poetry
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Visual Culture
Maybe the Instagrammers are right— a photo’s worth is more than words’ affect shown besting the described colors not letters retro-filtered immediately digested chronicling proof that a selfie’s gift is adoring the present. Continue reading
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Autechre Trust Their Code
Autechre trust their code more than their biological machines to make unsounded sounds ahead of culture beyond your opinion at home in concert darkness pushing your senses for sixty minutes of imagining how much more music can be. Continue reading
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Trusting Music
Once in a while when the music plays I have the sensation beyond the notes of being guided towards giving up my sense of direction leaving the navigation to the composer who has a plan for reminding me how to follow not lead believe in the gesture as if an unspoken lesson is that listening… Continue reading
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Miles Turns His Back
Miles turns his back on us because his playing isn’t to entertain but for himself on music’s own terms and tells us not to fear mistakes because there are none when you’re making something from nothing so it’s not that he doesn’t care— in playing the horn he cares so much he’s already figured… Continue reading
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Unknowing
It sounds new age (it’s not) instead of an exceptional technique, gifts of novice: that first time when you don’t know what you’re doing so head first you dive into its rhythm (a bypassing move) swift and sure trusting form is sound context becomes clear means generate ends because this first time practice beats theory… Continue reading
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Two Keys
The thing to do says the artist, is to begin anywhere— so get going and make something up. That’s how it starts. But there are two keys to ongoingness. The first key is withholding judgment about your beginning, going and making. The second key is moving it forward by asking “Why not this?” over and… Continue reading
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That Voice
The woman at the grocery checkout is the superstar of the place running on charm from Spanish to English inflected —How are you my dear?— moving accents offbeat, making thyme a sensible purchase that voice shape shifts and calibrates a thousand sensations, that voice bears gifts of depth and presence, that voice was randomly assigned… Continue reading
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The Improviser
Improvising is a litmus of the thinking under the notes the knowledge behind the gestures the taste over the technique: hands on strings the musician tunes into concord then embarks slow and spare bird flight from a distance sounding the scale notes one after another, climbing tracking free meter beats, counting slow phrases, color the mood circle… Continue reading
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Counterpoint
Lessons on how to live are everywhere sounding in the relationships among human part-writing watch how people move their melodies along with and against the tunes of others to create reluctant harmony or passing polyrhythm notes interdependent yet disguised as offset, mirror, retrograde, inversion following rules to avoid parallel thoughts and move in contrary motion… Continue reading
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The Composer
The process sometimes begins by imagining an impossible place remote overlooking the ocean in Malibu or Majorca or Milos. The house is white concrete, all square corners and panorama glass. The sunlight falls into empty interiors leaving rectangular shadows that lengthen as the afternoon ticks by. The wind sings through open windows, the ocean below churns… Continue reading
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