created 2024-07-11, & modified, =this.modified
I had never heard of it but I like Greenaway I was surprised that he was involved. Basically it’s four roughly hour long series of performances, accompanied by discussions by the artists. Not quite “Get Back” but covering representative performances.
Cage’s episode covers this performance on his 70th birthday that is all of his performances played together. Monk’s episode is focused on dolmen music and turtle dreams (there was a piece of pre-edit Turtle Dreams I hadn’t seen before, which I liked). Cage is goofy in a way, and playful. He’s full of humorous anecdotes. The performances though are all very serious here.
The structure of his episode had me thinking this, being part of a failed experiment. Watching people in this john cage performance, a bunch of college music students sitting around, and there’s various abstruse sounds that are difficult to “enjoy” traditionally in a simple human way (not saying they aren’t possible to be enjoyed, but you get my point - it almost seems like the act of it being performed is excessive to the concept).
John Cage is in the background, observing people performing his work - in various ways. He’s an observer of his own compositions. I want to put myself into the position he’d be in, to be observing a piece and it is clear that it is a failure he is inhabiting (“caged” in). (Not saying this is the case here, but it made me think of this scenario - in which you are performing and it clear something isn’t working as intended.) Music is funny because there’s some kind of expectation of an emotional reaction from it, even more than visual art. So you are kind of subverting it by it being so cerebral, like everyone at this Cage performance is obviously in on it. Nobody is wandering in expecting a taylor swift experience. The majority of the experience doesn’t have the traditional musical content of a foot tapping experience, or sadness.
Cage is explicit here in carving out unintentional music (there’s this part where he’s in an anechoic chamber and hears his body producing sounds, and says he can travel in the space of intent or everything else, and he choses the later.) I’m often wondering, why am I even listening to music? What am I seeking from each song? Why not listen to the same track over and over? Why create it? I’m probably just like you in that each morning I’m seeking new sounds/songs.
It also occurred to me this is being in a failed music experiment happens every time you see a DJ. The DJ is selecting tracks, and they notice the crowd isn’t feeling it. There’s a lull. People are barely moving, and getting off the floor.
I lost the code in the great 2019 drive failure but I had this project that I wanted to bring back. I had came up with it and then later read the PKD short “Preserving Machine.” PKD story is about this scientist who stores lost sounds in a post-disaster world in creatures. The project was these creatures that were basically sound (MIDI) with DNA that would combine and restructure. The idea was basically like seeing a still body of water, and putting a microphone beneath it and hearing the sounds of the creatures below. You’d put some sound creatures in (existing purely as sound) and then return, probe the surface and songs would emerge, mutate and warp over time. Even dropping a sound file could act like a source of food, which would be manipulated in the pond and emerge differently.
A thought from the Meredith Monk segment. This was part of her career where she’s moving toward experimenting with film as part of her music. (Earlier this year I think I mentioned seeing some of her films, which I didn’t really like unfortunately). Anyway she says something pretty obvious roughly “images are also musical, and the way they are put together is musical.” Once again this is obvious but I realized it was related to this admittedly basic project that I had going on in the background. At the start of the month I picked out a track that I wanted to based some recent observations on. Basically I laid down the music and then was adding clips of interesting things I saw while living my life. I’d keep the project live/open on the computer, and say I see some shadow that’s interesting (truthfully boring), I’d drop that onto the track where it felt right. I just bring this up because I’m at the point in the song where there’s this discordant shift in tone (maybe not my favorite part, apparently - and perhaps fittingly, the lore is that it is part of a live performance that the performer liked and spliced the audio into the album.) I just highlighted this because I realized that I would have to now go out into my life and either find something, or live in a moment dictated by the intensity of the music at that time. As a simpler example, maybe the beat picks up so relaxing shots of grass aren’t going to cut it. Long and tedious way of getting to the point that there’s a way to get a song to “run” through your life in a way, if you wanted to
There was a time when the Glass group all stopped by conicidence, half of the people didn’t notice. it rarely happens.
It rarely repeats. Feels repetitious
“Repetitive structures are a procedure another alternate procedure to narrative procedures, that’s really the whole of it. In fact the music repeats literally very little.”
Funny things will happen, like for example Michael recently plays opposite of me. If he grabs two pages (of composition) instead of one, turns the page and bingo a few seconds later he’s two minutes later into he piece and it’s just chaos. What we do as a rule is we all have to follow someone and as Michael’s left hand is the most dominant rhythmic device of the music, we follow his left hand.
I’m the center of the time, being the player of the left hand base. Keep it all together really.