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Is it more interesting to look at a river than a highway? (A highway with cars passing on it, I mean.) Is a colorful paint spill on a sidewalk as beautiful as a sunset?
People enjoy contemplating rivers. I bike along the Hudson almost every day. The constant motion always stays more or less the same. Is that what it is — a visual metaphor (as are many other things)? And is the headlong never-ending flow of water over rocks, around piers or by the shore, constantly changing and varying but structurally the same — is that some sort of metaphor for a bigger picture? Is that why we like it and find it so mesmerizing to look at? Is the water us? Is it life, flowing eternal but never the same?
Why shouldn’t a highway be perceived more or less the same way? The never-ending flow of cars, often fairly evenly spaced, has a similar constant variation, more or less like a river, and it remains more or less one thing, like a river. Small eddies and ripples of traffic occur, sometimes a fleet of trucks appears, like a large boat or flood of debris, but most of the time the flow of traffic is constant in its variation. So aren’t they more or less the same?
Is it a cultural prejudice? Over the millennium have we grown accustomed to gazing at rivers and viewing the works of man as impressive, but not as moving and beautiful as a river? Do we see the works of man as suspect, impure? Highways, in particular, are seen as practical devices to get us from one place to another in vehicles of one sort or another. And while some interchanges and triple-layered overpasses might be majestic and even aesthetically lovely, gazing at traffic going by an ordinary stretch is seen as the pastime of a psychopath.
Likewise, I sense there were moments in the history of fine art when painters asked themselves — why should the chosen object that I am painting be considered more interesting than the background? Objectively speaking it is all a rich colorful mosaic that is falling on our retinas, and shouldn’t I therefore give equal weight to all of it? (Here science may have had a part — leading aesthetic reasoning into a curious place.) Aren’t the curtains as interesting as the person whose portrait I am painting? Isn’t the sky as interesting as the street? Isn’t a chair as interesting as a face?
So painters like van Gogh and Cezanne pulled the background up to the foreground until they were all more or less equal. Somehow they managed to still give primacy to the sunflowers, the bowl or the fruit, but never mind.
Follow this line of reasoning and eventually you end up asking yourself questions like the one I asked myself at the beginning of this. Isn’t a Brillo box or a newspaper clipping or a can of beer therefore as beautiful and interesting as a mountain vista or a person’s face? Plus, these commonplace subjects would have the added interest of being drawn from our immediate surroundings — the new world we inhabit but traditionally prefer to ignore in the fine arts. They therefore actually are about our life, our surroundings, our man-made environment. It’s all equal. The highway becomes the river.
Truth be told, I intuitively feel that staring slack jawed at a river is indeed more enthralling and uplifting than watching cars pass — though my reasoning tells me it shouldn’t be. Here is where my reasoning has, for now anyway, reached it’s limits. I have to admit the obvious to myself — that rivers are entrancing to look at. Highways, somewhat less so. While our retinas may indeed scientifically receive a “flat” “objective” mosaic of light and color and shape, our brains filter this raw data and make of it foreground and background (it’s not just parallax that does this) and, more importantly, our brains make separate objects —some of which are more important to us than others. We “think” visually this way. It is not a matter of “naming” each object — it’s not about words or language — although metaphorically maybe that is what it is — but of perceptually managing the material, sorting it out, making a kind of visual symbolic language out of it.
Thinking in pictures, as with music, bypasses the logical filters in the brain and the emotional buttons are within easier reach.
Psycho-genetically, for example, we have evolved to be able to spot minute changes and aspects in a human (and even an animal) face. The look of a face has immediate and important implications for us — it is anything but an objective field of light and color. (Though it is always that too.) It can be life-threatening or life-changing. The features tell us if that person is a threat, if they are sexually propositioning us, cowering before us or merely sleeping. We take other clues from the surroundings, the posture and the dress — clues regarding class, sex, position, status and social group.
We find dealing with all this moving, repulsive, attractive, seductive, and beautiful.So we see a narrative, not just images. The images have meaning, potential, possible history, implication.
Technically, sight occurs in the processing of the visual stimulus, not just in the eye. The eye “sees” nothing. Only after the data has been filtered, processed, turned right side up and scrutinized, have we finally “seen” anything. Even pure color isn’t “seen” unless it is identified and compared with previous similar colors. Sight and vision take place using a confluence of organs — it is almost neither here nor there, but a result of a system, a network, not a machine.
So, in my opinion, the “objective” point of view —that all is visually equal — which inspired much of 20th century Western art — Impressionism, Cubism, Modernism, abstract expressionism — was perhaps a huge inhuman detour, going off course as a result of the vast influence of science and logic. We literally “lost the plot,” as the British like to say. We ignored our human impulses and instincts and left all narrative behind — a presumed relic of a less enlightened age.
There was and is a certain perverse pleasure in perceiving pure pixels — in ways that might be closer to objectivity. Like funhouse mirrors, hallucinogenic drugs and the skewing of perception caused by illness, the “objective” viewpoint is a nice place to visit, but maybe it’s not the place that regularly and emotionally moves us, that drives our car and gets us where we need to go.
According to a recent survey by the World Economic Forum, Scandinavian countries are ranked at the top of the list for global competitiveness. Finland is No. 1, ahead of the U.S., for example. “It is one of the leading monitors of the competitive condition of economies worldwide,” as the Forum’s website says. Here are the top ten:
1. Finland
2. U.S.A.
3. Sweden
4. Denmark
5. Taiwan
6. Singapore
7. Iceland
8. Switzerland
9. Norway
10. Australia
Obviously MIA: Japan, France, Germany, China, UK.
One conclusion that they draw is that contrary to received wisdom in many parts, especially in the U.S. (see internalized propaganda musing above,) high taxes and enlightened social policies do not in fact necessarily stunt the growth of economies — in fact, exactly the opposite, if one were to judge by this survey.
The final adjustments to "Playing the Building" were done just in time for the opening yesterday. Arun figured out how to successfully add a 3rd octave to the pipe/flutes and his girlfriend brought additional lengths of tubing from NY to accomplish this. Down to the wire.
Arun reconnecting some wiring to the back of the organ:
After a group dinner the crew connected the additional tubing and tested the air pressure (it turned out that it was difficult to sum the air pressure in single tubes from multiple sources, as increased pressure in some tubes would flow backwards into the less pressurized manifold openings — hence the need for additional tubing. Who would have guessed?)
Johanna and Emma arrange for the explanatory text I'd written to be stenciled in the hallway, and we decide it needs to be lit somehow. Between them and Per they manage to light it just in time before the crowds arrive in the morning.
Justin had the idea to mount one of the motors to the cement floor of the building, causing the whole area surrounding that motor to vibrate. That motor/floor is now the loudest of all the machines, emanating a massive Wagnerian bass tone. Almost terrifying.
Matti manages to redirect the power in the building from the now removed fluorescent lights to the circuit supplying the motors and solenoids, which had blown some fuses previously.
Justin and Matti testing the day before the opening:
The solenoids pinging on the hollow metal columns that line this building make a wonderful super stereo effect — each column has its own natural pitch and each note comes from some unexpected place — sometimes near, sometimes at the far end of the building.
A solenoid on a column:
Johanna added a little stenciled symbol to each column — a hand with a line through it to indicate that folks shouldn't insert their fingers in the solenoids. (No danger of electrical shock, but should some youngster manage to insert a tiny finger in the space where the solenoid closes they'd probably get a nasty bruise.)
On the morning of the day of the opening I arrive on Jan's borrowed bike in time to see maybe a hundred people drinking coffee in the café and waiting on the stairs for the doors to open at noon. “How am I going to get a nice clean installation picture with all these people here?” I think to myself. I forget this as soon as I see people begin to play the thing. They're totally enraptured, entranced.
Couples play together, children go back for a second session and one man plays using his knuckles. A young woman takes a bow after her “performance”:
Those waiting their turns form a large semicircle behind the players and some drift forward into the building to sit on the floor and listen or examine where the sounds are coming from.
Some people go downstairs for coffee and sweet buns and then wander back up to just listen. Needless to say, I'm pleased — thrilled is more like it.
There's a makeshift dinner table set up in the Färgfabriken office, so during the opening in the evening we take turns helping ourselves to the salads and cheeses laid out by a local café. Then we wander upstairs in ones and twos to see what's happening, who's playing. Jan and I give a little speech — he introduces me and I attempt to credit and thank everyone who worked for around a year on this project.
Stockholm. City of Islands, linked by bridges.
Jet lagged. Got a few hours sleep. Fairly quiet here at Färgfabriken today as things slowly ramp up towards the Saturday opening. Heard a few sounds from the machines — everything seems to be working pretty well. The flute-like tones created by blowing air into the pipes is weirdly animal-like. Both the tone and pitch ramp up as one holds the note-switch down — and then the note gradually decays as the pressure decreases. The lower notes especially sound like soft and breathy human or animal moans. Aahhhoooh.
Swedish information:
If a cop is chasing you and you're on a motor scooter you can escape by taking off your helmet. It seems the cops might then run the risk of being accused of causing an accident and resulting injury, so they give up the chase.
There have been a number of holdups of Brinks type trucks here recently. No one is ever hurt — though cars are sometimes blown up or set on fire. And the robbers always get away. Maybe they remove their helmets?
Someone told me that the King (or Konig as he is called here) is dyslexic. He is also reported to often confuse places, people and dates. Poor thing.
I watched a few TV shows as I dozed off. A sports program featuring two men racing on a road up a mountain on what looked like short cross country skis with one wheel in front and one in back. Very silly looking — though everyone seemed quite serious about it.
On a neighboring channel was a constant stream of (free) porn. I was greeted by an image of a grinning Asian woman with cum all over her face. I gather this is to prove the “money shot” was for real — not proof of her partner's bad aim.
Had elk, venison and pickled herring to eat so far here. Lovely rich black bread.
Yesterday morning had some tongue for breakfast — bad idea.
Lost Empires
Sweden was once the empire in this region. They ruled over the Baltics, Norway, Denmark — the sea was theirs. It is now a distant memory, history taught in schoolbooks and museums. Now there is pride, but little hubris or arrogance, unlike the current U.S., where there is plenty of both.
In some places empire is a recent memory, and there are tinges of regret, sadness, anger and frustration at its passing. The addictive adrenalin of power lingers on, barely. France and England had empires in fairly recent memory. I remember my parents suggesting I learn French as it was, for their generation anyway, the lingua franca, useful almost everywhere.
One senses in these counties remnants of this former power — institutions, bureaucracies, and cultural assumptions that their way is best. Best not just for them, but for everyone. Sadness at the cruel injustice that this obvious, to them, worldwide need for their culture and expertise cannot be acted on without impunity.
Was a lesson learned at the passing of power? Or is there just suppressed anger at the unfairness of the world? Those currently in power always seem to believe that they are immune to the traps and follies that have waylaid their predecessors. Somehow they believe they are different. Not because they have made a scrupulous study of history, but exactly the opposite, because they are ignorant of it.
Does the high school bully become wise with age and curtailed power?
The machines sound great in the Färgfabriken space — it's very echoey and reverberant, so the sound is quite large. The low motor on the floor (Justin's idea?) is deep and Wagnerian (as one TV news cameraman said.) The flutes — air blown into overhead pipes — gives a weird mixture of tones. Reminiscent of some of the bizarre harmonies and tones in some of Oliver Messien's weirder more cosmic compositions.
This morning on a TV interview I chatted pleasantly with the interviewer about the piece and then they moved on to the subject of…globalization!? An obvious segue, no? I suggested there was no such thing — that it is a euphemism for Americanization.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, that journal of illicit sexual dalliances, Gregory Gause gives the results of his study on the relationship between terrorist acts and forms of government. It has been widely preached (and accepted by most, me included) that democracies produce fewer terrorist acts. Well, Prof. Gause added up the numbers and proved it's just not true. In fact, he sates there is no relationship at all between terrorism and any form or government.
So, the idea we have been sold, that in the absence of WMDs the U.S. is in Iraq to foster democracy, which will in turn foster a less fundamentalist, less terrorist-prone region, is simply not true. (Iraq was never a source of terrorism anyway, that was always a sly bit of fake-out propaganda, too.)
In fact, as we have seen, democracy, or maybe just the “steps” that have been introduced so far, has had a marked destabilizing effect on the nation and region.
I discovered a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis called The Power Of Nightmares in my inbox some time ago (see 8.17.05 entry about his documentary The Century of the Self.) It was glitchy but my friend Lawrence Weschler had a copy so I finally saw the whole thing…6 hours…and saw the filmmaker's surprising conclusion. Holy Moses! (wrong exclamation, but whatever.) The director concludes that, in a manner of speaking, Al Qaeda does not exist! Well, that's a misquote — what he really says is that it's not a worldwide network as the neocons would have us believe and that Bin Laden is not directing terrorists through an intricate network. It says a lot more — it traces the roots of both ideologies back to their origins in the U.S. Midwest! Neoconservatism and Islamic Jihad too!
When I went to borrow his copy Weschler told me that his grandfather wrote a "geographical symphony" during Weimar years which was all text — geographical place names — which the young John Cage heard about as a student. Cage then made a pilgrimage to granddad's in Berlin to tell him how important it was.
"It was a joke"
"No, it's REALLY important"
Back and forth back and forth.
Finally Cage managed to convince him that he could at least get it published.
The Nightmares doc connected some unexpected dots, as did the Cage story.
Now that I've had a day to digest this I realize, of course! These 2 completely unrelated stories are intimately related! The idea that what often turn out to be large and influential ideas might be unintended, unexpected, unconscious, is my response to many people who, probably correctly, point out that the neocons and everyone else aren't together enough to manage such vast conspiracies. They conclude therefore that these conspiracies don't exist — or that there is nothing to worry about because these people are not smart enough to manage such a far-reaching system. The point is they don't have to be that smart. Ideas seem to flow downhill, or somewhere, of their own volition — once set in motion an idea is, while not quite a self-governing system, definitely a thing in itself that doesn't really need a Wolfowitz or a Bin Laden anyone else to micromanage it. Or something like that...
Lots of times people propose what seem on the surface like ridiculously vast conspiracy theories — either from the left or from the right — and these are often discounted as being too elaborate and complicated to maintain and keep organized — so therefore they are not really plausible. The Power Of Nightmares (see above) draws a line between the theories of Leo Strauss and the policies of the neocons today. They all seem to be connected, though maybe in a 6 degrees kind of way. Many people would therefore probably discount these connections as being spurious — “they didn't ALL read his books or take his classes, so it's too much of a stretch to say there is a connection.” But what I'm sensing is that one can be sometimes unaware of the guiding principals and ideologies behind one's actions, but they might still be operating, in an unconscious sort of way.
On the other side, or shall we say the mirror side, of the neocons, I think it's possible that Al Qaeda does NOT have a worldwide network of interconnected cells, a vast worldwide conspiracy, which is what Adam Curtis in his doc suggests, but maybe they function more as an inspiration, a imaginative and deadly seed that has no center (any more) and, like any “idea”, can spread like wildfire if the conditions are right (and I believe the U.S. has helped create those “right” conditions.)
(Aside: I still believe the way to combat this is not by massive shock and awe, but by truly supporting cool and democratic initiatives that have sprung up throughout the world — instead of friendly dictators, as is the usual U.S. policy — that policy actually creates insurgents, radicals, etc — duh.)
Anyway, you can also see that this decentralized yet motivating seed could also be the way a lot of creative processes work. This unconscious flow of apparent intention, which I know from experience, can be used to write songs, for example, without one needing to have any conscious sense of what they are about — but then in retrospect they all seem, or the subject seems (sometimes) glaringly clear and obvious later — as if, on looking backwards, one can see the connections, and trace a line of presumed intention. Which does NOT mean the intention was not there in the first place — it was merely unconscious, invisible to the creator — and I think mercifully so. Being blissfully unaware bypasses one's internal censor or editor. Playing Monday morning quarterback on one's own work, it often becomes hard to believe that there was never a conscious intention to begin with — it's also hard to believe that it was hidden from the creator but somehow subtly guided his or her the hand and heart — and the creative decision-making process — but I think it's true, I think that's how it works.
Lots of articles everywhere about Intelligent Design these days — the latest re-working of reality to allow God a place in it. It's a bit of a waste of time, all this discussion, in my opinion. If people insist on taking the Bible literally, at face value, and reforming the evidence on the ground to fit that, then there is no reasoning with them — they've abandoned reason from the beginning.
It's not a question of reason vs. faith either, in my opinion. I believe one can have a belief, a sense of a higher force, without taking virgin births, Adam and Eve, Noah and a man who make a sea part literally. You can believe in Mystery — in something beyond us that we don't understand, without necessarily believing that the stories that point and support that belief are also all literally true.
Over and over it has been shown that these tales that make up the Torah and the Bible were cobbled together from pre-existing mythologies and assembled to form these new groups, giving a new emphasis. Twice it happened — in the Torah and later by the Christians. That doesn't denigrate the mythology described in these books in any way, or deny its metaphorical power. A metaphor as powerful as these has the power to guide lives, to inspire, to order societies and to back up moralities. And they can be beautiful and poetic at the same time. That's a tall order.
But to say that it also literally happened is, well, to miss the point. It is to mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon, as the Buddha once said. The myths point towards a way of living, they give social and moral foundations and provide a backbone for daily behavior — but they themselves are not those foundations and backbone. They are signposts, not the thing itself.
Intelligent design strikes me as the latest convoluted attempt to allow something patently unbelievable to remain standing. If, for example, one confronts a person who insists that the first few pages of Genesis are to be taken literally with the evidence of the world around them, they have no choice but to admit that it probably didn't happen quite that way. Pause. Ummm, so, ahh, wait a minute! How about this? God didn't actually MAKE everything, but he set it in motion! How about that?
This sounds like a 10 year old desperately figuring out an alternate story explaining where the cookies went or how the dog got in the house. It's amusing, and maybe sweet in its desperation, but not to be taken seriously as literal fact. It is psychological fact, which is different. No less real, but very different.
The U.S. is a fragmented country — split between fundamentalists and infidels. Maybe that's why these days this issue is taken seriously and given so much media space. It speaks to larger divides and deeper problems.
I think it's possible to believe in God, Gods, a higher power, or the Force, or a Vast Active Living Intelligent System without taking the myths at face value. It doesn't devalue them either to not take them literally. But it can go either way.
I think in Buddhism there are 2 paths — and one consists of literally mostly just rote behavior. Just do the rituals, chant the sutras, behave correctly, and you'll get there — or your descendants will. The other road is about achieving release through deep understanding and lots of diligent effort. Often this is the road for priests, monks, hermits and wandering seekers. It is claimed that either road leads to eventual enlightenment — it doesn't matter which way you go — you don't have to know how a car works to arrive at your destination — but one should not mistake the car for the destination. Like a simple Bible reader in the USA, a dedicated churchgoer, one can achieve the end goal simply by following directions.
How this then got twisted all over the world into intolerance (forced teaching of Intelligent Design is intolerance in my book) is slightly beyond me — unless it's basic human nature to subdue the lands around you.
When I read about the Big Bang it is hard for me to believe that it all began more or less from nothing. And it's equally hard to believe that all will either disperse into empty wastes or collapse back in and restart the process over and over again. It's hard to believe there was a beginning or that there can be an end — a cycle is easier to believe, endless repetition, but then how did the cycle get started? How could anything always be here? Why is there matter or energy to begin with? In searching for an answer here is where an infidel like myself comes close to faith.
It is said that speed of light travel is impossible — that we would become energy and would therefore no longer exist as matter. This might be true, but viewed from a higher, much much faster level, that might not make much of a difference. What we consider as “existing” and what organizing principle may still exist when one becomes pure energy may not be so different. Simply (or not so simply) they may be different forms for the same thing, or non-thing, as the case may be.
Imagine speed of light travel in which yes we do become energy and we somehow maintain our organizing principles. Forget about space ships and maybe even bodies — we've become something less. We can then not only travel very quickly and far, but maybe time begins to be somewhat flexible as well. Here is where we can indeed enter wormholes and even stars become like planets — planets of energy, rather than of mass (though there is mass there, too.)
This level of travel — and of existence, really — would be all but invisible to us. Pulses and rays and concatenations of energy — it would be pretty hard to discern their organizational forms, if such things could exist, form where we sit. It would be the equivalent of another dimension — albeit the one the touches us fairly often.
Once one is converted into a form or pure energy would there be a reason to go back to being mass? Ever? Would this be considered a form or transcendence? It literally is. And does that put it in the realm of the spiritual? I think not, but appearances are deceptive. But it does allow one to imagine that there might be levels of “being” up our out there that we find pretty hard to imagine, and they are, when viewed by us, suitably Godlike.
Participated in a benefit for New Orleans organized by The New Yorker at Town Hall last night. I decided to resurrect the brass band I worked with on The Knee Plays with Robert Wilson 20 years ago. Although this local band, Les Misérables, are not really a New Orleans brass band, the music I wrote was at least partly inspired by The Dirty Dozen, an amazing NO band that I’d seen many times at a NO joint called the Glass House. The stuff I wrote was, no surprise, a little stiffer and more herky-jerky than the traditional NO stuff — but with some funky parts snuck in. My usual benefit mode is familiar songs of mine, unplugged, but this time I wanted to try something different, so I tracked down these guys and they agreed to participate. Thank you all. Here we are backstage (minus drummer Curtis Hasselbring who was packing up.) Thanks Jeanne for the pic. And thanks Toni Morrison for the use of the dressing room.
Here we are onstage (thanks to Tony Orlando for the photo):
[Click here for a Knee Plays review]
As it was a New Yorker sponsored event there were lots of writers represented. Greg Mosher was brought in as director, so there was nice pacing — writers interspersed with musical acts, no one allowed more than 5 minutes.
High points for me were the PowerPoint slides of New Orleans (parades, funerals, bands in clubs, the quarter,) Kevin Klein doing Randy Newman’s song “Louisiana” about the ’27 flood, Phillip Seymour Hoffman reading the first few pages of “Confederacy of Dunces”, Elvis Costello singing a new song, Audra McDonald singing a song I didn’t know, Calvin Trillin telling his own beautiful New Orleans stories with a message, and Patricia Clarkson reading some Tennessee Williams letters. Some of the musical acts like Queen Ida and Little Queenie were great, but maybe due to Town Hall’s acoustics their too-short single song sets never had the chance or sound to achieve true liftoff. Maybe music in this venue tends to stay “contained” due to the space and its acoustics — it’s a space which works in favor of more intimate performances.
We had one rehearsal at my place earlier in the day and after a couple of hours the piece sounded pretty damn good. It balances a fine line between funk and stiff mechanical rigidity, and we pretty much got that. The text, a series of contradictory predictions about the future, now seems to be about the present.
At the afterparty a man introduced himself as a fan — he looked like Harvey Keitel with a skinhead haircut, and that’s who I thought it was. Turns out it was the NYC Police Commissioner. If only I had parking tickets! If only I had a car!
I saw an amazing sloppy electric salsa cha cha band on the boardwalk at Coney Island recently. Mostly older guys (one photo attached)... farfisa and electric guitar kind of thing — songs like “Perfidia” and stuff like that. They had a good groove and were a pretty motley crew, but I could have listened to them for ages.
Researching the Imelda music piece I’m working on I notice that her union with Ferdinand was as much political and economic as emotional. She, from a good family, but the poor side of it, was generally “attracted” to men who were in positions of power and who had financial stability. There were no stories of her dating the local shopkeeper or schoolteacher. No fool, she. (She was beautiful, so she had a leg up, too.) He, meanwhile, was no less pragmatic — though she was poor, he knew that her relatives represented the South, where he was politically weak (he was already a successful Senator.) And she would look picture perfect in his future political life.
Though he might have been less smitten and more conniving than she, she was by all reports emotionally invested in their relationship, at least for a few years. So there was both love, of a sort, and pragmatism simultaneously. Sincerity and practicality too. For a while, anyway.
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” — Henry Kissinger said that. And if there was ever a frog prince he is one. Ladies, here he is:
But, what if one is powerful but poor? Does power trump cash? Probably, in purely Darwinian terms — power lends one a greater likelihood of spreading one’s genetic material around than mere cash. But cash is a pretty solid means to that end and even lottery winners can be cash rich.
Of course there are and have been gold diggers and gigolos who are pretty blunt and obvious about their game for eons. Trophy wives and celebrity unions seem both natural and cynical to us now. Do they really love each other? Maybe. Maybe not. Sure is convenient though. And there are exceptions. Though the boldface names play at this match game fairly obviously, it is the way it goes down and works itself out through the various other quotidian levels and strata of society that are sometimes surprising. Marriage is one of the few ways of jumping class — of leaping ahead on the Monopoly board without paying rent. Even the nouveaux riche have to pay their dues — the upper classes don’t accept them for quite a while (though this is slowly changing.)
This is not to say there isn’t real love involved. But love blooms at surprisingly convenient times, especially for the socially, financially and politically connected. Does that mean poor people love more than rich people? Wow, what if? Here are some surprising exceptions. Why don’t rich dot-com-ers and IT barons have publicized marriages and affairs with movie starlets or models? If nerds are so powerful now why don’t they behave more like Donald Trump? Why does Kate Moss sidle up to Pete Dougherty, who is not rich and is probably not long for this world? But what do I believe? Can I observe cynical conniving behavior and still believe? Sure, don’t we all?
Questions:
What if, instead of clearing the cobwebs from my mind every morning and then getting down to work, I saved them instead? Neatly stacked and labeled and organized in a portfolio or in manila folders? What dormant treasures might those tangled cobwebs hold?
Why don’t horned herbivores, constantly threatened by predators like lions and tigers, gang up on them instead of always running away?
If rationality will not save us then what will?
Is it true that Pepto-Bismol is essentially flavored clay?
New Orleans:
I’m participating in a benefit at Town Hall in a few days organized by The New Yorker. Reuniting the brass band Les Misérables and myself to do some stuff from The Knee Plays. It’s one of the smaller benefits this week, but maybe will be more relaxed and fun as a result.
Malu sees the evacuation and carnage as “The Day After Tomorrow”, but for real. Real life seen through the lens of Hollywood. Must admit that for myself and many others, on seeing the fireball when the 2nd plane hit, our first reaction was, “Holy shit! — it’s just like in one of those Jerry Bruckheimer movies!”
The foreign reaction has been one of amazement — that the mighty USA can presume to tell everyone else what to do, and how to govern themselves, but can’t save their own people.
They are also amazed at the depth and extent of American poverty that has suddenly been revealed to them, and at the callous indifference to it by the U.S. government. American TV and movies don’t show poor people except as colorful characters or glamorous gangbangers, and these are seen as few and far between, but now the media eye is focused on a whole city mostly abandoned by white people with the poor black people left to fend for themselves without food, water, medicine, electricity — and military sent in not to help the people but to guard and secure the property of the white people. The images say it all. White people with guns pointed at poor black people. You can make up whatever rationale for this you like, but the image is undeniable.
My friend Dicky Landry in Lafayette LA says that the influx of refugee New Orleans musicians into Cajun country may actually have a good effect on the music. New Orleans musicians are famously insular. Their city loves them, they’re appreciated and they work pretty steadily — the food is great, the music has deep roots — why bust your ass for little money taking your music elsewhere? Stay home, make them come to you. And they did.
But this meant that so many great musicians went unheard and unappreciated outside of the NO community that was and is familiar with the New Orleans sound. They had little incentive to spread their music and culture out to the rest of the world — it was always easier to simply stay where you were loved. And why not? Sometimes the world just didn’t get it.
I toured once with Coolbone, a brass hip-hop band from New Orleans. Jesus, what a feel these guys had! Live hip-hop, a concept that is only now becoming accepted. Their record, though pretty good, couldn’t capture the gut (and other parts) moving sound of the tuba playing the bass lines through a sub-harmonic synthesizer, which added extra bottom. Thump. It had to be experienced live. You couldn’t download the experience either.
Anyway, I could see that my audience, though appreciative, just wasn’t as taken by these guys as I was. Open any indie or alt-rock mag and you’ll see what an insular world it is — and it has opened up in the last decade! So, no surprise there.
But now, as Landry hints, this forced exodus, this sudden diaspora, may sprinkle a little funky seasoning on music from St. Louis to Austin, and the world might be better for it. In a perfect world, those dispersed musicians might flourish and be appreciated in those far-flung cites too. They’ll be homesick, but maybe some of them can cook as well.
Dunes are alive with the sand of music
Jenny Hogan - 12.18.04 - New Scientist issue 2478
Famous explorers have witnessed sand dunes roar, boom, squeak and even sing — now one scientist says he knows what all the noise is about
SOME roar, some boom, others squeak and a few even sing. They entranced Marco Polo when he crossed the Gobi desert in the 13th century, and references to their mysterious sounds can be found in 9th-century Chinese literature. Now one physicist has put forward an explanation for why sand dunes hit the right notes.
"Singing dunes constitute one of the most puzzling and impressive phenomena I have ever encountered," says Bruno Andreotti of the University of Paris 7. Andreotti has been studying the crescent-shaped sand dunes of the Sahara desert in Morocco, one of around 30 locations in the world where dunes are known to sing.
The Saharan dunes hum like a low-flying, twin-engined jet, and can be heard kilometres away. Elsewhere, dune sounds have been likened to drums, foghorns and trumpets, among other things. In all cases, the sound seems to be triggered by sand avalanching down the sides.
Went to the West Indian Carnival in Brooklyn on Labor Day. Why it is not held on the traditional carnival date in the spring is not clear. Families cooking and selling food along the parade route — Jamaican specialties, fish, chicken, steamed cabbage. Homemade ginger beer (non-alcoholic) and sorrel juices for sale. Bootleg DVDs and CDs everywhere. Here’s a phone picture of a menu. You can’t read it, but you can see it’s not a typical NY street fair with slick operators selling Italian sausages and tube socks. It’s a community affair.
I went to this festival 20+ years ago with Brian Eno and Jon Hassel. I got mugged and chased the muggers to Grand Army Plaza, yelling, “take the money, just drop the wallet!” — eventually they did.
Now, years later, there is a huge police presence here, which maybe is good in that I had little sense that I might get mugged. Did I mention that the cops were 80% white? And their numbers did seem somewhat out of proportion — hmmm, need I say more? In fact, Prospect park — the large and lovely park that touches the parade route in spots — was strangely closed! Guarded by cops, too. And this was labor day, a holiday when families here would traditionally head for that park and hold picnics, barbecues, play ball, sunbathe and relax at the end of a super hot summer. OK, maybe the reason for the park closing is obvious — racism — but this also just seems cruel to the multitudes that live around here.
An angle of one of the carnival costumes:
Speaking of cops, I read that some of New York’s finest are going to New Orleans to help out. Which seems super admirable, as the local cops were totally overwhelmed and received none of the promised FEMA help. Hope that the National Guard reserves and the various forces that are arriving there are not just there to protect (white-owned) property, but are actually there to help folks out and get services up and running. (Though most of those “folks” are gone or are dead by now.)
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