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."

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?

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...