Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1308301147270.14120@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: pain noh gain
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 11:48:54 -0400 (EDT)
pain noh gain http://www.alansondheim.org/painstretch.mp3 i will punish my fingers until they behave. my muscle memory must form an indefinite set ready at a moment's notice to adapt to another instrument, another scale. i must learn how to search for consonance on the single string, how to double-play the double-string, how to leap across the multiples. i must learn backwards and forwards bowing and furious arpeggios. i must learn to stretch my fingers past all endurance to reach the holes on the longer end-blown flutes, and to form unisons and fifths across distances on the bowed instruments. i must learn to sing. i must learn to sing in consonance, stretch my vocal cords to match the played tone, already shifting in octaves and harmonics. i must learn to work autonomically so that all of this occurs without thinking, so that the music might stumble in spite of myself; in fact i should think of many other things while playing without interrupting flow. the flow should take care of itself, should punish my fingers, drive my voice hoarse, drive my breath into gasps as if i were in a vacuum state. then when my eyes seem crazed, when those geometric patterns appear before them, appear among them, then i might be able to play for a short while, pain shooting up my wrists, across my thumbs, perhaps, the doctor said, i'll need surgery, freeing the nerves, giving space for everything loose in the wrist, and i think the fingers will be next, everything on my hands collapsing; already i begin to think, who will inherit these instruments and their history, who will play with such finesse that the mind can't follow what the body is doing, has done to it, the mind is a diving falcon or falling object, the mind is a shooting star, the mind is a world of pain, a whirligig of pain, the music is all about this coming, this muscle memory, the music is coming, the rest of the flesh is dead. the music transcends the pain, is all about the pain, the haunted figure of the rehearsal, of repetition, of slow degeneration of muscle and nerve, of feedback loops, the mind murmurs in the midst of the song, you're going nowhere, what the music's taught, that there's nowhere to go, and you had to destroy your hands for this? you had to destroy your hands.