Welcome To My Mind...

You want to know what it's like to live in my head? Here's a taste:

I dreamed last night that I had a meeting with Amit Goswami, a well known quantum physicist who has appeared pretty extensively of late talking about spirituality and science. You may know him from his interviews in the documentary What the Bleep Do We Know and from his books, the most popular of which is the Self Aware Universe.

As fate would have it, Professor Goswami was my physics professor in college (this is true, not part of the dream) and he taught the class with a great deal of humor, much of which was sadly lost on the overly large lecture hall. I learned a lot in that class and had a good time in the process. Goswami began writing ages ago as a Sci Fi writer and he often shared his and other authors' stories with our classes then quizzed us on whether or not the technology described in the stories would work (or not) based on what we learned about physics. He also joked a lot (seriously lost on this sadly stoic class) saying things like, "Of course the larger the mass, the greater the gravitational attraction. However, if you have a large friend and a small friend and the small friend says to your large friend, 'I'm attracted to you' - I don't think they are talking about gravity!"

Anyway, in my dream, for whatever reason, I was having lunch at Amit Goswami's house. He was a gracious host and we sat down to have a cup of tea before we were to eat lunch. He informed me at this point that another guest, a good friend of his would be joining us, but was delayed at the auto mechanic getting his oil changed and he thought we should wait until his friend arrived to eat. That was fine with me.

It turns out the friend was Ru Paul.

Apparently Amit and Ru were great friends, and so, needless to say, we had a wonderfully glamorous lunch.

I bet you wish you were me!

Photo taken by MS just off of Canal St. NYC

When Words Fail, Make Noise

It's interesting being a one-man band. I'm learning and devising all kinds of ways to make myself sound like an orchestra. What happened just less than a year ago with the creation of Ngoma Lungundu and then Songs of the Thirsty Sword Part I was only a ground-breaking for something new and more complex.

It didn't occur to me to do it this way - of course, the technology didn't exist then, at least not like I have it in my hands now. Furthermore, once you've got the technology, there is a learning curve. It's easy to create what's immediately obvious and to be honest I think that Songs.. part I is exactly that.

What I am working on right now is the next step - now that I know the grammar and syntax, I can use those to make my own sentences. This last few days has been exciting, working on the mastering of the recordings from last year. And to simultaneously be working on the work that I will premiere next, and these works consist of a complexity that is unusual for interactive work of this kind. I'm not revealing any 'secrets' at this point. But the initial workshopping of the pieces is alarming, surprising, gratifying.

It has been my goal for four years or so now to create work that is as complex and difficult as Ferneyhough's compositions, but executable by someone of limited or no musical ability. That is what I'm achieving right now. What's more exciting is that the work is still accessible and isn't in any way compromised. As a composer, it allows me to write in my true voice while making the work practical on a performance level.

Listening: Pnau, Empire of the Sun, Paul Horn (still!), Japanese Traditional Music, Andrew Poppy.

Oh, Woe is Me

Been looking at local art galleries - I've joked that it's somewhat like bird watching; I'm hoping to see some Art but there are no guarantees! I've been surfing the 'net for inspiring new music as well - not much luck there either. Seems like the Arts are floundering in a sea of confusion and mediocrity.

This is feeding a sense of malaise and frustration with the World@Large here in my Studio as I am so close to finishing a new recording.

What seems to pass for 'new' and 'cutting edge' is generally 'cute,' 'kitchy,' and unchallenging, at best. Check out Chuck Amirkhanian's Otherminds archive at www.radiom.org. I'm listening to Daniel Bernard Roumain's Angelou string quartet. I've avoided it for some years, quickly understanding Roumain to be a faddist, and yes, I stand by my critique. He's not the best of musicians for starters, his composition is lacking in any sense, and the gimmick-ridden Angelou suffers profoundly from a lack of ... composition! There's simply no interest in it, no development, no quirks, no surprises, it's exactly what I expected - that ol' New York 'I Wish I Were a Rock-N-Roller' fluff. This is the stuff that the Europeans, when they ask for American Music, specifically pin-point and say, "NOT this. Something new." I guess I have to ask, what is the point of this piece of music? How is it expanding the art, or confronting a genre? What does it accomplish musically on its own? Does it have a context beyond the moment in which it was created? Was that context relevant at the time? Does the music accomplish what the composer intended? And, at the most superficial level, how does it appeal to craft? Is it well crafted? Well executed?

I will give Roumain kudos for energy, but not more than that. It frustrates me that audiences respond to this kind of work with any enthusiasm whatsoever. Forgive me for being a curmudgeon, but I'm weary of hearing the same old thing over and over again.

So how does this have an impact on what's happening in my studio? I've been dialoguing with a group of local artists, visual artists, who are all suffering the same malaise. One put it so well in our field-trip to investigate local galleries yesterday. At this point in history (this also apply to music) is understood as a commodity, and so is taken to be a luxury. But we all know that's not the case, that Art is a valuable expression of the Times, of Ideals and Ideas and Philosophies; it's the Conscious expression of the Collective Unconscious, and the means by which we find self-identity as a culture, a community and a people. I'll elaborate on this further (on another website - keep an eye out for it). So the work that an engaged artist creates is not a commodity, but the expression of an idea, a point of view. That is to say, the physical manifestation of work, i.e. painting, photograph, sculpture, is not the end itself, but is a byproduct of a tracing of thought and idea. This makes the work valuable beyond its physical materials and gives it the uniqueness that makes it valuable. And important to the times in which it is created.

The same goes for music. Concert Music in the US suffered from the fear of an inattentive audience. So it turned to popular forms, pop music, electronics, rock. That was cute at the moment and I won't deny it opened some doors, even for myself. But it quickly outlived its necessity when it didn't progress. By reducing Concert Music to the lowest common denominator, it didn't achieve the status of pop iconography, but retained the same low listenership, the same limited audience that it had before, and became dated. This is the kind of fad that we will look back on and groan about with an embarrassed sigh. It's not the stuff Beethoven based his work on.

So, this is my statement and pledge to continue to look forward, to hope to expand some ideas and present some challenges and ask for thoughtfulness on the part of my listeners.

The Attentive Listening Lab (watch my home page and the MAS-Lab home page for updates) is in the process of germinating and will begin to take form in the next 12 months. My own work... well, it's a step-by-step process and I'm not going to make any pretense about succeeding - I have to be fair and honest, because I don't know if I'm succeeding. If you've ever heard Chuck Wuornin talk, my gosh, he really has an axe to grind about the state of New Music. And he is 100 % right, but, unfortunately, he doesn't have the solution. He's only identified the problem. That's a first step and maybe the best one can hope for. I'm ambitious though and believe with a little self-application that more can be accomplished.

In the meantime, I need to sit with my pencil and paper in my studio and tackle the issues that have been rolling around in my head like marbles in a tin can...

Listening: Sam Sparro, Jean-Michel Jarre, Paul Horn.

Where the He!! Have you Been??

I've been working on a new blog on WordPress - yay! Or not. It will be a place where I offer my very opinionated voice about recordings, performances, other-people's work.

Where have I been - I've been working at the Art Gallery and getting up-to-date with my own production company and non-profit .org MAS-Lab. We're reforming, re-naming. More on that soon.

Also madly working on Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders), the recording of the concert I toured last fall and will be touring the next few months. Yes, there is new material on the way too, but one thing at a time!

Meanwhile I've become hopelessly addicted to Graham Norton... Graham, take me away! (No, really, Graham - take me away...)

Listening: James Bond sound tracks, Jean-Michel Jarre: Oxygène Live In Your Living Room, Carl Craig: Landcruising, Diana Ross: Diana, and anything by David Bowie, plus a smattering of Philip Glass. Watch my WordPress Blog for my thoughts on these!