The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Enharmonic Lures

http://www.alansondheim.org/gu2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/harmon0.mp3 qin
http://www.alansondheim.org/harmon1.mp3 qin, qin
http://www.alansondheim.org/harmon2.mp3 qin, qin
(playing 2 qin simultaneously)

"Since I must save the day of tomorrow, since I must have a form
because I don't feel strong enough to stay disorganized, since I
inevitably must slice off the infinite monstrous meat and cut it
into pieces the size of my mouth and the size of the vision of
my eyes, since I'll inevitably succumb to the need for form that
comes from my terror of remaining undelimited - then may I at
least have the courage to let this shape form by itself like a
scab that hardens by itself, like the fiery nebula that cools
into earth. And may I have the courage to resist the temptation
to invent a form." (Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to
G.H., trans. Idra Novey, Penguin, 2012, p. 7)

qin. impossible tunings whose fingers harmonized. to be
harmonized. to the harmonized. harmonized. the program, be fit
(in the sense of harmonization) or not; in a sense it does.
these terms and my use of them are of course arbitrary; one
might use encoding to reference the act of program-creation and
coding that which operates on input, with all the phenomenology
of input already indicated. I choose a distinction between these
words in order to articulate a distinction within the field;
otherwise we are off again into unnecessary obscurity. as for
the element of a code, there is a sign or sign-function, there
is a process drawn from tables or closed lexicons. as for the
element of encoding, there is none; an input may, in relation to
the encoding program, be fit (in the sense of harmonization) or
not; in a sense it does not matter, as encoding is matterless,
codeless, just as coding is mattered, albeit the ideality or
cyberneticization of matter. inhalings, harmonics, harmonizings,
and whistlings, for you, be fit (in the sense of harmonization)
or not; in a sense it does work, these double guqin, somewhat
deeply out of tune with each other, communicating and
authorizing the presence of the Other.