The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

March 3, 2012


eighteen and fourteen


http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/eighteen.mp3
http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/fourteen.mp3

or (for Chrome users): http://lounge.espdisk.com/archives/789

this beginning with an 18' solo on the Shehata oud, more complex
working harmonics and string noise, and ascending to the highest
spheres, beginning the reading of Lewis' The Monk, then moving
through descriptions of English gardens as natural imitations or
imitations of the natural in The Flower Garden, 1839, to the
pleasures of the minor ninth, which I assign to the fourteenth
half-tone near the sound-hole of the Shehata oud, resonating with
the lowest spheres or degrees of heavens, so difficult to reach
that I needs add an odd third or fourth in there, almost missing
entirely, the wonderment of the wood insisting that something is
there, present, extended from nearly the ending of the eighteen,
which I cannot reproduce, the crying of the oud as I attempt yet
higher and lower spheres, my own mistress, own master, my music
yet of my very own, yet sure not mine, already breathing, I am
given the gift of sleep once more, these ascensions and
descensions, these inclinings and declinings, I am forlorn, I
am lost, I approach myself, you are there, planets, fractions,
ice, the soft warmth of your body, so difficult to reach that
I add, that I may add, yet another note

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