Me:
Is it odd that I would randomly think of King Kong this morning, then see his face in the paper later in the afternoon?
Katie:
King Kong is kind of a part of life.
10.29.2007
10.24.2007
I'm always taken with the sight of pigeons flying in the deep underground tunnel at the 168th Street 1 station. To see these birds fly you take an elevator deep underground. Got me thinking about odd but workable adaptations to finding sustenance and dealing with one's environment, which poets have extensive experience with: In the natural world.
10.23.2007
notes on Either/Or ensemble at the Kitchen, 9.14
A performance of some graphics scores from composers featured in the Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music exhibit, playing in the upstairs gallery. New music of the 50s, 60s 70s, so: old new music. The gallery was totally packed to the point of people sitting on the floor on pillows -- younger people, mostly early 30s. Very quiet, acoustic instruments, no PA. The fan sound in the back of the room over-defined the noise floor a bit....
Robert Ashley:
Drones with shifting attacks, pulses and timbres. associations of weather: snow and wind.
Morton Feldman:
Cello solo. The dynamics were played a little too tentitivly, even for Feldman. All cello techniques delivered simultainiously in a kind of technique kaleidoscope. Beautiful.
Cornelious Cardew:
This performance needed more commitment. Fascinating transformations though. And excellent texturing and control.
Christian Wolf:
These pieces seems to show off the ensemble best. Loose unison lines, like small flecks of birds moving in the sky. Not loud at all but enough volume to hear a bit more meat in the tones. It sounded like a processes of people working together at some collective task, where it means quite different things to the people invovled, yet it's unified in it's manifestation.
Earl Brown:
Delicacy handled with aplomb. Change and landscape.
A performance of some graphics scores from composers featured in the Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music exhibit, playing in the upstairs gallery. New music of the 50s, 60s 70s, so: old new music. The gallery was totally packed to the point of people sitting on the floor on pillows -- younger people, mostly early 30s. Very quiet, acoustic instruments, no PA. The fan sound in the back of the room over-defined the noise floor a bit....
Robert Ashley:
Drones with shifting attacks, pulses and timbres. associations of weather: snow and wind.
Morton Feldman:
Cello solo. The dynamics were played a little too tentitivly, even for Feldman. All cello techniques delivered simultainiously in a kind of technique kaleidoscope. Beautiful.
Cornelious Cardew:
This performance needed more commitment. Fascinating transformations though. And excellent texturing and control.
Christian Wolf:
These pieces seems to show off the ensemble best. Loose unison lines, like small flecks of birds moving in the sky. Not loud at all but enough volume to hear a bit more meat in the tones. It sounded like a processes of people working together at some collective task, where it means quite different things to the people invovled, yet it's unified in it's manifestation.
Earl Brown:
Delicacy handled with aplomb. Change and landscape.
10.19.2007
Oliver Sacks at the Psychiatric Institute, talking about his new book, Musicophilia:
The border between the ear and mind.
The guy can talk. Gotta love that he went at least an hour over his allotted time. Mostly anecdotal clinical stuff about auditory hallucination- usually from patients with some degree of deafness. You think there's a radio playing but it suddenly occurs to you that the same twenty Irish folk songs are repeating- all of which you remember from your childhood. Inter-cranial iPod. One patient heard a splendid version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm followed by thunderous applause. The Hallucinations can also be triggered by cochlear-toxic substances - too much aspirin or quinine for instance. The music is not always to one's taste, and it's impossible to turn it off. Sometimes frightening, especially at onset. One "atonal" (serial?) composer patient heard only "corny melodies." Some people hear repeating fragments over and over … like minimalism?
After a concussion a patient who had previously been an avid listener, concert attendee and collector lost all interest in music, which then produced total indifference in him.
Amusia: inability to hear chords as one thing - the tones sound like "separate laser beams."
The border between the ear and mind.
The guy can talk. Gotta love that he went at least an hour over his allotted time. Mostly anecdotal clinical stuff about auditory hallucination- usually from patients with some degree of deafness. You think there's a radio playing but it suddenly occurs to you that the same twenty Irish folk songs are repeating- all of which you remember from your childhood. Inter-cranial iPod. One patient heard a splendid version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm followed by thunderous applause. The Hallucinations can also be triggered by cochlear-toxic substances - too much aspirin or quinine for instance. The music is not always to one's taste, and it's impossible to turn it off. Sometimes frightening, especially at onset. One "atonal" (serial?) composer patient heard only "corny melodies." Some people hear repeating fragments over and over … like minimalism?
After a concussion a patient who had previously been an avid listener, concert attendee and collector lost all interest in music, which then produced total indifference in him.
Amusia: inability to hear chords as one thing - the tones sound like "separate laser beams."
10.14.2007
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