Thursday, May 27, 2010
Guitar, Part II
Redhead and I recently took a little driving vacation to the city of my undergrad alma mater, a little beach town. Though proficient in early music, and a singer in particular, until this trip my girl did not really play any small stringed instruments (though in the interest of full disclosure she did play upright bass in high school). But on the trip she decided to branch out and we got a little $50 classic guitar, beaten but authentic and beautiful, and with a few quick lessons she was playing and singling along to some of her favorite songs. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to share an instrument with your partner.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Guitar
I am in love with my 12-string acoustic guitar. Black and audacious, it’s traveled to the other side of the world with me. I got it from my parents for my 19th birthday and I’ve never heard any sound come out of it that wasn’t utterly gorgeous. But though I feel close to the guitar and I’ve never had anything against naming an owned thing per se, still for a long time the idea just never made much sense for my own little family of instruments.
Hexa (a.k.a. Mary Greitzer) gifted me a much beloved copy of Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” a few months before I moved to Thailand in 2007 to write my dissertation. An amazing and prescient book, it just struck me the way the right books at the right times can. Then I left the country for a year with a few bags and a guitar, to hide out and write an opera and then to travel. Though I’d trekked a fair bit elsewhere, I had not been to Asia before I arrived in Bangkok that first night with everything I’d have for the next year, when she named herself. Finally in my hotel room I ordered a large plate of pad thai, smoked a cigar, opened the Red Label left in the room (the kind for which one pays too much at checkout), and then carved “Rocinante” into my guitar’s hard, scraped, sticker-free plastic case before passing out around 4:00am.
Hexa (a.k.a. Mary Greitzer) gifted me a much beloved copy of Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” a few months before I moved to Thailand in 2007 to write my dissertation. An amazing and prescient book, it just struck me the way the right books at the right times can. Then I left the country for a year with a few bags and a guitar, to hide out and write an opera and then to travel. Though I’d trekked a fair bit elsewhere, I had not been to Asia before I arrived in Bangkok that first night with everything I’d have for the next year, when she named herself. Finally in my hotel room I ordered a large plate of pad thai, smoked a cigar, opened the Red Label left in the room (the kind for which one pays too much at checkout), and then carved “Rocinante” into my guitar’s hard, scraped, sticker-free plastic case before passing out around 4:00am.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Elegance at the Zoo
- The manner in which monkeys (in this case, white handed gibbons) move through space is elegant and amazing, and I think one particularly potent ingredient of this for me is how smooth and natural, how instinctual it all seems to be - how they manipulate space so casually. In some sense I think it's the awareness of the general depth of complexity of a thing that is made to look so utterly facile that really gets me (the "Crouching Tiger" Effect).
- I tend to find your average aquatic mammal more elegant than your average cold blooded swimming thing. I wonder whether this is 1) related to the previous point (in that it seems to me for some reason that it must be more difficult for mammals underwater and therefore I subconsciously root for them as the underdog as it were, even if the premise for my rooting isn't actually true), or 2) whether I just connect better with mammals. It's all likely nothing more than a matter of aesthetics - the trifles of fur, whiskers, and so forth - but whatever the case may be, otters are pretty cool.
- Giraffes and flamingos are both creatures that strike me as if they should be in some way awkward, but whose utter lithe elegance within this expectation makes them all the more lovely.
- I tend to find your average aquatic mammal more elegant than your average cold blooded swimming thing. I wonder whether this is 1) related to the previous point (in that it seems to me for some reason that it must be more difficult for mammals underwater and therefore I subconsciously root for them as the underdog as it were, even if the premise for my rooting isn't actually true), or 2) whether I just connect better with mammals. It's all likely nothing more than a matter of aesthetics - the trifles of fur, whiskers, and so forth - but whatever the case may be, otters are pretty cool.
- Giraffes and flamingos are both creatures that strike me as if they should be in some way awkward, but whose utter lithe elegance within this expectation makes them all the more lovely.
Idea and Action
It seems that one without the other is ultimately either briefly distracting or pointlessly frustrating, respectively, and that neither consequence is worth our time.
Seen from another side, what breathtaking human r/evolution ever resulted from something other than the two in concert?
Seen from another side, what breathtaking human r/evolution ever resulted from something other than the two in concert?
The Musical Will
Not only can a musical character, personality, anima, entity move and evolve of its own accord, it can proliferate into other works as well. The Musical Work and its constitutive elements can themselves in the most ideal circumstances possess, or tap into, wills of their own: the Musical Will, the force passing through the pitches and instruments and rhythms and the breathing. The soul underneath and at the center of the honest, hard music. The teleological undercurrent that grabs my foot on the beach, endeavoring to drag me back into the sea.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Basquiat, part I
Sometime in the middle of grad school I was on a weekend trip to NYC and had the opportunity to see a large Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. I’d already been a fan since sometime in the middle of high school—when my buddy Jason had introduced me to Warhol and the whole scene history—as from the beginning there had always been something special about Basquiat’s work that struck me, something that just seemed right.
I personally believe that the way to develop over time as an artist-composer—as opposed to a principally commercial-composer, which, though they do intersect and overlap, are different animals—is basically to look for and refine oneself, within ones work. Fundamentally, there are two constitutive pieces, or threads, to this: 1) the Idea(s), and 2) the Craft.
For some reason, at some time, we—meaning those of us who now call ourselves composers—fell in love with music, and then writing music; and this part, at least for me, was all about passion and ideas and excitement (and is in fact the same reason that I keep composing). We then take this childlike enthusiasm and this fresh pool of ideas, and we work to develop Craft, or the ability to ideally and accurately realize the Idea. We have the Idea—the creativity, the wide-eyed vision of the future yet-to-be—and the Craft—the skill set to make malleable any tool, to create any sound one imagines. The latter, generally, is what an academic institution will typically and predominately focus on helping with, and I’m not necessarily proposing any specific argument with any of that. However, what can unfortunately happen in higher music education is for Craft to somehow seem to become substitute for Idea, or to camouflage itself as Idea, or to lure us into believing that with enough Craft, Idea is just not all that important. The goal however is ideally to continually develop both creativity and engineering.
I’ve mentioned this before and am sure I will do so again and again, but I don’t believe Style is something for which one should directly, actively search. Instead, we create an existence—specifically, an artistic existence—in which we are open and able to collect ideas all the time and from everywhere (or from wherever the artist wants), filter them constantly, and over time work with and either discard the materials or make them our own. We find and refine our own tools. We find better ways of connecting our own poetries, re-collecting the internal diaspora, making the disparate as complete as it ever will be—perpetually as we can. We all come from a multitude of somewheres, and really, categories are so often for the lazy. I just look for the items—the metaphors, sounds, and suggestions—that I love and then try to work with them, as any artist does.
The much-later visit to the Brooklyn Museum took place when I was dealing a number of core concerns regarding my own composing. One of the emerging tendencies in my work was the strong, recurring gravitation toward certain core ideas, themes, motifs—a gravitation that seemed disproportionate, and whose influence demanded greater attention and became increasingly difficult to ignore the clearer and more self-confident I became with regard to other aspects of my composing. There were certain ideas—usually very general like a motif or metaphor, but occasionally more specific like a particular rhythmic motive—that kept interjecting, needing to be included again and again in different ways. And concomitantly, the new work would only feel right were the gregarious, seemingly-foreign entity ultimately incorporated.
It was an obsession with a handful of recurring, undercurrent ideas—a strange collection of things, it seemed to me, and strange how the collection allowed itself to be added to, like some secret society. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with or sure how I felt about this general compositional tendency, being in a particularly insecure part of my education at the time; I wondered, even amidst all my desires toward self-determination, whether this was “legitimate” (ah, the things we wonder about in school…)—whether this aspect of how I worked or felt compelled to work was “okay.”
The Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition had 150 paintings of all sizes, full of strong, jutting gestures, “crudeness” and elegance presented as anything but opposites, and endless examples of gorgeous, flagrant obsession: an entire personal iconography. The poet had created and exploited his own hieroglyphics of rough imageries, shapes, words, references, fragments of personal and cultural histories—a fundamental but personal alphabet, pieces of a language for endless combinations and degrees of inclusion and re-contextualization—and the results were there for all to see. For me, personally, it was genius.
Maybe we shouldn’t need to get permission; maybe we artists should just be able to evolve all on our own, to figure out what we need to do and then do it. Whatever the case may be, with this experience the man gave me permission to make obsession a permanent tool and I instead began thinking about how to to more ideally make use of this natural tendency within myself instead of fighting it. This experience had a permanent impact on the way that I think about creating, and I am still utterly taken by his work—what an absolutely unbelievable artist. RIP JMB 08121998.
I personally believe that the way to develop over time as an artist-composer—as opposed to a principally commercial-composer, which, though they do intersect and overlap, are different animals—is basically to look for and refine oneself, within ones work. Fundamentally, there are two constitutive pieces, or threads, to this: 1) the Idea(s), and 2) the Craft.
For some reason, at some time, we—meaning those of us who now call ourselves composers—fell in love with music, and then writing music; and this part, at least for me, was all about passion and ideas and excitement (and is in fact the same reason that I keep composing). We then take this childlike enthusiasm and this fresh pool of ideas, and we work to develop Craft, or the ability to ideally and accurately realize the Idea. We have the Idea—the creativity, the wide-eyed vision of the future yet-to-be—and the Craft—the skill set to make malleable any tool, to create any sound one imagines. The latter, generally, is what an academic institution will typically and predominately focus on helping with, and I’m not necessarily proposing any specific argument with any of that. However, what can unfortunately happen in higher music education is for Craft to somehow seem to become substitute for Idea, or to camouflage itself as Idea, or to lure us into believing that with enough Craft, Idea is just not all that important. The goal however is ideally to continually develop both creativity and engineering.
I’ve mentioned this before and am sure I will do so again and again, but I don’t believe Style is something for which one should directly, actively search. Instead, we create an existence—specifically, an artistic existence—in which we are open and able to collect ideas all the time and from everywhere (or from wherever the artist wants), filter them constantly, and over time work with and either discard the materials or make them our own. We find and refine our own tools. We find better ways of connecting our own poetries, re-collecting the internal diaspora, making the disparate as complete as it ever will be—perpetually as we can. We all come from a multitude of somewheres, and really, categories are so often for the lazy. I just look for the items—the metaphors, sounds, and suggestions—that I love and then try to work with them, as any artist does.
The much-later visit to the Brooklyn Museum took place when I was dealing a number of core concerns regarding my own composing. One of the emerging tendencies in my work was the strong, recurring gravitation toward certain core ideas, themes, motifs—a gravitation that seemed disproportionate, and whose influence demanded greater attention and became increasingly difficult to ignore the clearer and more self-confident I became with regard to other aspects of my composing. There were certain ideas—usually very general like a motif or metaphor, but occasionally more specific like a particular rhythmic motive—that kept interjecting, needing to be included again and again in different ways. And concomitantly, the new work would only feel right were the gregarious, seemingly-foreign entity ultimately incorporated.
It was an obsession with a handful of recurring, undercurrent ideas—a strange collection of things, it seemed to me, and strange how the collection allowed itself to be added to, like some secret society. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with or sure how I felt about this general compositional tendency, being in a particularly insecure part of my education at the time; I wondered, even amidst all my desires toward self-determination, whether this was “legitimate” (ah, the things we wonder about in school…)—whether this aspect of how I worked or felt compelled to work was “okay.”
The Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition had 150 paintings of all sizes, full of strong, jutting gestures, “crudeness” and elegance presented as anything but opposites, and endless examples of gorgeous, flagrant obsession: an entire personal iconography. The poet had created and exploited his own hieroglyphics of rough imageries, shapes, words, references, fragments of personal and cultural histories—a fundamental but personal alphabet, pieces of a language for endless combinations and degrees of inclusion and re-contextualization—and the results were there for all to see. For me, personally, it was genius.
Maybe we shouldn’t need to get permission; maybe we artists should just be able to evolve all on our own, to figure out what we need to do and then do it. Whatever the case may be, with this experience the man gave me permission to make obsession a permanent tool and I instead began thinking about how to to more ideally make use of this natural tendency within myself instead of fighting it. This experience had a permanent impact on the way that I think about creating, and I am still utterly taken by his work—what an absolutely unbelievable artist. RIP JMB 08121998.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Good moment
Raining outside, sitting on the bed, the dog asleep, working, listening to early Tom Waits.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Invasion
It bothers me that a local bookstore, part of a large chain, installed a television at their information booth. The screen runs a repeating advertisement for some series of products. When I politely mentioned to the gentleman in attendance whether they’d considered that some might find it offensive to be confronted with a television in a bookstore, he said no, that I was the first to have mentioned it. I said I understood there were much larger forces at work but wanted to go on record saying that I found it a little intrusive, being a person who deeply enjoys bookstores as one of our last citadels of silence and consideration in an ever cluttered, clamoring, and invasive world.
But so it goes.
But so it goes.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Style and Substance
A thing that concerns me is, in our efforts and enthusiasm to create an improved space for new music in the United States, whether what it is that we're cultivating is in fact a system built around presenting truly great music, or whether it is instead nothing more than merely another style, a style known collectively as "new music."
In actual practice in particular, it often seems that the concert event is designed - whether intentionally or incidentally - to be about "being about new music," and it's first mission is not necessarily focused on great music that happens to be new music.
I tend to believe that focused missions/goal points and clear, simple priorities are necessary for an organization to thrive. I also tend to feel that the continued growth of new music in the US will necessitate us stepping up our game. Focus is a key, especially for the smaller organizations - resources are so tight and there is nothing to waste, and it is so hard to get people in seats even once in the first place. Once s/he's there, we need to do all we can to make absolutely sure that what the audience member then witnesses is something that is both artistically incredible and that will make them curious and anxious about coming back next time. Given the current US new music situation, to my mind one truly spectacular new music event is of more value than a thousand mediocre shows: I believe we need to bet big, with greater focus, for greater returns, instead of handing the new (and potentially lifelong) audience member something inconsistently ranging from bad to decent to occasionally great. We talk so much about the remarkable in our music but the public gets to see so little of this in reality.
I love new music in large part because of its particular ability to be so utterly fantastic, to push and pioneer out into the unknown music of the future, for the options that right now we have yet to have any idea about. And I see the potential of new music for creating this experience to be one of our great kinetic strengths in promoting ourselves to the civilian music world, and in changing the cultural landscape of the US as it relates to new music over the course of this and this next generation.
However, in our vigor to be ecumenical we can lose sight of the most important word necessary to maintain a crucial excellence: No. Excellence of intention, excellence of execution, excellence of curatorship. Not every newly composed work "deserves" to be presented at the same level, and pretending like they do encourages programmers, especially less experienced programmers, to flood an already struggling scene with so much mediocrity. Mediocrity is the albatross around the collective neck of our scene - and ironically so, as contemporary music has traditionally loved to pass itself off as quite elite. And while I tend to feel this attitude of elitism is intensely counterproductive, at the same time I believe that mediocrity will never save us. We need a consistent excellence, but absent an attitude of elitism. It is about the excellent and the fantastic.
In actual practice in particular, it often seems that the concert event is designed - whether intentionally or incidentally - to be about "being about new music," and it's first mission is not necessarily focused on great music that happens to be new music.
I tend to believe that focused missions/goal points and clear, simple priorities are necessary for an organization to thrive. I also tend to feel that the continued growth of new music in the US will necessitate us stepping up our game. Focus is a key, especially for the smaller organizations - resources are so tight and there is nothing to waste, and it is so hard to get people in seats even once in the first place. Once s/he's there, we need to do all we can to make absolutely sure that what the audience member then witnesses is something that is both artistically incredible and that will make them curious and anxious about coming back next time. Given the current US new music situation, to my mind one truly spectacular new music event is of more value than a thousand mediocre shows: I believe we need to bet big, with greater focus, for greater returns, instead of handing the new (and potentially lifelong) audience member something inconsistently ranging from bad to decent to occasionally great. We talk so much about the remarkable in our music but the public gets to see so little of this in reality.
I love new music in large part because of its particular ability to be so utterly fantastic, to push and pioneer out into the unknown music of the future, for the options that right now we have yet to have any idea about. And I see the potential of new music for creating this experience to be one of our great kinetic strengths in promoting ourselves to the civilian music world, and in changing the cultural landscape of the US as it relates to new music over the course of this and this next generation.
However, in our vigor to be ecumenical we can lose sight of the most important word necessary to maintain a crucial excellence: No. Excellence of intention, excellence of execution, excellence of curatorship. Not every newly composed work "deserves" to be presented at the same level, and pretending like they do encourages programmers, especially less experienced programmers, to flood an already struggling scene with so much mediocrity. Mediocrity is the albatross around the collective neck of our scene - and ironically so, as contemporary music has traditionally loved to pass itself off as quite elite. And while I tend to feel this attitude of elitism is intensely counterproductive, at the same time I believe that mediocrity will never save us. We need a consistent excellence, but absent an attitude of elitism. It is about the excellent and the fantastic.
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