sections - Ur-song/On Prepositions/On Food/On Concentration and Solipsism/"Third Section"/Mesostic on Rick Moranis/excerpts from string quartet/Efficiency vs. Convenience

Some thoughts on why all songs are the same/every song is (semi-neo-Platonically) part of one ur-song
Lyrics: Let me start here by saying that I usually want to share with others words that I sing to myself. Sometimes these words make sense, sometimes they don't. Often they're set to familiar (stolen) tunes, sometimes not. Like Michael Stipe said in the early 80s, I don't hold a tune responsible for maintaining consistent lyrics or even appropriate lyrics. I don't marry music and words, they're free floating to me; there is no appropriate connection between the two, it's like Cunningham and Cage over here. I don't know why this is, I've just always done this. I am apologetic to those people who are upset by this practice. If my conception of what lyrics are offends, please understand it's just my conception of what lyrics are and I mean no offense. So I try to be quiet about it sometimes, but I can't always keep it to myself.
Here's an example of things that I do with words of songs, which to me are not the songs themselves (of course, I couldn't say what is the song in and of itself): Recently, I've had the tune of PB&J's "Young Folks" kicking around my dome piece. I know more or less what the real words are (I think I do anyway), but I veer more towards puppies and kitties and things from the past.
Verse - ...If I rap sue my name was jock/If I rap sue/If I rap sue/would you still go out with someone like me?... Chorus - ... they don't care about those puppies/don't give a damn about them kitties...
Clearly, the verse comes from a line of AdRock's in "Intergalactic", and the second is part of a more long-term effort. In high school, I tried to get every song ever to include the word "pizza". Later, it was "sandwich". Nowadays, it's "puppies and kitties". Example: "What the world needs now/Is love, sweet love/it's the puppies and the kitties..." and I don't really care what comes next, my work is already done. Puppies and kitties are what's lyrically important in every situation.

Two conclusions: 1. It's about interchangeability. It's respect, but it's about lyrics blending together in a positive way. It's about combining the collected achievements of songwriters the world over and making one "LYRIC". It's about not bothering to differentiate words in the way that I one musical phrase leads in to another (I make constant mental notes of what songs sound like other songs for their chord changes, cadences, melodic fragments, etc). I do the same thing with people's faces. What not to like when everything is connected in a positive way? Who needs authorship when it's all positive work? Seriously.
2. part of this relates to my disdain for songs about important life things, i.e. love, death, emotion. I've often said that I wish there could be serious songs about vegetables or wolves, not these as metaphors, just these raw concepts, and that they would be taken seriously. Imagine how happy I was to see a dance about bugs. A serious thing.

Music: I mean, this is a little more abstract and less personally-specific. But it's about subjectivity. You, whoever you are, as an [improvising] song player [and that includes improvising when composing], or song ornamenter, or arranger, or player are utterly and hopelessly predisposed to a set of conventions (this is where personality comes from). Listen to the collected production works of Mr. Jon Brion. Or watch & listen to the brilliant videos of Chris White. Or take me, for example, when working with songs. There is no one who does not constantly repeat similar rhythms, harmonic passages, melodic contours, and the like while never repeating her/himself exactly (probably). This is not escapable - there are just things that we do to put together a song, be they skronky, sweet, repetitive, or whatever. You could give Charlie Parker any song, and he would do certain Charlie Parker things to it, which is also true of some person who just picked up an instrument. Hence, the song is as much (if not more) a formulation of the person/people playing it as the apparent (inert?) construction of the song. Not that people can only play one way, but even given multiple approaches from the same person, this holds true.

Sex Mob is a band that is a quartet of slide trumpet, alto sax, bass, and drums. It seems to me that the basic idea of the band is that all songs are one song, to be stretched out by the quartet ad infinitum. The trumpet player, Steven Bernstein, basically inserts hooks and riffs from the history of pop music into these loose, lanky beds that the rhythm section sets up. Often, the rhythm section doesn't change for 20 minutes, while Mr. Bernstein (VERY SUBTLEY) throws out scraps of songs that he knows, and ideally, that you know too. Briggan Kraus, the immensely talented alto player, tends to pick up on these scraps before anyone else, and harmonizes and embellishes them, usually without ever really soloing (unless Mr. B tells him to or unless you consider what he does to be always soloing [I think it’s always comping]). So you see, Steven Bernstein plays anything, with a rhythm section playing anything else, and Briggan ties it together. No song will ever make this formula any different, it's about adding snips to other snips. I've always felt this is a nice working affirmation of my thoughts.

It occurs to me that what I'm getting at is a fundamental distinction between pieces and songs. Pieces are things that you can have an introductory page to, saying: HERE ARE THE RULES THAT ARE IN EFFECT RIGHT NOW, JUST IN THIS PIECE AND MAYBE OTHERS I'VE AUTHORIZED WITH THESE RULES. Songs don't have that. Sure, there's genre, which is ultimately in the hands of the performer, which can govern embellishment and realization, but the logic of a song is the logic of a song is the logic of a song (note the indefinite article), and that logic is endlessly mutable, based on the there and now. [And besides, genres exist at their own borders.] There is nothing concrete about a song, not the words, not the tune, not the chords, not the rhythm, as any half-decent cover will tell you. The point of songs spread across personalities is that they change, and there's no pattern to describe this change. You can't do that with a piece. A piece will tell you (usually) exactly what's free to change from performance to performance. Often this is by omission, but the rules are explicit whether they're positive or negative.
You may completely disagree, but what I'm saying is, and one of my goals is to spread the concept that, while songs may have authorship, they are always lacking in definitive-ness, and moreover they are very unstable things meant to be shared by everyone. Songs are realized by you singing in the shower, or just the low end coming through someone's car system, or a producer hearing it on high-tech studio speakers, and there is no heirarchy of which is more real.

 

On prepositions:
I’ve long remarked that languages could really get along just fine with only one preposition. In the past, this has been a joke that stems from my incredulity during high school Latin at the multifarious uses of “in” – in, on, into, with, without, not, etc. During college, I would frequently use this reduction to get people unnecessarily riled up, and I’ve got a more productive way to talk about it these days.

Let’s take the phrase “in English”. Imagine meeting someone of indeterminate linguistic origin and trying to say to them, “I don’t know how to say that in [language name]” or something like this. You go through the Romances, “en español”, “in italiano”, “en français”, great. Same basic prepositional idea. Try German: “auf Deutsch”. Not exactly the same. It’s not unreasonable to imagine the idea of being in a language as we have it in Romance or Romance-ish languages would be articulated as from a language, of a language, or about a language in another linguistic conception. Is it not strange that such a concept is generally related in spatial terms? And as such are there not a number of equally expressive spatial metaphors for words coming from one body or language of words? Prepositions are necessary to describe conceptual bodies, but when there is no physical grounding, do these words function specifically?

Such an abstract concept is a clear place to start, but what happens when we need to describe something in spatial terms? Is there another way we could say “from X to Y” without using two different prepositions? I imagine a number of ways this could make sense with one preposition – with attention simply paid to the order or context. Let’s say “abc” is our proto- or meta-preposition. Would not the convention “I went abc Greece abc Rome” or even “I went abc Greece-Rome” make plenty of sense, given consistency of practice?

As Freud shows with “Heimlich” and “Unheimlich” in The Uncanny, it seems to me that prepositions in English, given so many idiomatic phrases, often become their own opposite. Take “in” and “from”; both can be terms of inclusion (a group one is in or comes from [synonymous with of in this sense]), but “in” as a prefix connotes negation and “from” also connotes departure or removal. Since the scope of the words they are attached to can run the gamut, prepositions are linguistic tofu and can assume any proportion, given the right modifier. Obviously, with and without will always negate each other, but like canny and uncanny, there’s no pole that either one is affixed to; they exist as flexible modifiers, always 180 degrees apart. In view of such negations, could we not simply have one preposition with an optional, affixable negative to show when it is its own opposite? “To” becomes “from”, “under” becomes “above”, “around” becomes “through”, “on” becomes “underneath”.

Of course this list of opposites shows how ridiculous the idea of prepositions opposing one another is. Granted, it would look hideous, but can you not imagine that in context, the one proto-/meta-preposition would become clear? This might force short sentences to get a little longer, and prepositional clauses are often only clarified by more prepositional clauses. If we try to say “I went around the lake” using abc, “I went abc the lake” clarified would look like, “I went abc the lake abc a boat abc the water abc a few hours” and only after many sub-clauses does the meaning become clear.

Mind you, I’m not agitating for English to drop “around”, “throughout”, and “underneath”; I’m just illustrating a point. Even if I were to be in charge of starting a new language, I’m too attached to English’s overabundance of stuff (i.e., words) to execute this. I’m just sort of agitating for artistic license, trying to show my view that prepositions are just one place where (particularly if you are face to face with the person) you can say just about anything (I think of the omnifunction words in my past life: Chong, Slamm, Boot, etc.) and have it make sense. I’m a totally unstudied linguist, but I keep coming back to prepositions. I don’t know why. Anyway, try out switching prepositions in daily use, or rather, if you slip, try not correcting yourself and see if it still makes sense.

 

On Food:
It has long been clear to me that traditional, American egg rolls look like nothing so much as a large, beige bolus. Or more over, they resemble the word “bolus”.

 

On concentration and solipsism:
Flip the situation:
Person one comes into the restroom and sees person two standing at the urinal. Personal two does not see the face of person one. Person one enters a stall and rips some toilet paper, presumably to clean the seat. Person two now knows what person one is does there. When person two flushes the urinal, person one’s imperative is to let to plumbing loose and make noise while there is an aural mask and presumably person two’s attention will be elsewhere, namely in zipping up and walking to the sink.

Now, as a musical metaphor, it is most necessary that in the moments when Person (now Player) two is providing an aural mask for person one (or three, seven, etc.), person two must pay attention to what person one is doing. The moments at which you are being the most noticeable are the moments at which you must be the most aware and selfless. Improvisation or composition.

 

Third Section:
1. I think about 1997. In 1996, if I wanted to hear the newest music that record company/radio stations wanted to push, I would tune in to 105.9 on a Sunday night. In 1997, I lived in New York State, and I had to settle for reading about what the new music was online and knowing about it rather than hearing it. This may have been a fatal split for me, because ever since, I've been better at knowing about things because I've read up on them than I am at knowing about things because I've experienced and digested them.
But this is also a commentary on time; before, I had to be within a certain physical radius and tune in at a specific time, after, I just needed a phone line and for them to keep their half of the deal. Does this comment on the nature of modern art? Not at all, just the nature of modern time (related? not related?). MODERN TIME? TIVO and the INTERNET? TIME LIMITED BY ELECTRICITY!!!! What an idea for a piece (think Pendulum music, the ending, MAYBE). I want the old-fashioned electricity back.

 

Mesostic on Rick Moranis:

(that's lifted and belies, not llfted and belles)

 

On concentration & abstraction, from Mvt. no. 2 for string quartet:
There is nothing particularly fantastical about riding in an elevator. Depending on the ride (and the rider), you may have some rides that register more than others. But on a normal ride, you are standing on the elevator, and you can perceive the various sensations involved with the ride.

Textbook diagrams are nice. They take a cross-section of some narrow, systemic function, and reduce it so that it’s visible and digestible when both time and space are condensed.
In the society in which this is being written, there are often attempts (and I think of this as having economic motivations, defined broadly) to make a person dissect what it is his or she is doing and think of it in terms of its constituent parts or processes. such that the mind’s focus is necessarily diverted from the broad, the sensual, or the obscure.

You are on the elevator, and you are thinking not about the sensation of riding the elevator. Instead you are thinking about the energy being used for this specific elevator ride. So you back track; you’ve pressed a button, which enabled a current to flow, which allowed gears to turn, weights to be adjusted. To get that current, some AC receptor switched from potential to actual. Somehow, the potential energy had been built up in that specific location. It had been somewhere else before this, and before that it had been generated, perhaps by something very hot or something that turned around very many times.

By this point, you are very far back in time and completely removed from your elevator ride in space, despite the fact that electric currents travel incredibly fast and so does a thought inside your brain. You may be thinking about it, but it’s not happening as such.
Perhaps you are eating. You consume a meal that comes from a cook book, and this cook book tells you exactly how many calories are in the meal that you have just cooked. You are not thinking about the specific potatoes that you purchased, in your neighborhood, or the exact length of time, to the millisecond, that you allowed your dish to simmer. You are thinking about what the book tells you: potatoes are starchy and if you simmer this dish longer, more excess water will cook off. And now you’ve lost it.

Depriving the acts of riding, eating, etc. by focusing on abstract bundles of unobservable substances inherently strips the act of its reality through channeling focus away from sensorial observation and into something that seems like a deeper understanding. When someone tells you that the flipping the lights on and off rapidly contributes to global warming, it is not personally demonstrable truth (or a series of true things) that would affirm that comment. A person, left to herself, is either incapable of proving observable theorems or else uniquely qualified to do so.

Not that our goal is to stifle imagination, but the reduction of these unobservable systems and processes into text book diagrams robs them of their sophistication and complexity, and hence makes them less real.

 

on things and non-things, written for mvt. no. 2 for SQ but not used:
It is important to walk like a dancer. It is important to be able to get up on your front like a sea lion. To move yourself with deliberate focus. To have torso muscles that can account for your entire physical self.
To swim like a dancer and to walk like a sea lion.
To find yourself in the front seat of a Chrysler Seabring convertible ever so often.

These are things that we can account for in our lives. This is the effect of empiricists, capital, the systemic drubbing out of other languages, and the centering of the map. This, however should not be confused as being the fault of Stonehenge.
Reified and thingness are generally different though. For example, you cannot use them interchangeably. Whereas reification carries cultural subjectivity, thingness is very culturally specific. Like pleated pants are a thing, and thinking about going up the stairs and feeling a certain way is another thing. And I’m not just taking the extreme examples of Stew Leonard’s or the contents of pictorial dictionaries. I’m talking things, and some of them with capital letters.
It’s nothing to blame. Dancers in all cultures know about this: a gesture is a gesture. John Cage knew about this in the 1950s. You do something, and then you do something else. And that thing could be small or large, whole or having component parts.

 

On lucidity & concentration, from Mvt. no. 2 for string quartet:
Lucidity as pepper flakes. Alertness is here represented as a shaker of hot capsicum flakes, as in an Italian-American pizzeria. Perhaps a plastic canister in the spice aisle or on a grandmother’s spice rack. There is a void around the container; nothing else exists in this metaphor to describe what we are talking about.
And mind you, we are not talking about consciousness, we are talking about the part of consciousness that involves direct focus. Throw away the conscious time that sees you reading while sitting on a train and thinking about your skirt rather than the material at hand. Think about this: there are times when it’s critical to go back after such a lapse and re-read the paragraphs that you were thinking past, and there are times when you give up on what you’ve missed. I’d like to suggest that in whatever you are doing, there ought to be occasions for both of these, and frankly that choosing to move on passed something your brain has decided to gloss over is both natural and deeply important. You can only fight lucidity so much.
So the pepper shaker shakes out flakes of probing alertness that go beyond awareness. The combination of these flakes, in aggregate, makes up your knowable experiences. Nothing can truly be forgotten - it is possible to remember every moment you have lived through, given proper stimulus. However, these stimuli happen rarely and surprisingly, most often you are left with the pile of flakes (piling up on what, exactly?).
There is only so much underlining and margin-writing you can do to hold on to what you find momentarily gratifying. Eventually the larger, inexplicable moments win, and your history is awarded to and shaped by them. After you’ve seen a concert, you have a memory of certain moments that stood out, that felt special, but only so many of those moments in which your lucidity stood at attention will be transferred to the long term memory dump, which in this analogy we will call the slice of pizza. We all know that which flakes end up on the pizza is determined by things describable and accountable, but at the same time it would be impossible to actually account for everything without replaying one’s entire life, probably several times over.
Stranger still is that moments might fly by us the first time, only to later turn out to have been spicy chunks of lucidity. If we can accept that external stimuli, most often in my experience those which arise through conversation, will introduce new, significant moments that are lack personal authenticity, and while not contrived might as well be.
Even if we had a system of memory, this cannot compete with lucidity. Mnemonic systems are about direct copying, one to one reproduction, and hence the turning of an idea into a thing. Lucid moments are unable to be reified and as such are quite mutable; they are deposited into a bank, but once inside they cannot remain the same, whole cloth with any reliability.
And so perhaps you wonder, if any differences occur in the effectiveness not only of memory, but of the likely lucidity of information when it is interrupted in its intake.

 

Efficiency vs. Convenience