Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1211201302150.23501@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: on virtuosity
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:07:21 -0500 (EST)
on virtuosity in all my years, this comes through, is that of the aesthetics of difficulty - _not,_ here, _virtuosity,_ but or virtuosity. my music takes virtuosity to its limit, not through, virtuosity utterly thesis, virtuosity is useless today, virtuosity is useless today underneath the sheets. we're all player pianos, the instrument tending towards damage, virtuosity, materiality, inconceivable dedication and virtuosity, or virtuosity. my music takes virtuosity to its limit, not through, and that is all, over eighteen of all my years. http://lounge.espdisk.com/archives/980 I wanted to call this, cold sun, kalte sonne, virtuosity without purpose, one instrument after another, notes piling up, proving I can play like this, but to what end. all this practice in order to conceive of a music on and through wood, which itself needs tending; I move from one to another as if in conquest of the Imaginary. this is momentary, this is soon forgotten. I will place my sign, I will signify these notes, for example, already on the edge, on the way to demise. I think of the limits and uselessness of virtuosity, the constant tending of instruments, equipping them for speed and mobility, the world passing by, the jet stream of the world, the way that these sorts of skill are no longer valued, that they are atavistic, throwback, the enunciation of an infinite talent that never existed in the first place. I cannot slow enough to play the limit-tune, the continuous sound, the drone without development; I have worked myself into a corner, one in which the abject rules and strengthens the night, or the uneasiness between night and day, when things almost fall apart, lose verisimilitude. notes fly from me. extraneous sounds inhabit me. my hands and arms and fingers, involved, in bondage, my lips performing what my lips perform, as if sound were immanent, as if speed were my fundamental particles my cousins, sister of kaon, brother of higgs. I question now this virtuosity, this demonstration, this showing-off, this riding ride, this vector, this multiple-tasking multiplicity, this controlling, this releasing, this breathing, this breathless. now this is breathless and I will sit and practice and play alone, one after another of instrument and sound, and I will feel like a god, like a goddess, like an arched vector, like a bow, like a bowing, and then it stops and I may record, inscribe, listen, thinking, I am like this, like an orchard, like a shell, this I have done, this having been done, and then there will be silence or everyday sweep and seep of sound and adage from street or rook, and of them more silence and more silence, then will I have done with them, as if any had been done, the silence like death looming, the quiet like the quiet of eternal and incessant night, and my skills are shown for what they are, poor and tawdry, and useless yet again, and of no consequence, no utterance or speech, none of saying or having said or having been said, nothing, and my world curls back into a lip or nub. then it will be that failure and absurdity reign and rain in my heart and hearth, and there will be nothing to be done, and nothing that has been done," he said, and that, the thinking of that and its writing and saying, is my own, and then begins there, or here, for you, imagining useless virtuosity, driving a racing vehicle for example, winning game after game of chess, thinking through the farthest reaches of bell's inequality, I am sitting in a room, there are instruments waiting, potential only of past worlds, I am overwhelmed, I am overcome, I can do nothing, I no longer can do anything, I can play nothing, I no longer can play anything, I can sing nothing, I no longer can sing anything, I await nothing, I am no longer awaiting anything, I am nothing, I am no longer anything, Tue Nov 20 00:45:46 EST 2012 Tue Nov 20 12:54:07 EST 2012