Kebyar

... is a Balinese word that roughly translates to "the process of flowering." What a wonderful concept; certainly a word to be used by a particularly creative civilization. Since my student days "the process of flowering" has been one of my favorite sounds in all music - so much so that I began to listen to flowering motifs as functional elements in their own rite.

Of course in Balinese music, Kebyar is one of the most popular styles of playing. Sudden flashes of metallophones begin and end with buzzings of nature oozing through cracks of the gamelan’s silence. I imagine the act of creation on a chemical level, full of explosions and violence and mystery. Organic compounds and pollen and fertilization and zygotes and sun and soil and overwhelming growth...
I think I need to post Herzog’s jungle fever after this one…

Century of the Self

I watched this BBC Adam Curtis series last year (along with his other tantalizing documentaries) and have since had much more sophisticated conspiracy fodder for those slow days at the office.

Basically Curtis identifies the history of what has become an outright science of commercialized psychology led by Freud's nephew - the handsome, charming Eddie Bernays. My favorite citations are Betty Crocker's egg scheme, and the "freedom sticks" otherwise known as ciggies. Sit back, grab yourself a box of Kix, and enjoy the show.

P.S. this is part 1 of 4. Check out the others on gvid

Those Poor Pidgeons

Sheldrake goes off on some homing pidgeons. If you have time, its not a bad Sunday afternoon spent watching the whole Glorious Accident posted on blip.tv.

SO who do we have here?

Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Daniel Dennet, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Toulmin, and Rupert Sheldrake have a fine conversation over a meal and some hookah.

Check out the hilarious laughs of Dyson and Sacks. Oh man great time.

Stromatolites

sometime, to name a few,
we go back
oh, now i remember

that somewhere, in plain view,
a voice sustains
to whichever number

and if then, by some meager virtue
the havenots supplicate you

go back
go back
go back
go back
go back
go back
go back

hymn

insipid beguiling protest
in case of fire
repeatedly languishing selfish
form over style
having it sewn on
is seen to be trying
rather informally
time's underlying
lesson in taking our rhythms back home with you
listen to eating, aging, and dying

Cudamani

I'm about to trek out of the house to see Cudamani perform for the second time today. The first performance here in Philadelphia, around 2pm, was taken in with very high expectations. I've long claimed to my friends and peers that gamelan is among the highest of human arts. Let alone their responses, I mean to say that my feelings for gamelan encompass nearly every branch of my own artistic ideals. If I had to compare my discovery of gamelan to some other much desired western discovery, I would say it is the missing link in human evolution, or better yet, the unifying theory to the physical forces of nature. OK, slight exaggeration... slight. More accurately, I'm mystified and inspired by the spiritual, metaphysical, physical, practical, musical, natural, timelessness of the sounds. Doth I protest too much?

The effect of gamelan on the western composer has become something of mythical proportions. Debussy is of course the most famous example, especially the story of his exposure to Javanese gamelan in the 1889 Paris World's Fair. To my surprise, I couldn't find many of Debussy's thoughts on gamelan recorded, but I did find this ditty:

"There used to be-- indeed, despite the troubles that civilization has brought, there still are-- some wonderful peoples who learn music as easily as one learns to breathe. Their school consists of the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, and a thousand other tiny noises, which they listen to with great care, without ever having consulted any of those dubious treatises." (Debussy on Music, trans. Richard Langham Smith, [New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1977], quoted in Tamagawa, p. 22)

UPDATE:
I was awarded the Independence Foundation Fellowship. I'm going to Bali this summer --shhhh don't tell anyone yet. I have to figure out what to say at the old nine-to-fiver. Maybe it's time to move on, ya know. To really become an artist - leave the 40 hour week behind for an 80 hour week of composing, coffee shops, and bi-polarism. Anyway, I'm amazed that I have this opportunity. I'm going to study with Cudamani.

Teatro Comunale di Città della Pieve

Well tomorrow I'm off for Italia. Citta' della Pieve (or as we affectionately call it "shitabowlopubes") to be exact. My chamber opera, La Tempesta (ummm... The Tempest) will be gloriously performed thrice in a gorgeous multi-hundred year old opera theater. It was a rush job, as these things often are, and it was a radical break from my more experimental musics, but it has been a time of worthy trial up to this point. I orchestrated two hours of music in two weeks. Nothing like deadlines to show a man what he's made of...

Commissions are strange that way. Fulfilling a commission, a specific goal, can be quite fun. I got to write in all the languages I'm not 'allowed' to write in. I find the whole process quite fascinating... at least fascinating enough to do it this time. Yeah, this time it was okay. After this, I'm prepared to drown myself in uncompromising duende inspired art-making. For the people!

What a strange strange time its been. I've been expected by other people... many other people... to write performable music. So strange. I've been fortunate enough not to think too much about it, but in my brief moment of reflection, I recognize how obsessive my mind has been to simply complete a job. Expectation creates a very unique atmosphere that I never really anticipated before. Sure, I should have reasoned this dynamic as likely, but it never really occurred to me.

Blah. I'm off. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept in months. Time to reap what I've sown.

Wow. What great friends I have. I'm not about to do a public banter on each of you, the three or four who read this thing, but I am completely humble to each and every person who has been so understanding through this crazy composing time. I'm very very fortunate. It is clear that what I have attempted would not have been possible without support from amazing people. yikes, i'm so cheesy. well, you know me. i'm a sincere cheesy guy. Thanks everyone.

Well, that's all for now. Poof...

Reflection - Negation

IndieWire interview with Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi director: Godfrey Reggio

iW: Do you see benefits from technological progress?

Reggio: There are obvious benefits -- medical or educational. Buckminster Fuller, one of the prophets of the technological order, used all the metaphors like "spaceship earth" and it was his basic point of view that prevailed that said technology is neutral. It's use or misuse that you make of it. So, of course America makes good use of it, Saddam Hussein makes bad use or the Al-Qaeda makes bad use, and the UK makes good use, well that to me is ridiculous. Technology is not neutral. All tools have intrinsic politics and technology is the tool of now. It's not just the effect of technology on the environment, on religion, on the economic structure, on society, on politics, etc. It's that everything now exists in technology to the point where technology is the new and comprehensive host of nature of life. We are now cyborged, that's not the future, that is the present. Now, that's a hard sell, believe me. It's not a popular point of view.

iW: Well perhaps because there's a sense of inevitability in your films, and I think people don't want to accept that. Because what you're telling me is that we're already there, it's not a warning.

Reggio: That's what I meant about holding a mirror up to society. I think there's an enormous value to being negative. The world we live in today, negativity is not permitted.

iW: No, it's medicated away.

Reggio: Yeah, we want to have the shiny view on everything. But in fact if you look at film as a metaphor, only through the negative can you have the positive print. What I'm trying to get to is the positive value of negation. I think it's the tragedy of our time that we're not aware of the affect of the manner in which we've adopted tools. Those tools have become who we are.

iW: Do people call you a doomsday prophet?

Reggio: I've been called that or a very negative person: "You better take a pill if you go see Godfrey's films, they're pretty dark." What I'm trying to do is to at least raise a flag to the blinding light of technology. Homer said, "Ah, fire, their brilliance, their flaw. Is this the moment of the sunset or the moment of the dawn?" They weren't shrinking from tragedy or from humor. If it could help you sense the moment you were in, it had a very positive value. It wasn't to depress, it was to purge. Now, this all heavy stuff you realize isn't stuff I demand from my crew. [laughs]

iW: Because the theme of "Naqoyqatsi" is civilized violence or a life of war, I'd like to ask you to comment about the time we're in right now, with eminent war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and your own studio having been located south of Canal.

Reggio: Right on the ninth ring outside the bull's eye. As hard as this is going to be to say, I think the events of 9/11, the events that are happening in Israel right now, in Palestine, the events in the Middle East, in South East Asia, in Africa, which we all neglect, and Latin America, and now coming to our shores are the ongoing, logical conclusions of the way of life based on power.

For me, nation-states are the first technology. They homogenize language, develop mother-tongues, become father-lands. They think only of their own interest. And power becomes the arbitrator of what is good and bad. It's curious to me that the gods of the conquered become the demons of the conquerors. History has been the history of warfare.

Morning Raga

I finally got around to putting some Mad Man's Laughter sound files online. Sean and I will make the official internet debut next fall, once we've completed our summer projects. But for now... here's a few improvised and composed pieces... or whichever ones I get around to loading on that crappy website called myspace.

A good read...

Cornelius Cardew gets down on the essense of improvisation, music, and humanity in Towards an Ethic of Improvisation. If you don't read the whole thing, at least skip to the virtues that a musician can develop.

Music is Erotic

Postulate that the true appreciation of music consists in emotional surrender, and the expression music-lover becomes graphically clear and literally true. Anyone familiar with the basis of much near-eastern music will require no further justification for the assertion that music is erotic. Nevertheless, decorum demands that the erotic aspect of music be approached with circumspection and indirectly. That technical mastery is of no intrinsic value in music (or love) should be clear to anyone with a knowledge of musical history: Brahms was a greater composer than Mendelssohn, though it can be truly asserted that Mendelssohn displayed more brilliance in technical matters. Elaborate forms and a brilliant technique conceal a basic inhibition, a reluctance to directly express love, a fear of self-exposure.

Esoteric books of love (the Kama Sutra for example) and esoteric musical theories such as Stockhausen's and Goeyvaerts' early serial manipulations lose a lot of their attraction when they are readily available to all.

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".

Yeah, that's what's up

Alkan via Hamelin

Psychedelia

I totally wasn't expecting this.

MML

Desire, ergo, suffering, ergo sum: salvation or tranquility

How do you do, sir?
She said as you kissed her
to fly or to transfer
next to by after

I'll sing to them faster
Said their queen pastor
next to or after
the mad man's laughter

Healthy Forest Initiative

Ah google. My window to the world.

Today Google's logo was decorated by solar panels. Must mean it's earth day. Sure enough, a click on the logo took me to earth day search results. A few clicks later I found myself looking at the United States Government web page for earth day. How exciting! I wonder what the United States Government, the wealthiest, most moral, most visionary, most fantabulous government in the history of human civilization, was doing to celebrate our mother earth. What were the great resources of our great people doing to protect and serve our planet? What were the intentions of the brightest, healthiest, most-god-blessed civilization doing to preserve our life sphere for future generations?

Well, one thing I found was the Healthy Forest Initiative. Sadly, I have only learned about the HFI through liberally biased networks. I've heard something or other about it pressing legislation that would allow loggers the right to cut once protected forests under the guise of "preventing forest fire." But that was liberally biased. What is the government's side?

Why is the Healthy Forests Initiative Needed?

In recent years, most of us have seen televised pictures of wildland fires, evacuated communities, burned homes, and blackened forests, or witnessed these fires first hand. In 2002, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and New Mexico, each had their largest timber fire in a century. The most devastating series of wildland fires in state history swept Southern California during October 2003. These fires killed 24 people, destroyed more than 3,700 homes, and burned 750,000 acres. Alaska set a record for acres burned in 2004. And, while fire has always helped shape our landscape, today's fires are not those of the past; they are often hotter, more destructive, and more dangerous to fight.

Wow. That's wierd. I wonder how these new mutant fires came to be. I mean, the forests seem to have been here much longer than we have. Why the sudden need for a rescue?

We know in part the reason for the difference. Compared with earlier times, many of today's forests often have unprecedented levels of flammable materials including among other materials: underbrush, needles, and leaves. In the interior West for example, Ponderosa pine forests range from Arizona and New Mexico northward into Idaho. A century ago such a forest may have had some 25 mature trees per acre and be easily traversed on horseback or by a horse-drawn wagon. Today that same forest may have more than 1,000 trees on the same acre creating conditions that are much too thick for the passage of a hiker. These tightly packed trees are smaller, weaker, more disease prone, and more susceptible to insect attack than their ancestors. Such forests form huge reservoirs of fuel awaiting ignition, and pose a particularly significant threat when drought is also a factor.

Hmmm. Forests are flammable? That's crazy. So the more they thrive, the more prone they are to self destruction. You'd wonder why God would make such a crazy, self defeating ecosystem.

Just as we know the reason for current devastating fires, we also know the solution. Wildfire requires three elements: heat, oxygen, and fuel. We can manage neither heat nor oxygen, but we can remove hazardous fuels and make them unavailable for fire's inevitable appearance. HFI helps make that happen by reducing unneeded paperwork and processes thus shortening the time between when a hazardous fuels project is identified and when it is actually implemented on the ground.

Oh. By hazardous fuels I'm sure you mean trees. I gotcha. Just wanted to be clear on that symbolic step forward. So HAZARDOUS FUEL = TREES. Okay. I'm clear. Yep. Sure, lets continue.

HFI accomplishes its goals through administrative reforms and legislative action.

Bush With Tree

As I went on reading, I found out that trees were at higher risk for insect infestation and disease. They were at risk of sustained periods of drought. And creepy crawly suburbia was not at risk since it burrowed its way into these cancerous trees. I also found a quote of Bush claiming "analysis paralysis."

hee hee. analysis paralysis.

While I am quite the expert of analysis paralysis and I do support bold, mythical steps in the escape thereof, Bush's context and logic techniques make me suspicious. Does that mean I'm paranoid?

Lets just put it this way.

Dear Mr. Government:

I support a healthy forest ecosystem that sustains itself for the remainder of our planet's existence. I understand that forest fires have been around since the oxygen and forests first met, and I strangely assume that the ecosystems have, through natural selection, assumed the adaptations that create the most sustaining characteristics possible. My question: is my assumption wrong? Are forests not able to behave in such a way as to secure their own future existence? Why are forests creating more "fuel" which makes fires "hotter" and "more destructive" (presumably towards the point of annihilation if we're concerned with saving them so much)? Are we in any way performing harm towards ecosystems? I mean, are we sacrificing one good for another?

Forgive me if I ask this, I don't mean to offend your integrity. But was the Healthy Forest Initiative in any way influenced by the profit-based intentions of the logging industry?

Thank you for your time.

Troy

Ambigious Truth

Seigneur! Seigneur!
Musique et Poése m'ont conduit vers Toi: par image, par symbole, et par défault de vérite.
Seigneur! Seigneur!
Seigneur, illumine-moi de ta présence! Délivre-moi, enivre-moi, éblouis-moi pour toujours de ton excés de vérité...
(Il meurt.)

Lord! Lord!
Music and poetry have led me to Thee: by image, by symbol, and in default of Truth.
Lord! Lord!
Lord, illuminate me with Thy Presence! Deliver me, enrapture me, dazzle me for ever by Thy excess of Truth...

The Egyptians built the pyramids. The Romans built the Pantheon. The Saxons built Stonehenge. Messiaen built the opera St. François d'Assise. Messiaen's greatest masterpiece ends the life of St. Francis with lines inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas.

I wasn't raised religious. I am not a religious man. But I find that this quote resonates with my outlook. Perhaps my connotations of the word "Lord" are a bit more ambigious...

... but isn't that exactly it?

Field Report

Sean and I (The Mad Man's Laughter) have been hired by Pig Iron Theater to provide original composition and sound design for their upcomming production "Love Unpunished." Details on the actual vision of this production will follow in time, but for now, lets say that the set consists of a gigantic stairwell that resembles those found in... american skyscrapers...

Certain words seem to be thrown around quite comfortably now, including...
meditation on death. prayer.

So Sean and I took a trip to a VT college where Sean's incredible friend hooked us up with some amazing studio space. The first night we played in an auditorium the size of a basketball court. I didn't think much of it at first, but I began to feel a strange comfort and energy while simply being present. I finally took a moment to really look around and noticed that the entire place was made of beautiful wooden panels which stretched from floor to the hundred foot ceiling. It reminded me of the orchestral studios I've seen in pictures of the 1950s NBC symphony.



The gods couldn't have been more generous as there was a collection of handmade instruments which were gathered for an upcomming celebration for the late composer who had crafted them. Every once in a while a chime would ring on its own, or a string would vibrate without us touching it, and we couldn't help but smile thinking that the spirit of that old composer was watching us with pleasure.

We wrote a piece for three parts which was based on a 66 beat cycle. This was performed on gamelan style instruments-- microtone vibrations and all. Practicing the cycle for two hours put us all in a very comfortable, focused frame of mind which proved to be particularly effective come our improvisation time.

Among other things, we improvised on three timpani, vibes, chimes, gongs, strange 20ft banjos strung with piano strings, and of course, piano.

The music is very beautiful and interesting and I can't wait to write more about this as the process continues. I will say that I believe that the future of this project looks fertile enough to produce what I may consider my first piece of public art.

Feldman and Cage and Radio

Feldman: John, wouldn't you say that what we're dependent on we call reality and what we don't like we consider an intrusion in our life. Consequently, I feel that what's happening is that we're continually being intruded upon.

Cage: But that would make us very unhappy.

F: Or we surrender to it. And call it culture.

C: Call it culture?

F: Or whatever.

C: Give me an example. What would be an intrusion in your life that you would call culture?

F: Well this weekend we were on the beach, and on the beach these days are transistor radios blaring out rock and roll. All over.

C: Yes. And you didn't enjoy it?

F: Not particularly. I adjusted to it.

C: How?

F: By saying that... well, I thought of the sun and the sea as a lesser evil.

(Laughing)

C: Well, you know how I adjusted to that problem of the radio in the environment? Very much as the primitave people adjusted to the animals that frightened them and which probably, as you say, were intrusions. They drew pictures of them in their caves. And so I simply made a piece using radios. Now whenever I hear radios, even a single one-- not just twelve at a time, as you must have heard on the beach, at least-- I think they're all just playing my piece.

(Laughing)

F: That might help me next weekend.

C: And I listened to it with pleasure. And by pleasure I mean: I notice what happens. I can attend to it, rather than, as you say "surrender," I can rather pay attention and become interested in the... well what you're actually interested in is what superimposes what-- what happens at the same time together with what happens before and what happens after.

Recycle (part 1)

In my daydream this afternoon I somehow made my way back to the days following Hurricane Katrina. I remember visiting my folks and basking in the glorious poison of cable TV... something to the tune of Fox News. Yeah, I watch Fox News from time to time-- for entertainment purposes, surely. Sometimes there's enough balony to muster up a real full-belly laugh, or at the very least, I try to predict the material for tomorrow's Daily Show. Anyway, railing at Fox News is old hat, but like I said, it's just a daydream. I remember (maybe Hannity was it?) interviewing an environmentalist who had a lot to say about the man made set up for disaster. (Hannity was it?) then ended the interview saying "well, nature really owes us one now."

!

Can you say, Mr. Burns?

Lisa: You never heard of recycling? It means to reuse things to conserve our natural resources.

Mr. Burns: OH? So mother nature needs a favor?? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well, I say, HARD CHEESE.

got back (while he can)

sometime, to name a few,
we go back
oh, now i remember

that somewhere, in plain view,
a voice sustains
to whichever number

and if then, by some meager virtue
the havenots supplicate you

go back
go back
go back
go back
go back
go back
go back

Why I hate philosophy (but always come crawling back like a scared little girl)

It seems that debates over the logical conclusions resulting from logical conclusions have been centering around "postmodernism"-- whatever that means. As far as I see it, western rationalism interprets reality in an order somewhat resembling:

1. Biological recognition through sensation: hear, touch, feel, get burned!
2. Immediate "emotional" categorization-- assign the perception to one of two places: pay attention and remember or ignore.
3. OH i'm bored and lazy already. Lets skip a few steps.
4. Rationalism identifies the true nature of reality: nothing has objective value. Objective value is an illusion placed on an object/idea/behavior/etc. by the valuer. Value does exist, however it is determined by the limits of a system which are invented by a particular frame of consciousness. The limits of a frame of consciousness result from: survival necessity (nature), intrinsic artistic beauty (some bastard child of the survival necessity), and *eh em* nurture (for god sakes, I love E.T. no matter how sentimental I know it is. I love Reeses Pieces too). Sometimes value is shared by groups of people, sometimes not. (as a side note, I'm convinced that most "agreements" are a result of miscommunication. If spoken/written language was nearly as precise as our pure thoughts are, we would find that the subtleties of difference are humongous. But who knows, really?)
5. In other words, pure rationalism = nihilism.
5(a). Nihilism sucks.
6. Postmodernism says there is no objective value because we all place our own value on things. But even this observation has no objective value. The value of looking at things objectively is also an illusion. In a strange turn of events, postmodernism says to the observer/academic/gaunt cynic from the underground: Hello!! are you going to be part of the human race or are you just going to translate experience into an incredibly inefficient language of "if this, then that."
7. Rationalism, when not taken to its ultimate logical conclusion, is a mystical wonder that brings us buggies without horses and self-cooling houses and theories and berries* and cherries* (*all spoken with mid-western accent)
8. Rationalism, when taken to its logical conclusion, is a bitch that ignores the cries of her only child because, well... why not?


I hate philosophy because it teases a human out of their humanity. But once the human has entered that cold, naked place, oh how greatful they are for their fickle desires and senseless appreciations of beauty which require no philosophy to experience, but a shit load to explain.

But when there's not enough manual labor in one's life, they tend towards "higher things" and in our limitless boredom, we indulge in intellectualism like me on sour skittles... and eventually the tastebuds are burnt out and everything tastes like hurting.

Of course, I'm completely wrong about all of this. I'm generalizing, and incredibly lazy in my approach. I'm even indulging. Not to mention hypocritical.

Blah.