Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.21.1710272222470.6114@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Bad Music
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 22:24:52 -0400 (EDT)
Bad Music I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roam'd Delighted, through the motley spectacle - Wordsworth, 1805 Prelude http://www.alansondheim.org/akkad682.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/martin12565.mp3 * A realization: I am not afraid to play bad music. I am a fake, not a musician at all. I work with music, with the foundations of music & the musician, I play not with time signatures, but with temporality; I work not with scales, but with building-blocks of rubble, & somewhere within them, architecture emerges. I cannot sing a note. I am increasingly careful about tuning and its austere occupation. But I cannot play a tune for long; I get bored, count my good fortune among the polytopes of desire, not the tropes of musical acumen. What is the long reach of a piece played with real-time reverse reverberation; what is the habitus of sound played as fast as possible, with speed an overarching parameter. What happens to the body with repetition moved to the slightest comma of transformation. * We found a 1916 Martin parlor guitar for $40 today; it needs heavy work (new bridge, back repaired). Around 1930-1940 it was badly repaired in order to handle heavier metal strings. The neck's still straight, but a tailpiece was added, the original bridge removed. This has to be fixed. Small nails were also used to reinforce the back for no reason whatsoever. It came with three 1930s-40s strings (the rest were missing), and frets out of alignment. So the task at the moment, here in Maine, was to make music with it. The strings were tuned extremely low (I didn't want to stress the instrument), only a few frets were aligned, and here is the result. Surely this is a music, bad or good, I did not care, I did want to be amazed by the possibility of the absurd tuning and condition of the guitar. It is in rough shape but even here it sings and I identify with my badness and hope to be better myself.