark textures, leaf shapes, and branch tendencies? every plant has a name. when i was in australia visiting what once were sacred forests of the peoples who lived there before any settlers arrived it was clear to me that each plant, each living being had a name and a personality - and whether its function be medicinal, decorative, or even toxic, the people of that region knew intimately the land on which they lived and those beings with which they shared that land. it makes perfect sense to me that i do the same here, where i live, though the parameters within which i live are so drastically different to be almost as in another world...

and still, the trees continue to tower above our heads and cluster together in forests where we humans have no choice but to succumb and cooperate. i am awed incessantly.

here we have a recurring theme of this blog, to be sure, and it goes something like this:

"holy fuck, the universe is amazing."

real talk.


funnily enough i am also becoming even more entranced with the energy of females which surround my being. the energy of that particular world of characteristics which i both posses but by which i am also not imprisoned lends itself a familiarity to music both frightening and comforting. i find myself drawn to those which may have been my sisters, may have been my neighbors, may also have been distant cousins living on opposite ends of the globe.

shaped by our own cultures and conditioned by our own communities i share with you today a few highly inspiring figures of mysterious life energy who are colored female but, again, are not at all limited by this label.

connie converse - "man in the sky" (how sad, how lovely, 2009)



connie converse, an american singer-songwriter operating out of a brightly-lit yet dark obscurity for the better part of both her life and the time thereafter, sang with an ingenuity rarely heard in any-gendered singers of her time. perhaps it is this raw human sound i hear in her mid-atlantic voice, which is such an atypical sound to be uttering such magnificently-unique lyrics atop such lush and intricate acoustic guitar-harmonies, which draws me to play this re-issue of songs all privately-recorded (for friends) over and over and over again.

sibylle baier - "colour green" (colour green, 2006)



a german singer-songwriter this time; sibylle baier also lived a life of relative obscurity, musically-speaking, as the original songs which comprise colour green were not propelled into the collective consciousness until relatively recently. characterized by a voice and aesthetic steeped in the deeper end of our sensibilities, baier often appeals most to those of us seeking to venture inward in our musical experience.

kaitlyn aurelia smith - "to feel your best" (the kid, 2017)



i have been quite obsessed with this entire album for several months now, but i guess i'm just now getting around to mentioning it here. my apologies.

i saw her this year at moogfest, which amazingly happened right outside of my hometown, and didn't even realize what an honor it was to be in the same room as she! she has collaborated with buchla synthesizer-extraordinaire suzanne ciani but even more importantly is one of the modern generation's leading innovator of the buchla instrument series. trained classically/traditionally as a composer, smith claims to have lost touch with music and was ready to give up completely before being introduced by a neighbor to the highly-sensitive and complex system we now as the buchla 200 series. with this smith's personal and creative voice found a foothold, one stronger and more original than she had ever found before, and it is quite amazing to witness what she has created since discovering these instruments.

the kid is the latest in a series of sound experiments where fully organic sounds emerge among others whose origins are harder to pinpoint in a beautifully-woven tapestry of voice and brilliant life-energy. i really really love getting blissfully lost in the soundscapes of kaitlyn aurelia smith's making, and this song, "to feel your best," sounds rather like the sounds one would hear in an alien forest while either tripping or traveling through life-bearing galaxies in the far-off.

... which reminds me of another album composed/improvised upon by a female artist. i haven't been able to listen to hardly anything else but this either for quite a while now~

suzanne ciani - buchla concerts, 1975


it's fairly obvious that ciani has done more for the exploration of buchla's potential as a musical instrument and a compositional device than almost anyone else alive - and to think that this gem was recorded 30 years ago! i saw her live at moogfest this year as well and can say with confidence that she lives and breathes this instrument with such an impressive ease that the experience is akin to watching an expert dancer flow seamlessly and beautifully in time and space. in thinking about and listening to this record, which contains two separate improvised sets, i'm often struck with a feeling of isolation as though orbiting in space from miles and miles above the earth's surface in some sort of isolation unit. strangely enough, however, this isolation leads not to melancholy but a warm kinship with some deeper and greater force which exists outside of my human mind's comprehension. i feel the universe's cold and unfeeling embrace (as paradoxical as it may sound) for the very harmonies we hear ciani play with, which are indeed familiar to us mortals as we have been conditioned to enjoy harmonious music for countless centuries, are produced using technologies and systems almost too fantastical to be considered mere "instruments" - if mathematics, as a whole, were to sing, would ciani be considered to be in intimate contact with this ancient and timeless machine?

you be the judge. :D

fatou deidi ghali (les filles de illighadad) - "telilit" (les filles de illighadad, 2016)



bringing this circle of utterly-unique female sound-energy around to rural niger, fatou deidi ghali of the increasingly-popular female rock group les filles de illighadad gives us a private acoustic performance of what it might sound like for a musically-inclined nigerian villager such as herself to pick up an acoustic guitar and play a unique blend of blues and folksong that strikes me of delta blues and indian raga, and much more. wherever the exact roots of such a music lie (it may be impossible to say), i am forever taken by this woman's rawness, as well as the organically-interwoven melody of her synchronous voice and guitar playing. 



the soul lives on!

7.6.18

along, to find

i see red hair and fiery green eyes. they sparkle in the sunlight, her home; a place of infinite possibility.

the windows always let in that shape, that particular shape of hope, those rays of beauty-not-far-off.

outside and inside her head it makes no difference, there are wonders to be had.

/

unwound once said that the drawback to living was finding yourself. i used to find myself agreeing, with a sunken head. now, i wish to view the finding of oneself in a slightly different light. one of waging a constant battle against nothingness, and even from within the vast nothingness becoming exhilarated, almost drunk, with hope for

better things,

even lost things,

but always better,
warmer,
somehow.

the mind has an interesting way of casting all different colors of light down on every situation, every little thought which flits minnow-like from infinity to infinity within the skull.

there is an imprecision to life that we humans often neglect.

in our experience, and in that which we experience, perfection is rarely associated with life.


i played piano earlier. it felt like in the playing of the keys i was interacting with lush jungle vines and leaves, and also stars and constellatory entities. my fingers wouldn't stop dancing, stretching, working and singing.


15.5.18

in lush
green and
blue rolling hills

a giantess lays her
head of soft
red

.bosom ablaze and
burning for
o n e

.a golden orb
,fiery pink at night

,lowers into the terrestrial pool

.a dog barks and
my knee itches




.greatly, a shimmering
expanse

widens below
these rare plants

-above
,a clearing develops

;the onlooker
remains un
-aware

. . .


somewhere among these hills
will
i
find

10.4.18

untitled

walking on the path i look down at my feet. i look also ahead, at the trees. above, at the clouds. to my right, the rushing river.

(there are many rocks on which i tread... not the same rocks i am used to, and not even rocks with a history that i may be able to imagine. but rocks nonetheless. i study them, in between glances, for the special one which i will take home with me.

you can't take them all home; i tried that once, helplessly, in a place which throbbed of mystery and wonder, but i now treasure some of these as relics from a place which continues to exist.)

but the path, let us return to the path. is the rock, the individual rock among thousands, nearly as interesting as the path itself? the path, a collection of shared directions, an accidental display of time-worn tracks, forged by untold numbers of travelers, human and beyond - the miracle is in this unintentional preservation, and in this image as in countless others i see my life.

if you and many other souls are traveling together; or if yours and many other bodies were inhabited by the same soul;

the path remains ever-yet-wandered-upon,

and i want to live the creed of finding that beautiful.

laida lertxundi - vivir para vivir, 2015, 16mm

hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without the words,
and never stops at all.

and sweetest in the gale is heard;
and sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird
that kept so many warm.

i've heard it in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet, never, in extremity,
it asked a thing of me.


jean de pomereu - sans noms
i will learn from myself, be my own pupil. 
i will learn from myself the secret of (your name here).

7.4.18

an icy fog

in the cold capsule of your home you wait in patience. the air is warm, and it is dark. a household appliance hums somewhere, singing only to itself. is anyone operating it, aware of its "on" condition? there is no one else here. in all of these gigantic high rises, with so many thousands of others living, you never sense another soul. you never hear their arguments, you never feel their footsteps or smell their bodies. but they are there. they must be. why else was such a building constructed?

so many questions, so many of the same questions you have had daily since before you can remember. there are never answers, and so you've begun to formulate your own. sometimes they make sense, but others sound as ridiculous as what the questions suggest. one option is that it's always been this way. this is the way life is supposed to be and you are merely a bystander of this section of history and its unfolding.

but that explanation does so little to soothe the aching and wounded bird in your chest. you are not a robot; you feel with a heart as real as that inside any other being. yearning for release, escape. what other option is there? it's possible that...

that you may change the course of this so-called history. that you may create history for yourself. that all is, in fact, within your power to change and affect. how can this be so?

to destroy the nothingness you must stop feeling so at home in it. to destroy pain it must be shielded against. why is pain where you want to hide? the embrace of aloneness, and solitude? the place you are the most unhappy?

you don't understand.


on the precipice of change, at the crossroads between sense and insanity. that is where i find myself.

daily.

to take the first step... what does it entail? to reach outside of myself into the void and hope there is something i can grab onto. there is no genuine assurance of anything existing out there at all.

i don't quite know how i became this way but at least there is still hope inside me that i am wrong.

.

this morning i found myself at the top of a mountain meadow amidst swirling and winds which grew ever colder. the birds were plentiful, as were their cries - always anew, i experience the fullness of these creatures and their explicit presence in my world, their world, our world...

.

i think of the snow watching me, watching us. i think of the infinity imagining us, of us imagining It. i think of the outside and the all, all at once, and maybe this is what helps me remain (sane?). i am nothing without that which created and holds me. it plays with me. i play in it. i am all and nothing all the time.

circular writing and circular existence, i find myself in this circle all over again and can imagine no greater home.

this body is practically transparent. the self is transparent and illusory. what we are are mirrors unto each other, unto nature, unto experience.


as much as i read, listen, and respect all manner of artists and thinkers i still must rely solely upon myself and my experiences first for the revealing of

truth

12.3.18

the pear and the fig

dreams of faces and names.

dark hair and pale skin. you were always out of reach, always one step beyond my own, but we both know it is i who has been elusive.

like a master painter, my dreams elicit colors from memory fragments and swirl them together. the unconscious mind is a blank canvas for all manner of masterpieces both beautiful and frightful. fear becomes a color; entire scenes once experienced but now only barely remembered become mere details of larger scenes that have never actually happened.

not while awake, anyway.


hiroshi yoshida - ten views of fuji: yoshida village


once again i find myself in a place of relative upheaval...

loss and regrowth, all over again.


kōshirō onchi - 湯上り(after the bath)


the biggest conclusion i have made from this is that i have been searching for the wrong result.

there isn't going to be a day when i wake up and magically have found my personal reason for being alive - at least not in the sense that i had been imagining. i was thinking that some career choice, or some other person, or any external factor was going to prove itself to be my knight in shining armor - the ultimate reason for my existence and therefore my reason to get up every day.

how i could be so naive i am not sure. but this is simply not the way.

the external will fail. it will crumble and fall apart. you cannot have as the cornerstone of your life - your life - something unpredictable, something outside of yourself.

my conclusion is that there is no grand overarching reason. there is no treasure of meaning that i have, out of incompetency, failed to find. the reason for being alive is that you are alive, and that is the reason. the meaning is in the act of existence itself. there is no real external pressure to be anything in particular, but there is an internal struggle to accept the simple complexity and complex simplicity and even simple simplicty of the concept - being unconditionally.

to will one's self to be despite external circumstances. to thrive and accept and flow and love.  

to be okay.

that is my reason.

6.3.18

always farewell

last night i had one of those dreams where i didn't want to wake up - i remember the complete absence of memory i had about reality (the real one), and for all intents and purposes the dream was all i had known or will ever know. to be woken up from such an experience is surely tragic. a loss occurred, and in its wake i find myself desperately grasping at threads with which i may weave myself back into the dream. here is my attempt at the reconstruction of that universe.

i will be back someday. perhaps even in wakefulness.

the sea lover (1897) - pompeo mariani

there were many people that i knew. people whose interests echoed mine, people who weren't so distant after all. i felt a kinship with them, a bond i do not usually feel. ideas were being taught, shared, and passed around. the atmosphere was one of joviality, like at a party, but it was the imparting of knowledge and the making of music that was keeping our spirits alive; not substances or drink.

feeling unusually content, i remember the paradise as one i wanted to never dissipate. however, before the dream ended, i was led on another journey, as though passing from one room to another in a house larger than can be known.

led onto a boat by someone else i knew, someone i trusted. they were concerned for me and for the knowledge i was receiving from the groups. they had fashioned for their personal use a boat out of wood that was dark and aged, yet strong - it also served as a house and, strangely enough, a makeshift library. small books, worn and faded yet once brightly-colored, lined the shelves located at the very center of what could also have been just a raft with a tiny roof. the books were primarily of western and european origin, but their contents dated back to ancient times. i remember scanning the titles, hoping to find an author with a name i could not pronounce or did not recognize. the one who had led me to their boat had begun to set sail, and along with them i was drifting away from that land of familiarity, a place i thought i would be able to grow and learn and thrive as an individual.

still, in my heart, i felt a thrill at being swept away by the promise of true knowledge, knowledge pre-selected for me...

it was soon after this that i woke up and, though i felt resentment at not being allowed to see where the boat would end up, i began to wonder what motivations were driving the one who led me away. what did they not want me to find out? what sorts of exclusive ideas did they want to fill my head? probably the exact ones which had led them in their particular journey to end up as they did - making rafts and sailing, independently, on waters in between foreign lands.

/

i realize that i cannot travel along the same path as another. i could spend enormous amounts of energy imitating the life of another by reading all of the same books or adopting the same beliefs but, alas, i may never be but me. i may never attain the spirit which resides inside another and only them, which instead of books is what actually extends from a person's life onto their surroundings, and this is how it absolutely must be and is. how could i have wanted anything different? how could i have believed that i would be happy being anything but myself?

like björk says, 

how could i be so immature?
to think he could replace
the missing elements in me,
how extremely lazy of me


lately i have been craving soft sounds, and the circular guitar found on this aerial m record, aerial m (1997), perfectly suits these desires.

this is the solo project of guitarist david pajo, famously from slint...




the dance

"the sun seemingly falls only to rise again. music, the laughter of children, intellectual conversation, is but the rising and falling of sound waves we interpret as vibration. ocean waves rise only to fall, withdraw, and rise again.

we fall, to the absolute bottom, only to pick ourselves back up.

it is the ebb and flow of life in its pure form.

but this motion is joined by one thing. my fingers are attached to hands attached to arms attached to my body which is governed by my brain, in the center. my fingers mirror each other on opposite sides of the body, but they are connected by a single source.

it is that which joins the polarity of rising and falling that gives us meaning. we give it names like God or consciousness or particles or life. vague words whose definition we debate, but are only arrows that point towards something that can never be articulated by language and mathematics.

rising and falling is the dance of something unlimited, microcosmic and macrocosmic, that we struggle to comprehend.

we dance while we search. without realizing we are searching, without realizing we are dancing. without realizing we are that which we are searching for."

27.2.18

perverted by language

i have not been able to take this album off of repeat for over two weeks.

why?

why can i not resist the rhythmic ostinati, those somber, morose melodies, the plodding bass, the sensual waltzes, the sheer absurdity? the simplicity, the transcendental simplicity of it all?

you tell me.

the fall - perverted by language (1983)


"hexen definitive/strife knot" (peel session #6)


"wings"


i actually hear a lot of coil and current 93 and sol invictus in this, some gang of four too. these influences are especially noticeable in the vocals of mark e. smith (r.i.p.) - i wonder if it's a purely british thing? the rambling madman style of speech-singing, the sheer brilliant lunacy of it all.

there's a rhythmic wonder to his vocals too - occasionally the guitar, bass, and drums will be tightly interlocked around an axis, and mark e. smith will intersperse his spoken word with such a rhythm that it acts as sparkling to the texture of the music as an extra high-hat or .... i don't quite know. 

basically, the rhythm of mark e. smith's vocals are so integral to the texture of the music that he is an instrument just as much as the guitar, bass, or drums.

of how many bands can this be said?

14.2.18

désordre | calme

my practice, as it takes more and more concrete shape, is of tracing regularity out of apparent irregularity.

i am always drawn to the irregular - in rhythm, in harmony, in pattern, in structure - for, somehow, in this, i find what makes the most sense. more unusual than a limping aksak rhythm, to me, is squareness - the predictability of a box made to please simple logic. i suppose i am arguing that sense and wholeness can be made out of structures erected which follow their own laws and make sense according to their own rules (or lack thereof). these constructions tend to be more complexly-designed or contain parts more tighly-interwoven, certainly, but are also organically whole in that chaotic way we often observe in Nature and her patterns. *

without proper research to back up my claims, i'm afraid i have naught but my own aesthetic sensibilities upon which to draw, but it is in this luminous light which i trust. i strive to articulate as clearly and communicably as possible what i believe to be true.

anatjari tjakamarra - big pintupi dreaming ceremony, 1972

undoubtedly i am led straight into that haven of composers and artists who look to the jungle, as morton feldman put it, where time (and i suppose also raw and abstract "reality") exists uninhibited. these few look to a totality for inspiration, one that encompasses every aspect of observable and unobservable life - in the stories of the mountain folk, the rushing streams, the stillness of vast desert, and even in the unpretentious workings of the machine (that infinitely-extending projection of man's imagination and desire).

to find inspiration in the Everything and to condense into a single vision or instance these disparate patterns, rhythms, and workings is, quite literally, what i am all about.

.

and so we have ligeti.

a seemingly natural successor to bartók, at least in some of his early works, györgy ligeti was a hungarian composer of much distinction. i focus mostly on his piano études, of which there are 18 - all composed during the last two decades of his life.

1923 - 2006

to listen to the entire cycle of all three books is a nigh-unparalleled experience of varying moods, textures, modalities, and dances. each presents a new universe of sound in which specific laws govern the behaviors of the necessary musical elements - the piano-as-object, the keys, the soundwaves, and the performers' fingers, hands, arms, and heart.

this collection includes pieces both purely mechanical (thus fulfilling one of the basest requirements of the étude as musical genre) and those which encompass broader, more picturesque forms. some of my favorite individual études, both in concept, sound, and from a pianist's perspective, are:

no. 2, cordes à vide (2:02) - this piece has been likened to satie, but i see this particular étude as being more similar to the eleventh étude of debussy, pour les arpeges composés. open chords built on fifths, and dedicated to composer pierre boulez - i find the open texture and the chosen intervals both mesmerizing and intriguing. it's like listening to an imaginary orchestra tune for eternity...

no. 5, arc-en-ciel (10:29) - rainbow. i have always found this one to be simply beautiful. the harmonic tension blossoms early, nonviolently, as dissonances in high registers give way to an intense desire for resolution. it is aching to hear this unraveling search at such a measured speed. this rainbow signifyies apparent peace, but is not without its own darkness.

no. 6, automne à varsovie (13:54) - autumn in warsaw. i actually really applaud the work of some theorists who have ventured as far as to analyze, in-depth, the harmonic tapestry of ligeti's dense work. in this particular piece, the lamento motif (the chromatic descending line you hear so frequently in such varying forms) is not hard to spot, but is often associated with sadness and a crying out. chromaticism is used heavily and without apology in the finale.

no. 8, fém (20:19) - metal. what's interesting about this is the performance notes, where ligeti indicates that the pianist should play the piano "metallically" and with a "springy" tone. how can music played on a large-scale percussion instrument of hammers, strings and wood be made to sound like metal? by hitting the keys ... hard! this is another reason why i love ligeti's music: that he thought outside of the usual limitations of the instrument. here he has created a piece for the piano which conceptually is to sound like pure metal. how much more metal can you get?

no. 10, der zauberlehrling (25:12) - butterfly. dedicated to the pianist pierre-laurent aimard, who actually studied with messiaen (!), this immensely difficult piece is the audial version of a butterfly flying and flapping its wings in mid-air. again, you ask how ligeti can summon nature like this and for us to receive a believable simulacra of the real thing, but... he did it! with all the caprice and irregularity of a real butterfly, the asymmetrical rhythms recall the air disturbed by the wings themselves. the great shimmering climax begins at 26:21 when a waterfall of descending pentascales evolves into extensive descending chromatic lines (ligeti seemed to love these, didn't he?) until a beautiful outburst of sheer pentatonicism cuts into your soul - only to be overtaken once again by the delicate butterfly's flutter.

i am currently reading a biography of sorts on ligeti by richard steinitz entitled music of the imagination which is so far highly enlightening on the life of the man - a struggling composer out of will, but not necessarily out of practiced talent, who suffered a great deal of loss and failure in his life.



i find the scores to his études highly beautiful to look at as well:


the opening of désordre (1985) in ligeti's autograph

the opening of entrelacs (1988) in ligeti's autograph

.

and so we have, also, messiaen.


1908 - 1992

a self-proclaimed ornithologist and rhythmician, rather than mere composer, olivier messiaen was devoted entirely to nature, light, and what he would call divine love.

defined however you please, this love led the man in everything he did - from wandering into forests and for years collecting and transcribing the songs of birds, those merrymakers both familiar and alien to us (who seem to know something about which we can only guess), to being captured and imprisoned in a german POW camp during the second world war where one of the most beautiful and revolutionary chamber works of the last century (quator por la fin du temps) was composed.

yes, these and more make the man quite a character to which i am irresistably drawn. being a pianist, it is his solo piano works which currently find me with eyes closed; transfixed and, often, transported.

his piano préludes, composed between 1928 and 1929, are pieces of unprecedented uniquity. indicated in the score for each, of which there are eight, messaien has specified precise colors to be associated with the sound of the piece. being one with synesthesia, he heard and saw color (his favorite being violet) - a unique sensory ability which left an indelible mark on both his compositional process and his wholly unique tonal language (the closest innovator to which messiaen might be able to be compared is debussy; but, ultimately, they are separate).





the first, a short piece entitled la colombe (the dove) is my favorite. it is so delicate, almost unimaginably so, and speaks a language sounding of resonances, rising and falling into silence and flutter. the last few notes utilize an incredible technique of affecting natural harmonics. the piece is written on three staves, too, as if conceived as a broad arrangement of birdlike instruments beyond the piano alone.

my second favorite of the set is the sixth, cloches d'angoisses et larmes d'adieu (bells of anguish and tears of farewell) (19:08). it is common for composers to place bells and the likeness of their specific tones in pieces (ravel and his miroirs come to mind).

each prélude is remarkable in its own way; one has only to study and listen to find beauty and trace it inward.

/

i have been told that these sound purely chaotic, and i suppose i understand that, but there are indeed distinct melodies woven into the density, and these melodies do have identities which characterize them even when buried among chromaticism. remember: color, birds, and spirituality were some of the lifelong loves and inspirations driving this composer - it is impossible to separate these aspects of his waking life from the music of his soul - music that sounds as if it is of the universe's soul as well.

tim leura tjapaltjarri - travelling honey ant dreaming, 1972

* messiaen's own views on rhythm echo my assertions, it appears, and this is welcome news (i am really not the only crazy one here, eh?).

in an interview, messiaen says:

"schematically, rhythmic music is music that scorns repetition, squareness, and equal divisions, and that is inspired by the movements of nature, movements of free and unequal durations."

though these are strong and controversial views, i cannot disagree that music which lulls one into a state of predictability is most likely not "rhythmic" - not as defined by messiaen, in which all of rhythm's various shapes must be exhausted. i am not sure, however, if music which is rhythmically predictable is inherently less natural than music of a sporadic rhythmic nature. do we not also observe in nature, too, a rendering of order out of disorder? though not at precisely identical speeds, rain drops fall at a generally similar speed and rhythm - i find nature to be more approximate than precise, but less chaotic than messaien suggests.

natural asymmetry! it happens all the time - patterns which, out of pure biological error, are not perfect, but... are generally similar.

weirdly, though, natural systems still work brilliantly. now i'm definitely getting ahead of myself.

 'till next time...

20.1.18

through the looking glass

can you recall a particularly memorable listening experience? what was the setting, what was the music? were you lying down, or with friends in a crowd?

in my life a few moments come to mind.

a field recording of found sounds listened to with the windows open on a warm afternoon. early spring. sounds of city, insects, wind melding together. curtains blowing and, inside me, a pervasive half-waking state. gray and bright and warm

.

or, as twilight darkened and the din of nightlife grew more lush, an open screen door revealing a rickety wooden porch is accompanied by the following album. a mystical moment of two worlds meeting.

midori takada - through the looking glass
1983



v click below to listen v



an overflowing tapestry of sounds vaguely reminiscent of traditional folk music, or modernism, or minimalism, or the experimental.

6.1.18

disparate . trajectory . intersect

in my recent sound explorations (an utter whirlwind of a process usually involving hours of hunting which results in a state of breathless, excited, overwhelmed invigoration) i have come across several artists from indonesia, morocco, and niger which have earned a well-deserved spot on this blog.

[ also worth mentioning are some of the blogs and labels which have been indispensable to me in the finding of such incredible musics: the hum, stray landings and sahel sounds. all are filled with the musings and products of passionate and interesting music-lovers  ~ ~ moving on. ]

while searching i am rarely struck and brought to my knees, metaphorically, by a sound. with each of the following releases, however, i could do nothing else but just that.

ي


tarawangsawelas - wanci
morphine records (2017)




this was released on morphine records, an interesting label which releases/d pauline oliveros as well as rare indonesian gamelan musics, just at the end of last year. i was struck particularly by sounds i had never before heard. this genre, tarawangsa, is played with just two instruments: "the tarawangsa, a two-stringed fiddle played upright like a rebab or small cello, and the jentreng, a seven-stringed zither" (aa).

"tarawangsawelas is a musical duo from bandung, performing mainly a modern and contemporary version of tarawangsa, the sacred music from sundanese west java ... wanci is a minimalist, cosmic album composed with a careful contemporary interpretation of one of the most mystical and spiritual genres in indonesia" (bc). the compositions "unfold as a captivating ten-to-twenty minute crescendo, beginning slow and melodic, the simple plucked strings of the jentreng providing a rhythmic and harmonic base for the soaring melodies, built on the typical sundanese pentatonic scales of pelog, salendro, and madenda" (aa).

the music is intentionally trance-inducing, and is traditionally the accompaniment to an elaborate ritual, or ceremony, focusing on agriculture and fertility. knowing me, i was drawn first and foremost to the repetitive nature, which is nearly always indicative of the ultimate transcendental state. it was interesting to find that this tradition isn't related to any specific god or deity. i think i listened to the album on repeat several times, unintentionally, because i didn't want the state of mind and spirit it gave me to end. with the absence of a voice or explicitly human element (i know there are humans behind the instruments, but still) the singing line of the tarawangsa takes on a character of otherworldly knowing, eliciting sounds which exist in no mouth but are of the universe's soul. this album is especially well-produced, too, as exemplified by the gentle reverberations and echoes that can sometimes be heard.

ي

i have tears welling in my eyes pressing play and even explaining the sheer and immense spiritual power of this next collection of incredible recordings, for which we are most certainly blessed to have, and which contain in them the aural remnants of many generations' worth of history and tradition and, not being a speaker of the language, i know not what else. as a human, though, i recognize and am fucking enraptured by that mystical element of music which needs no translation.

needless to say i've had more than one incredible listening and existing experience due to this album.


maalem mahmoud gania - colours of the night
hive mind (2017)




this is the debut release of hive mind records, a promising uk-based label of "international sound."

maalem mahmoud gania was a successful and popular moroccan musician and prominent member of the gnawa people. this ethnic group, which inhabit parts of morocco and algeria, has a rich musical tradition - one heavily steeped in both sufi islam and pre-islamic/shamanistic origin. these traditional gnawan songs are used to evoke spirits and ancestors in ceremonies of healing and spiritual renewal, rituals which are made trance-like and hypnotic by this deeply rhythmic and repetitive music. the sounds of gnawa music are made with the sintir, a wooden goat-gut-stringed guitar-like instrument that issues low tones. these plucked rhythms are accompanied by incessantly clapping hand-cymbals (krakeb) and often echo the sung melodies which are presented in a call-and-response style.

deep and dark and low and joyful, this album is like a belly full of warm honey and hearty laughter. it is healing music, after all.

ي




les filles de illighadad - les filles de illighadad
sahel sounds (2016, recorded in '14)



there is nothing quite like these girls - fatou seidi ghali (guitar and vocals) and alamnou akrouni (vocals), both from rural niger. the first half of this album is purely acoustic; gentle and free of excess noise, recorded outside under a tree. the girls' voices sing out of the guitar, along with it, and there is an undeniable organic quality to the way these melodies weave an whirl around each other and the from the strings. the second half of the album includes sounds of villagers brought toward the sounds of the tende, a type of drum, which one girl plays as the others join in polyphonic harmonies and clapping. it is said that the solo guitar music is inspired by the communal tende musics.

fatou, the guitarist, is self-taught and one of only a small few female guitarists in the region of what is usually a male-dominated musical scene.

here is a great video of what les filles de illighadad (in this incarnation - several more members have since been added) look like performing live:


though i do not understand what they are saying, it touches me in that abstract way music does. i hear recognizable sounds and scales and shapes, but somehow just knowing that these compositions were brought about purely by feeling (as though in the dark) rather than some sort of formal education means and says a lot.
music of the soul, not of a book. expression of the prime impulse.
it's what we're all looking for, isn't it?

ي
 
to sense the energy which moves silently in between

4.1.18

sky - fuck / shapeshift

love on the mind, love on the brain.

if i, only i, could understand and maintain
this foolish predilection for a devilheart's strains,

then all of humanity's knowing wouldn't
seem
so
plain.

i love all you are, all you've been.
all you will be too,
fiend
or
friend.

you once said you know not how to trust,
for on a face two functions cause shifts, thus -
subconscious emotion and conscious possession(
an inner hell wrestling with an outer love);
disconnect the connection, and with such obsession,
we read and deign to understand and believe
the book of all that's unknowable.

with all our might we believe what we will -
that which causes our hearts outwardly not to spill.

do you realize the heart with which you're bequeathed?
the joyous pain with which time is set  free?

("and have i?", i wonder, when hearts entrusted to me
are snatched by a Fate so cruel as to be
the routine of a dysfunctional, pained ennui.)

all love is dysfunctional until willed to be true. to be real.

to be the One.




the One is always what it is, always both outside of our experience and inside of / behind every neuron's firing.

the One cannot ever be escaped, for we all are the constituents of its essence -
as the membrane of its outer layer, living also in the deepest recesses of its interior.

the One shows no sign of existence until we question our own outer layers;
until we unify ourselves and see that great cosmos yet padding OUR earth.




so, the point:

unity.

separating the wheat from the chaff (to use a pianist/musician's term) -
discovering our individual voice, hidden amidst blustery fields and in waves of oceanic rage;
discovering our own voices among the monotonous sea of faces in which we are born. 

it is only i who determine my ultimate identity. it is only i who assert this Self, this expression of my existence - it will not, must not be done by another. not in this lifetime. not unless i sign my being away to the will of another.

.

to will Love is to will Truth, to will Reality, to Be Fully and not look back. until it becomes subconscious, i will not stop - that is the essence of learning, and of teaching.

teach that which would become a subconscious function; it is the only way to build upon the layers of knowledge gained prior.



i want to start my own label. electro-acoustic music. compose Rachel's-like works for viola, cello, and piano. i want to memorize about an hour's worth of piano music and play around town, for free, just because i think i am great. i want to read poetry out loud. i want to sing in my own language. i want to play percussion and play steve reich's mallet quartet. i want to take lessons with lamonte young and marian zazeela. i want to go to norberg festival in sweden this summer. i want to compose drone music and perform long, meditative sets. i want to be able to teach my art, for money, to those willing to learn. i want to write more about music and write more in general - the idea of pretention left behind.

there, i said it -

I WANT TO BE MORE THAN I AM.

 
 
^ what a constellation sounds like ^