Le Merle

a betrayal of material
a subversion in order to get inserted into
the “canon” ASAP
packaging my own music in a commercially
acceptable way
remixing? more like DE-mixing!
titillating rhythm
the dumbing-down of material
cop-out solutions
weird self-fulfilling popularity /
mass marketing fantasy
sick concessions to intelligibility
done with a sick heart and bad conscience
Ostranenie.
yanked out of the “canon” wholesale
more synthetic, plastic and more insertable
a music which exists in the ineffectual zone
musak-like substance, almost Indian-raga
meditative but also dangerous
remember those religious condemnations
of backwards-masking in rock and roll
which made an impact on me in 7th grade…
what a turn-on!!
confusing each other mutually
are they friends or foes???
make the backwards-ness the subject of the thing
play into the satanic-religious side of it
using the most basic techniques of “manipulation”
traditional music pronounced badly
the performer has now been absorbed
into the weirdness
it’s like talking to someone who you
don’t know that well
the patina is always on the verge of detaching itself
this almost makes him feel competitive and
the Beethoven comes out of that
getting in the way of the performer’s persona
yes, in a clichéd layer-revealing sense
as if a mechanical piano pedal pressed down
regularly but nervously
continuous rotating squabble
without “distortion”…the man-made kind, of course!
some kind of “Mahler Adagio” (???)
in the background of all this CRUD,
STALACTITE material
it’s almost an accident that this kind of thing
could be revealed in the first place
“zero-in” on detail and clog-up with reverb
layering (piling up) until its “mambo-ness” is annulled
but it should always be FLAT
the pianist might almost be “incidental” to the action
AWOL, MIA, picking his nose unawares
the Hindemithian neo-classical and its backwards
subversion
the ultimate desire for conformity
seeing what you want to see, hearing what
you want to hear
The Social Climbing of an Ordinary Material
But he works very much in the dark.
actual words, not moaning grunting à la Jarrett
the baroque infatuation
These are lofty subjects.
sort of an “erasable” mambo with lots
of incidental harmonic activity
the two yin and yang Nudist materials
DUB: muddy sound
the CD should occasionally be “badly made”
the murder of mediatized reality
parallels between the actual videoed burglary
and the musical burglary in progress
block the video proceedings physically
you can take out the external noises and amplify them
EXISTENTIAL slithers in rather larger units
ultimately shifty, incredibly intelligent and manipulative
instructions remains hopeful and naive
and somewhat puritanical
the air-raid siren in Jabbering-Sousa
Sensuality is important to me…but contextualized
That doesn’t mean you can’t be bluffed
through the nose
the victim of a serious cover-up
working with digital tools is somewhat
like sculpting anyway I amplify its anonymity to drastically
exaggerated proportions
an epigrammatically elusive statement
a strange unexplainable ICON
a nondescript picture
Anonymously pompous
(It’s my first orchestra piece.)
It’s just a strange little construction,
which happens and then goes away.
“This is what’s gonna happen, folks!!”
an Oliver Twist sort of story
My dreams are often geographical
some concrete, basement-like structure,
painted white walls, pipage everywhere
Concert ritual does involve after all,
a before and after too.
the dreams one has for greatness
making a mountain out of a molehill
Of course it won’t happen in any kind of traditional
proliferation technique.
Frankly, Part I just exposes these potentials and
it doesn’t amount to much.
the performer repeatedly demonstrates his
“ABILITY” (or “TALENT”)
(this could also include some picnic materials
in a sub-strata level)
it really is background music for a
Public Service Announcement
the idiosyncrasies of Bacharach especially would
be leveled out, flattened
That doesn’t sound like much of a tribute, put like that!
Even his saddest songs are upbeat
If you begin distorting tempo, you get something
quite removed from Bacharach
something rather less positive
just below the threshold of “sprightliness”
You know…quick is positive, slow is negative?
forcing one category into another
remove the defining characteristics of a thing
and then examine what you’re left with
He seems to be steering Bacharach towards
the darker side
he amplifies everything, pulls every emotion
to its breaking point
until you eventually wind up with the vocals
and the stand-up routine
Material doesn’t matter
But we know now that even the drone isn’t rock-bottom,
it’s actually copyrightable
This material wasn’t meant to emanate from that piece
in that re-contextualised bubblegum way.
it’s reformatting itself down to the original idea
these private moments which no-one
was ever meant to see
there certainly isn’t enough humor in today’s music
I’m fed up with what Grant Applications
force me to do with my work
Maybe a kind of novella? A tract? A love story?
I like that moment in What the World Needs Now,
where you only have the piano chords
ABSOLUTELY NO DIALECTIC.
short barrages of destroyed soundfiles
the Gamelan reality
like playing on a synth
backwards versions of all this material
“mocking the mud”
Can do the Serial Satire!
the so-called “deconstructed mambo“ material
this is the third level of material
Forget incorporating that into the tape part.
The primeval goop
which seems impossibly essentializable
(But wait!)
It’s not a good place to be in.
What I DON’T WANT is some kind of pseudo
Reynolds-like über-structure
avoiding dealing with others head-front
he can do things really proficiently, but chooses
not to sometimes
…or is he just a bad pianist…
a really broad satire on IRCAM
which is why The Wrong Technique can happen
It couldn’t be a worst time to be centrestage
Make no mistake: this entire piece is also a metaphor
what community I have I’m about
to completely alienate
That doesn’t make those little incremental steps
any easier to swallow.
he’s really the little commercial devil inside all of us
The fact is, I always consider selling out but with clauses
(which would still allow me to make my statement
about selling out)
completely acceptable, but completely WRONG
an elaborate SEDUCTION sequence
an incredibly creative, sleazy, manipulative,
charismatic, persuasive SEDUCTOR
an unwitting modernistic, intense,
“artistic” SEDUCTEE
confused as to his veritable purpose in life
Maybe it’s really only MUD. And mud eventually
washes away…it is only dust.
pentimento green-curtain multileveled language
it’s like my bread and water
I could live on it forever, at least I think I could
I’m actually considering though dropping
the whole schtick
never looking the material straight in the eyes
which play are you talking about?
Refusal to follow through on anything
Sliding down this irredeemable, entropic path
towards diversity again?
his reluctance to package himself is funny to watch
he doesn’t care about the Bumblebee
just working through the changes man
take THAT, David Mamet!
the pedal-blues is pleasant enough
the pedal sound is so much more interesting than
what he’s doing underneath
redoing the “mud of Ives mambo”
like making fun of a cripple basically, that BASE.
He’s just too stuck in his ivory tower
to begin understanding
what it means to “reach out commercially”
this work is not so NEGATIVE after all
his first attempts are painfully awful
coming to life is a violent thing, no?
The CD becomes intensely pushy
though he’s REALLY charismatic
maybe he’s not all that BENEVOLENT
a register which no-one can hear anyway
(my preferred register)
come with me, I’ll show you a whole BAG of tricks
you can use to get into the groove, bud.
transpose way down some chorale material
Give up dude. Whatever you can do, I can do better.
But listen, have I got a whole array of goodies for you
that you can use!
he’s really an impotent dude who flashes his lights
and effects
but really is a PHONY
He can do the really obvious magic tricks
Me and Prospect Down By the Schoolyard.
This paradigm shift on the part of the pianist…
is it healthy?
Look at how stupid he looks!
devoid of any kind of REAL commercial manipulation
Dark or light? Hard to say.
you need an instructions sheet to figure out what to do
with this raw choral material
The weird shit you can make with LEGO
the preplanned condos they set out for you
liking the wartime devastation, thinking
these ruins are beautiful.
building is better, just build, build, build,
forget the past, let ruins decay
can make noise out of a file if the window is small enough
this is an unsanctioned version of
the Theatre of Eternal Music
this makes the pianist want to GO FOR
the big gesture
“OK, bad example” — lemme try something else
on yah“
chipping away at his block of granite
“is modernism the only way to be truly alive??”
it’s really a private RITUAL, which you (the audience)
are not invited to
There should always be a “Laurel and Hardy” side
Start having a good time
a whole lotta nothing, just to get the piece going
in the right direction
just like all those bad salesmen
in the way their stressed-out defeated
soul radiates outwards
See, the CD wants to commercialize the pianist.
always looking out for what’s “best” for his kid
what I do is completely inconsequential
and deliberately anti-social
I am happy in the dark chipping away at my reality
look at the misfit, the mutant in front of you
trying to be polite, social
if anyone were interested enough to ask,
which I can’t assume they are unfortunately
The CD’s frequent boring attempts
he is essentially good, but misled
He is like a parent, come to think of it: he wants
what he never had.
his reality is STILL good!
you either melt or you get the fuck out and fast
The pianist makes the bad decision to jump in
but is it truly bad?
chipping the modernist marble
“And where are we, but further into this morass…”
this could mean a LOT of transposition
you can USE this, not be used BY it
getting lost in the implications
come on, that’s not really how it happens!
two types of attention manipulation
run of the mill stylistic cereal-box-toys
He’s concentrated, you’re not…your society forbids it
it’s a REAL STRUGGLE
we’ve been faked to the hilt by now
just a bunch of singles floating along
it was at the beginning of my experiments with
bodily impulses
I think you really can hear the conventional
sonata-form
…with CODA tagged on at the end
I think you could also tag “modern” onto it
sensitive dependence on initial conditions maybe?
where the Prayer musics can coexist
don’t do this for EVERY Bacharach tune
the computer who loses his temper, gets pissed off
loses his usual Zen demeanor
his shiftiness oozes out uncontrollably
I have a real alchemical perspective on material.
Anything can be transformed into gold….
or shit if that’s what you’re into.
They hit you regardless of what they’re made of
19th century European baloney
personalized, monogrammed material
I think he called them “waves” or something
the one that you have at the grocery store
my materials are not worth talking about
it wears it on its sleeve in a very macho way
finding your “voice” and other such cliches
there is sort of a climax about 3/4 of the way through…
the “ragtime”
he continues plodding along with his David metaphor
But he IS taking it in!
The pianist really takes the CD seriously
more meta-structure…as if we really needed any
A whole miniature city preserved in formaldehyde.
WHAT is going on in that little sub-neighborhood?
Ominously lit school buildings.
What is “The Boulevard”??
were wars fought on that grassy knoll?
It’s limiting, but in the way I want it to be.
within the Ladies Morning Musical Club for instance
where they would probably all be throwing up
in the first 10 minutes
or vacate the premises.
the outward-demonstrations of Zorn
a strait-jacketed, suit-attired “concert pianist”
who may or may not have some serious impediments
It’s a counter-paradigm work.
I made sure it always happened within a glorified,
ecstatic context.
Victo is no different from the Ladies Morning
Musical Club
Concert music is dead! Dead as a doornail.
More power to those who DON’T
understand something!
The Brahms audience had to basically
doubt everything they heard
clearly fake emotional displays are almost
universally rejected
the insincere paradigm, which occurs repeatedly
in counterpoint
The two are not synchronized,
they fall apart constantly
What about oral tradition? Answer: it takes time.
I’m much more interested in blurring boundaries
who is this person on stage in front of you?
Down with well-oiled systems!
Sure, they can be useful. But now we have DVD.
But the polemics continue…
and the resistance is ever present
PART I is almost a thesis-defense!
but tainted by showmanship
an entropic mudslide away from his potential client
If I could, I would forever live on that mudslide.
It’s a great place.
“did I just have a stroke or did the lights
really go down?”
you get the whole piece for a song actually…
getting absorbed into preexisting strategies
When did concert music die?
I always take the path of MOST resistance
like your mind is turning to sludge
it’s the zapper’s nightmare
it’s like he’s been patient for so long
and then he shoots his wad all at once,
wastes everything.
covering up his embarrassing activities of the last
20 minutes
We’re talking content again.
Then the message becomes “expressive” and
“descriptive”…and “programmatic”
the composer is trying to put one over on you
McLuhan anyone?
dumbed-down for your average Joe…who by the way
isn’t that stupid
not a trap door into a mollycoddling environment
Once you step on stage you’re committing
a political act
whether you LIKE it or not
inhabitants of another century
the screeching car noise / ventilation system
of the Disabled School
I cringe at the tactics that this salesman is employing.
But OK, the pianist IS advocating!
yes, maybe I AM the salesman…or perhaps
I was once the pianist.

(October 2001)