Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1112201307510.2897@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: korea
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:09 -0500 (EST)
korea http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/yi.mp3 oud, double-course strings played individually: i worked this out originally for cobza; here it creates bell-like tones resonant with the poetics of the origin of the world. i hallucinated korea, playing the figures of goddesses and dragons from the great tomb. i hallucinated figures making their way slowly across the stretch of strings, roads of limited durations. i hallucinated them literally, my eyes closed, head pressed against the belly of the instrument, its vibrations my very own, the singular music of historical memory occasioned by the figures; it was their memory, not mine, they communicated through the murmur of the wood. for this is a strange oud, almost drum-like in the warped surface of the top, which speaks among us, uncontrollable. blind i played, my hearing opened to the circuitry of particles announcing the end of history, but what an end, of the yi dynasty, emerging from the future anterior of this memory, accountancy. the figures are there, enmeshed in narrative, but obdurate, hardened beyond all belief, among stories and enunciation: in other words, they remain present, surely watching me, half-ghost, out of the corner of their eyes. incomprehensible silence, they remain in that eternity i can only dream of; in my dreaming i play the surface and depths of the oud, i pass the playing on, i am transfigured, i am within the circuit where they remain, until i leave the world.