Dear Allan you are a master in thinking with whatever
love Annie On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 7:23 PM Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> wrote: > > > On Music > > http://www.alansondheim.org/esaz.jpg > https://youtu.be/RtY56tQJcBU > > I don't consider myself a musician, by which I mean I don't > identify as such. I took a few piano lessons when I was young and > was told I had no ability. I have a hard time discerning > intervals unless I'm playing them or playing with someone. Years > later I took a classical guitar lesson from a woman in Israel who > told me I was holding the guitar wrong (blues-style). I ended up > giving her a lesson. My parents hated the music. Before my father > died I asked him what was wrong with it, he said 'boom boom boom' > - that it was all one beat. I realized he had never listened to > it, just as he had never read the books I wrote or appreciated > the art I gave him and my mother (after he died, I found my art > in a corner on the basement floor, moldy and unsaveable). But I > began playing after hearing Lightning Hopkins and then found a > voice. Then I lost that voice and didn't play for years, after > recording for a couple of labels. Then I found my voice again > and have played since. Then I thought I should go in a direction > of potential ugliness, that I owed nothing to anyone. Now there > are maybe twenty albums (cds, online, records, even cassettes), > most out of print. I play with a few people or solo or with Azure > who sings. I listen and know a number of jazz players; they never > seem to listen or comment on my work. We get almost no reviews, > one only on Plaguesong (ESP), the last. I don't play classical or > jazz or folk or world music. As a result, there's almost no > audience either. I'm grateful for anyone who listens and even on > occasion supports what we do, what I do. > > I'm not comfortable playing, but that's comfortable, that > discomfort. I'm used to it. I don't consider myself a "musician" > but I don't consider myself a theorist or writer or new media > theorist or performer or any other category. I seem to be an > outlier which is an interesting and frustrating position. I'm the > first to admit I'm the master of nothing. > > Whatever else I do, I write, do research, practice daily. I'm > limited. I'm very very lucky to have a few people around me who > do understand what I'm doing. > > I can always do music; it's just the matter of picking up an > instrument and playing it. Writing is very hard, especially if > I'm writing theory; I feel the academy breathing down my neck, > thinking I've got it all wrong. I assume I've got it all wrong, > which is why I've written about defuge (early on), and the > fundamental concept of failure (which seems somewhat absent from > theory, or rather theorists might theorize failure, but it's an > object, not the internal abject and problematic effluvia that I > think it really is). Much to my serious horror, I practice my > thought on myself; I never escape. > > Here is an older piece that relates; I've isolated it for another > potential publication: > > "(in the mountains, 4) > > Tendenz > > What does it mean to tend the net, to tend to it? What is tending > something, tending-to something, in general. > > Tending-towards is a falling, tending a vigil. > > What does it mean to be vulnerable, open, to dream oneself into > someone else? > > Vulnerability is a failing, foreclosing, the drama of > displacement. > > What does it mean to transform objects, spaces, trajectories, > textualities? > > Transformation is the remnant of magic obliterated by the > counting and accountability of step-wise procedures; spaces are > their domains, trajectories the ensurance of repetition, and > textualities, their betrayal. > > To hold a step accountable: to construct it by rules and > repetitions from the previous step, but also to find it whole, > intact, within the previous step. To find it whole, not by > parallelism, but by fragments of logic, micro-domains. > > Tending-towards is the vigil of the parallel, tending falls > towards the object which has become the subject. > > But vulnerability is also an opening towards tending, reversal of > foreclosing towards foreopened, replacement by the parallel, > empathy, the drama of the other, the subject, not transformation. > > Even here, even within all of this." > > __ > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >
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