But if the concept of art becomes anthropological it is totalized and really does refer to human creativity, to human work and not simply the work of artists. Why anyway should the term art refer to the work of painters and sculptors? That is simply a restriction that never existed before.
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. – Ulysses, James Joyce
History as a determined course of events, objective in space-time, cannot exist. We might think of it as a series of probable facts. Memories and evidence. We all have to accept the probability of being wrong. At all times. No subjective world, no, not what I mean. Just no objective world possible. Better: no possible objective perception of the world. The past is not a physical entity, hence history only exists as seen by man, as renembered by man. Cannot be right or wrong. When all memory of this planet is erased along with our race, will our past have existed? No. Past=function of memory. No memory – no past. Again as a physical reality the past does not exist. Only probable pasts. Nightmare – History's judgment. Positivistic. Morals do not make sense. Positivistic laws do not make sense. How to interpret the course of humanity without pastcertainty? Death of memory will erase all. Not only the present and future possibilities. No Laplace's Demon. Only probable events in a probable timeline. Patterns repeating themselves through human experience over and over and over and over. Cicles? Fluxus.
pastcertainty will haunt history and dedalus
how to think of cause and effect?
Possibilities.
Meaningmakingmachine.
III. AS MCLUHAN SAYS,
EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE. IMAGE IS
NO LONGER STREAM FALLING OVER ROCKS,
GETTING FROM ORIGINAL TO FINAL PLACE;
IT'S AS TENNEY EXPLAINED: A VIBRATING
COMPLEX, ANY ADDITION OR SUBTRACTION
OF COMPONENT(S), REGARDLESS OF APPARENT
POSITION(S) IN THE TOTAL SYSTEM,
PRODUCING ALTERATION, A DIFFERENT MUSIC.
FULLER: AS LONG AS ONE HUMAN BEING IS
HUNGRY, THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS
HUNGRY. – Excerpt from John Cage's Diary
Following a strand of musical topics, I pop another one-in-all problem: finding contemporary music. I rarely find anything on Cd's, except for my college's library, and even there I must restrict myself to very few composers. I.e.: La Monte Young. I heard his 'Drift Study' in college, and since then haven't found another piece. I was very interested by the study so I looked for more. I haven't found anything else. Be it on the net or stores (many stores). How to keep in touch with new developments? Sure you can find Philip Glass, Stockhausen and Ligeti, but what about Tom Johnson and John Godfrey? Radios (BBC on the net, Cultura on FM) have contemporary music shows, but I am yet restricted by others choices.
‘Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?‘ (FW, 114.13-20)
Enough on that. Now for some good memories: Ligeti's Requiem. I am drowsy with sleep, tommorrow I travel back home, three-daysout already homesick. Death to those bastards. Damn them all.
P.S.: More on the bastards to come
Technorati Tags: Music, Monte, Protest, Help, Literature
While I looked for some good internet radio, across came BBC's Radio. Amazing website. Radio programs ranging from sports and news to contemporary classical music and Beckett plays. While you, mon hypocrite lecteur, stare at your screen the name of this topic may seem a bit off radio…. Naryana's cows is a problem involving cows and calves. But cows are not the point tonight! It is also the title of a piece by Tom Johnson inspired by the cow problem. Again amazing. All this in one program, Hear and Now, at BBC's Radio 3. If you enjoy cows, math and music do take a look. I've started posting some photographs using Flickr. I have some very likable drawings up there (and to your right side on the brighty-brighty). Soon I will put some of my drawings and spoil everything.
Lately been trying to work my way through Finnegan's Wake. So many meanings, so many! In Umberto Eco's words, Joyce 'has prepared a machinery of suggestion which, like any complex machine, is capable of operating beyond the original intentions of the builder'.
Back to music by a commudius vicus of recirculation!
I'm listening to Aria 51 by John Godfrey right now. Very interesting. Dreadful pun… Of course, by the vicus, on BBC's Hear and Now! I haven't listened to it all yet, so I'll bite my tongue for a while. All these songs played by the marvellous Crash Ensemble. I can't emphasize: all readers, tune in to BBC's Radio 3! After looking around and feeling at home, look for Hear and Now. A nice way to come in contact with contemp. music. This song, so much. The use of tape repetitions and the piano, brilliant.
'Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?' (FW, 114.13-20)
Technorati Tags: Radio, Flickr, Joyce, Music, Literature
Perfectly planned evening. Day even. But. All buts in my way, boredom seemingly my only motivation. And yet with the perspective of turning a perfectly planned evening into Hell, I stopped. What a clown. These are the days someone once told me, these are the days my friend. A perfectly planned evening at the ballet. Nothing in my way. And yet. yet. yet. yet.
I lack the hability of turning future projections into concrete fears and hopes. And yet.
I should've gone to the ballet.
[...] Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n
- Paradise Lost, Book I 249-264, John Milton
Passing the hours away. Nothing else to do, nohow to passaway hours. No will to do anything. Better fix it. Only indifference between death and life brings true freedom. Better to die of vodka than of boredom – Maiakovsky. Everything might for a moment seem impossible. Even the simplest action shudders when it is confronted with the enormity of time through which it will not resist. Resisting is impossible. Time will swallow what I was, what I did, where I lived. Time will swallow everything, thus everything is without meaning. God is either curel or incompetent. Or simply he never existed, or should've never existed. What are the roots that clutch you, Son of Man? Everything tastes sour, allthings seem ugly, everywhere hopeless. Time clutches and drags and weighs down, every fiber fights, but death must eventually approach and deliver. Deliver from pain to endless bliss of nothingness. Why must we strugle against the inevitable? We can only live by. For though everything is rendered meaningless by time, so does time make every small deed a necessity. We must spend our time somehow, only without purpose. No purpose necessary, no objective. Just fill time is all we can ever do. If possible.
Repetitive, boring to many. Understable. Listening to same melodic pattern repeated for minutes at a time (i.e.:Einstein on the Beach's Dances) can bore the audience. To the death some claim. But this is a shallow look at his music. Better, it's a western look. I don't believe in this exact division between western and eastern, specially since the 70s and globalization. But, I have to say, such an approach would be meaningless to someone used to Hindu music. Or to a Zen disciple (even boredom would be meaningless in Zen budhism). Common in our music are melody and harmony, along with a narrative time, horizontal. Hindu music (i.e.: ragas) is centered on isorythimic overlaping (different rythims played at once) and cyclic time, vertical. Time, in Hinduism, isn't an arrow. There is no Alpha and Omega. No Genesis and Apocalypse. Time is centered on million years cycle, and our life is based around the karmic cycle. As such, music, closely tied to religion and myth, tries to anihilate the feeling of time. Time as we understand it only exists along with the end. Death. After all, time became a problem after we were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
[Listening to: Raga Ahir Bhairav : Alap And J - Hariprasad Chaurasia & Zakir H - (21:33)]
Not all posts will be bi-lingual form now on.
Technorati Tags: Philip, Glass, Zen, Hinduism, Minimalism
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Back On!
Posted in Comments, On Movies, Web-stuff on May 7, 2006 by PedroGood news on the way: the Minimalist Radio is back on with a new playlist. From what I've seen it came with a greater range of composers. The long down-time made me wonder through the net craving for new songs. I found many things along the way, some good, some bad. But nothing replaces this one of a kind net-radio. It's amazing. I want to congratulate and thank Richard Ellwood for this wonderful experience. To all my readers (if I still [if I ever had] have any): tune in. Join the chorus of listeners and discuss this radio through the new website.
Thank you Richard Ellwood.
Technorati Tags: Ellwood, Minimalism, Music, Radio, Contemporary
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