Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1407172136260.12231@panix2.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Takes
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 21:38:25 -0400 (EDT)
Takes http://www.alansondheim.org/homelands.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/taking0.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking1.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking2.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking3.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking4.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking5.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/taking6.mp3 I want to write an article on playing fast, on making so many pieces. My article would speak about death, my fear of stopping in the midst of things. There are times my fingers hurt, and I wonder when they'll give out, when I'll have to stop playing altogether. So now I work furiously, every idea is carried out, and I know that every attempt might be my last. No one plays the way I do, and I'll think, I have to play faster now, push my limits and those of others. I'll make a new sequence of notes, consciously try to remember it, bring it to the foreground repeatedly in the midst of other modules, creating a tapestry that blurs on the hearing of it. Some instruments are faster and more fecund than others - electric saz and guitar, oud for examples; some, like erhu and suroz seem deeper and sleeker; some like sarangi record my stumblings, and some like viola and Alpine zither carry incandescent beauty at any speed. In the midst of all this playing, however, I hear silence; in the midst of tuning, I feel the descent of the curtain, and I call to myself, in the form of a calling, faster, slower, faster, more beautiful than I have known. Here I play off Jon's guitar and Azure's songs, and weave and surge towards the end; it's as if everything is an elegy, and elegy is all I know. Azure Carter, songs Jon Woodson, guitar Alan Sondheim, sarangi, viola, suroz, electric saz, electric guitar, erhu, oud Please listen soon; I'm not sure how long I can keep these up. Thanks, Alan