Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.21.1805200049070.16951@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: silent playing, inner hearing*
Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 00:56:11 -0400 (EDT)
silent playing, inner hearing* http://www.alansondheim.org/gone06.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/silent.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/gone14.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/listen.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/gone15.jpg *playing, literally, on vygotsky's "inner speech" //using 3m x5a headphone silencers, i play solid-body electric saz unplugged. i can't hear anything; i'm deaf to the sound of the unamplified strings. i improvise, attempting a kind of inner hearing. i think of beethoven. i record silent.mp3. i then record listen.mp3 without the headphones; i can hear a faint sound (the saz is still unplugged). the result is virtuosic but far less interesting. i've been meaning to do this for a long time; i have tinnitus; i worry about going deaf: it's one thing to compose with inner hearing (as beethoven did), and it's another to improvise in real time on an instrument. the images are from the providence waterfront; development has taken over. the ecosystem has been leveled. we walked there often; now it's fenced off. this is a different form of silence, without recuperation. hopefully we'll be gone before even more damage is done; we're not deaf to it.//