art
from the back of my head
in my secret life: this is not my music, I went to bed and saw it posted on its own when I woke up. Even all the words. It’s not me, is it? well, it’s one more good reason to not have an i.d.
secret egg eon
No blind spots in the leopard’s eyes Can only help to jeopardize The lives of lambs, the shepherd cries An afterlife for a silverfish Eternal dust less ticklish Than the clean room, a houseguest’s wish He lies on his side, is he trying to hide? In fact it’s the earth, which he’s known since birth Face worker, a serpentine miner A roof falls, an underliner Of leaf structure, the egg timer
clear summer
listen to the summer we recommend listening with headphones and a cold beer The summer is making me happy and in the winter I’m counting sound to make me feel better so… the sound of summer… That’s yummy.
listen to this\/\/a performance exercise
Performance art is bad when artifice takes precedence over the performance. At best it’s kitchy and at worsts it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Artifice: a manufactured thing. Performance implies a body, moving and engaged. The thing made should not come before the body, the thing making. The general (the body) should always come before the descriptive. Otherwise the audience is left bored or confused. Previously I talked about the importance of sight and perception in creating/experiencing performance. As someone who sings like an amputee, I often run the risk of forgetting my voice and relying on other media to express what I want the audience to experience. I remedy this by recording sounds with my pen. It usually looks something like this: (tilt head at a 45 degree angle and shake slightly and sporadically) ker-ush-sehkrgsh kerkirkersh That was the sound that my feet make as they climb up a rocky path. That’s my sound of summer. Now, if we listen at any given moment of our day, we will find an endless number of sounds, all of which can be recreated more or less accurately using only our body. However, this requires a great deal of commitment and concentration.
in the background
Every night at the restaurant where I work I dread the same moment. It occurs when the dinner crowd arrives and the ambient music switches from mellow indie rock to Brazilian music. I desperately hope that tonight, this one night, the manager will forget to make the change. I could even deal with Iron and Wine–SPEAK UP, sir. Anything worth singing is worth singing louder than that–over the Brazilian tripe. Not that it’s especially bad music. It’s just so dreadfully innocuous. And it is for this reason that management has decided it is the perfect “background music.” Where did this concept come from, that some songs are worthy of our utmost attention and others simply serve to fill in the silences while we chew? I ask this from the perspective of a busser, a member of the background myself, expected to smile but not to talk. What do we ask for in our backgrounds? And I refer here not only to music, but to art, décor, etc. (I have some experience in this area from my one-day stint selling hotel art door-to-door). Obviously, the quality of a background is not strained, there are no wild guitar solos or daring splashes
summer sounds in winter grass
December 12th, 2005 I found Thomas Tallis in the dried winter grass today, a 40-voice motet devoid of chlorophyll, building a glass cathedral of its own. I have never put my hope in any other but in you, O God of Israel, who can show both anger and graciousness, and who absolves all the sins of suffering man. Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, be mindful of our lowliness.
