HB: “Sound is innately terrifying and haunting. And it holds this magnetism over us because of that. We’re talking about physical pressure waves that are invisible and inescapable.”
…HB: “I think making music might be closer to the work of archaeology or geology than anything creative or constructive like sculpture or carpentry or something like that … with sound and music it seems like the game is uncovering things that are buried already, within this strange frame of time …”
…Interviewer: “What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?”
HB: “Well I won’t waste too many words, but making music is the same as engraving the markings on your future headstone …
1). Elaborate forms and a brilliant technique conceal a basic inhibition, a reluctance to directly express love, a fear of self-exposure.
2). …for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.
It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle.-Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And imnumerable [sic] others.- And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.” [quoted from Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein]
3). Love is a dimension like time, not some small thing that has to be made more interesting by elaborate preamble. The basic dream -of both love and music- is of a continuity, something that will live forever. The simplest practical attempt at realising this dream is the family. In music we try to eliminate time psycholgically [sic] to work in time in such a way that it loses its hold on us, relaxes its pressure. Quoting Wittgenstein again: “If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present”.
4). My most rewarding experiences with Treatise have come through people who by some fluke have (a) acquired a visual education, (b) escaped a musical education and (c) have nevertheless become musicians, ie play music to the full capacity of their beings.
5). Integrity What we do in the actual event is important -not only what we have in mind. Often what we do is what tells us what we have in mind.
The difference between making the sound and being the sound. The professional musician makes the sounds (in full knowledge of them as they are external to him); AMM is their sounds (as ignorant of them as one is about one’s own nature).
6). Life is a force to be used and if necessary used up. “Death is the virtue in us going to its destination” (Lieh Tzu).
“We were surprised and delighted to find we had long-time fans in China even though sometimes our music has been hard to find there. The fact that people really had to work to have access to it was very moving to us. We were told that in the early ’90s people had to buy black-market indie rock cassettes — discarded from factories where the tape had been cut up to prevent resale — and splice them back together by hand in order to hear the music. Having to do so much to have access to music floored us.”
-Naomi Yang (of Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi)
https://youtu.be/ZefbOP8BQ_o
“The Walkman is replacing certain drugs as a mind- and mood-altering device,” he lamented. “When teenagers have reached the point where they feel they must shut out the sounds of the Ohio State Fair, society is surely ready to collapse.”
“Ting Shuo’s founders also see their programming of participatory sound art and noise as a reverberation of the traditional sounds surrounding them: nanguan and beiguan music. The two styles arose in Fujian province in mainland China, traveling to Taiwan in the 17th century with Hoklo migrants, and have continued to be performed for hundreds of years. ‘[Nanguan] is a very social and collective kind of music. Performers gather together for a whole day and just play. People might take different seats, play different instruments,’ says Chang. For her, the collective openness of nanguan music feels close to her improvisational practice and that of the artists that congregate at Ting Shuo.
Beiguan, on the other hand, is noisy. “It’s temple music, where you might have like 20 people playing the suona, which is a kind of crazy loud reed horn instrument, as well as a bunch of gongs and metal percussion,” says Chang. For her, the out-of-body experience produced by Beiguan music cuts close to the catharsis caused by a noise or punk show.”
“After Jerry Garcia died, his wife [Deborah Koons] and Bob Weir had already dumped half of his ashes into the Ganges. I don’t know what in the world was behind that. The rest were to be scattered in the San Francisco Bay. All The Dead were going to go out on this boat that had been rented by Debbie, the ‘black’ widow. Mountain Girl [Garcia’s ex-wife] showed up with her daughter Sunshine and all the girls, and this Debbie went nuts. She said, ‘If she tries to get on this boat I’m calling the cops and having her arrested.’ Debbie was frothing at the mouth and so Mountain Girl backed off.
Finally they got on and Sunshine was just so sad to see her mom standing there on the docks as the boat pulled away, with all The Grateful Dead and the managers out on the fantail of the boat. It was a windy, rainy San Francisco morning, miserable, cold outside, and Debbie was sitting alone in the cabin just fuming. She finally came out with these ashes and flung them over the fantail. Sunshine said, the wind caught them and swirled them all over everybody, and they were all wet and stuck with Jerry’s ashes. All of their pockets, seams, shoes, ears and mouths were full of Garcia’s ashes.
Lionel Lark was an alchemist by profession but he loved to quest. Li and Mole were a romantic pair. Li, with his many-coloured zodiac coat flapping about as he rode the dawn wind. Rubbing his rimless spectacles, he lectured Mole in his larkish manner about the mythical Lily Pond and its latitude and longitude, and goofing sometimes, and mentioning the Hyperboreans, the frozen folk who lived behind the North Wind.
At eight o’clock he scribbled little spells and directions on a dried mushroom parchment and Moley got proudly into his pigs-bladder balloon. Lionel took off, at first a little shakily, but soon as swift as the lordly eagle, the Emperor of the Sky-Skinned Airships.
Bopping through the morning clouds, Kingsley rocked to and fro, now and again straightening his course by adjusting the misty spider’s-web rope which was harnessed around Lionel’s little puffed-out chest. They made a wonderful sight, these animal Wright brothers.
A lonely elf crunched the autumn leaves and solemnly dictated to his mouse scribe long, winding spirals of wonderful runes which, in our heavy translation would awaken Ra at midnight, or un-hibernate a legion of poley albino-eyed hedgehogs or even cause a chasm on the deeply swirl of Fox Necks to drown a blessed water lily. Pan be praised for elfish ability to know about wisdom and to use it wisely.
The elf’s autumn feet hidden in rose-petal, pointed shoes walked into The Mighty Grove and his never-ending stream of merriment soared and gushed Niagarally through the Wonderful Kingdom. But even as quick as it came, it had ceased. His wise eyes became beacons of true light.
As the piggy bundle tumbled from the blessed heavens, the leaping elf hastily harnessed his beloved, tame nightingale and made for the point of ejection with a heart of many carats. Entangled in thorns and briars was Kingsley Mole, his snout sticking high in the splendoured air; tents of zodiac folds cascaded over Lionel’s larkish dome. De-spectacled, he moaned into Kingsley Mole’s eyes and cursed all flying machines doomed to rely on the ficklety of piggish bladders.
The two saddened creatures trundled from their rose-bush prison and lay scarlet and fatigued in the escaping afternoon. The handsome, elfin figure soared through dusking skies and upon landing, kissed the proud brow of his sky steed and called a greeting to Mole and Li.
After tea from acorn cups and slices of blueberry pie, the handsome elf told all the large legends that he knew about the perilous pond and its scaly protectors. Also of its healing ability and how one draught of pond dew could put forests of tangling tufts on the baldest badger or field mouse’s heads.
After glow-worm talks and plans for the quest, the elf led the tired companions through the foreboding fairy wood until they reached a large, beautifully-worked leather fencing boot, which had a door in its heel.
“My great grandfather,” the elf said, as Lionel commented about image engraved on the door knob.
“An alchemist you know,” said the fairy one.
“Mmmmm,” said Li suspiciously.
They were made very comfortable in beds of great expanse, spider web sheets, and towers of warm, woolly moss blankets and, as always in an elvish abode, dreams of the gentlest texture.
“We all fell for Jon [Leidecker, AKA Wobbly] during an unforgettable moment on the platform of the train station in rural Denmark as we stood beside him with other passengers and witnessed in awe as he and his hand-held electronics conducted an extensive conversation with the local crows. Suddenly all these birds flew in and surrounded him on the train platform and began singing with him.” –Thurston Moore
