cmm4: it is about relationships, people!

Once upon a time, I suggested that we program Yoko Ono's Promise Piece. Essentially, the performer breaks a piece of pottery, distributes the broken shards among the audience and enacts a quasi-ritualistic pact to reconvene ten years later to make whole this decade-old ceramic diaspora.

Sadly, Promise Piece never made its way to a Chamber Music Midwest program, however the spirit of Ono's performance remained integral to that life-changing fortnight known as Oh No, Fluxus! When I founded the festival four years ago, I had an instinct, an impulse arguably premature without a recognizable rationale or reason to support it. Today, I can see that this instinct was one connected to the need for community, to forge relationships deep, meaningful, and indeed musical. All too often our time in music school is spent not perfecting our craft, but rather developing a callused, impenetrable exoskeleton. Although arguably useful in protecting our fragile, nascent egos from barbs and shivs, such a structure proves detrimental to both the formation and formulation of artistic agency.

Why is this so damaging? Because music is about relationships, people!

More than any other year, CMM4 exemplified the creation and strengthening of relationships--musical and otherwise. Our successful Kickstarter campaign (thanks everyone!) allowed for dear friends and fine musicians to travel to Wisconsin; the unique community formed through this proverbial "social cocktail" was exhilarating. The inclusion of family friends and community members as host families and so-called "bringers of jollity" facilitated a cross-generational, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural exchange of ideas. Yes. Exhilarating. I would also argue that the music making was better for this very reason. Dining together, living together, dancing together, our community supported a joyful musical practice.

experiencing firstness in portugal

I'm currently sitting in a perfectly bizarre hotel in Porto. Positioned squarely between Ikea and Jumbo, Tryp Porto Expo reeks of newness and impermanence. Over the next couple of days, I hope to explain why this bothers me so, why I have come to find new construction--new things--aesthetically and philosophically offensive.

But Performa, and Aveiro, were wonderful.

figure wonderful: Aveiro city park

There are pages and pages to be written about my experience at Performa, but first, today, allow me offer you a litany of topics and thoughts provoked by the conference, the city, and new colleagues. 1. Taruskin is a total hipster, Turino is a total nerd. 2. More seriously, Turino offered the most lucid explanation of Peirce I have ever heard. I am waiting on bated breath for his newest book, but until then I'm looking forward to diving into his 1999 article, "Signs of Imagination, Identity, and Experience: A Peircian Theory for Music." 3. Iain Foreman presented a completely brilliant paper entitled "Performance as Resonant Listening." I have spent some time thinking about music as something intrinsically violent, but Foreman pointed out that indeed sound can be something violent in and of itself. The more I ruminated on this point, the more I agreed: sound is uninvited, unexpected, it violates our bodies in an intimate and invasive way. In a sense, we are powerless to protect our bodies from what I have been calling internal sonic micro-colonization. As I write about the presentation, all kinds of observations are coming to mind. Basically, it was brilliant. I can't wait until I can read his books. 4. At some level, almost all the papers I saw addressed the paucity of communicative relationships between audience and performer. While no one said it explicitly, it seemed that they were all getting at the following. We exist as plural entities comprised of numerous virtual, disembodied identities in combination with an embodied identity so coded and bogged down by tradition it can barely see straight (metaphorically speaking of course). Because music can be understood as a heightened form of intimate, physical communication--touch (in a very literal sense) initiated from a distance and experienced from the proverbial stem to proverbial stern--it is indeed, deeply effected in its perception, reception, and transmission by such a cultural context. 5. Speaking of disembodiment and Peirce, who has two thumbs, a scholar-crush on Turino and had a moment of firstness in the Church of Jesus? This girl.

figure firstness: Church of Jesus, Convent of Jesus Aveiro

But it didn't stop there. I went upstairs to the choir loft and was moved to tears.

 figure secondness: Choir Loft, Church of Jesus, Convent of Jesus Aveiro

On the heals of Turino's laudable and if you'll forgive me, awesome, Peirce-a-thon, my experience at the convent brought up all kinds of questions regarding the phenomenology of religious architecture. I am not a Christian, but I have to admit the incredible coercive force of this space; was it a moment of spiritual awakening? Doubtful. Was it a moment of emptiness and openness that left my body and psyche vulnerable to suggestion, co-option, and unmitigated joy? Likely. Is my experience something that has been utilized by the institution of religion over time? Absolutely. However, I should note that despite using words like coercive, vulnerable, co-option, I did not feel violated by the experience--on the contrary, I am deeply grateful for my moment of firstness. 6. The American fetishization of that which is ancient. When I arrived in Portugal, I found myself attracted most to buildings in decay: missing walls and roof tops, proudly displaying elemental wear, these buildings fascinated me. As the week progressed I attempted to articulate my interest-turned-obsession: was it their aesthetic value? Was it the mystique and probable plurality of their history? It wasn't until last night when a colleague expressed a similar fascination. We discussed our American-ness hoping to come to some sort of conclusion, eventually realizing that the allure of these structures was generated by their perceived permanence. In a fundamental way, these buildings comforted us, "grounded" us. My colleague articulated it quite well by saying that in America, architecture is not only transient, but also apocalyptic.

packing my library

Thus far, the most rewarding part of the transition from performance to scholarship has been the time spent with my books. Since arriving in East Lansing a little over a year ago, I found myself acquiring more and more texts each month at my local used book shop(s). What started with a few exhibition catalogs has snowballed into my current obsession with all-things phenomenological. 

figure expanding library

figure books books everywhere

This weekend, I began the arduous process of packing my library. These books have changed my life, my perspective on music, art, aesthetics...the list goes on. Certainly, Chamber Music Midwest's broadening intellectual focus owes its genesis to my ever-expanding collection. To think that just a year ago, I had never read Foucault or Baudrillard or Hegel or Aristotle, it boggles my little mind. Until engaging with these texts, I had never before considered the ways in which I interact with a world conditioned by what Marx calls "the nightmare of tradition." I had never before considered the ways in which music is implicated in such a "nightmare." I had never before considered how the act of acquiring knowledge is the first step in dissolving the paradoxically diaphanous yet unyielding shackles that bind us.

Perhaps it is as simple and elegant as that oft-quoted verse:
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

huberman's bach

Listen to this:



There's a lot to say about this, but to be honest, I'm pressed for time. I like to consider it a public service: don't play Bach like a robot. Please.

feldman memories (i)

On Thursday night I gave a humble little recital of Hummel (ha!), Mozart and Feldman. For years I've wanted to perform The Viola in My Life (III) and for whatever reason I decided that this summer would be my time. Following the performance and my (perhaps overly) emphatic advocacy of Feldman, an audience member approached me to understand better why I loved Feldman so. Her direct question forced me to examine more than just the visceral response his music stirs within me. In fumbling for words and explanations I came to understand that more than anything, Feldman's appropriation of silence excites my synapses. I say "appropriation" because I feel that is what he truly does. His silences represent the maturation of the classical GP, but also our own personal moments of reflection. I don't want to be drawing connections willy-nilly (that would just be ridiculous), but from my perspective it seems as though he captures and re-purposes those moments in life where there not only exists pure presence but also a kind of static stillness.

In case you have not realized already, I love Morton Feldman. His oeuvre occupies a special place in my heart--I cannot articulate why, but I can recount my first experience with his music.

I'll never forget the summer I spent listening to his second quartet, Triadic Memories, Rothko Chapel, and the Viola in My Life (IV). At the time, I worked for the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the U of M as a graphic designer and illustrator (I believe my official title was something like student communications assistant or some such). My boss shared his office with me, and bless him, he didn't mind listening to Feldman when he arrived in the mornings (or, if he did, I never knew it). I have these very vivid memories of unlocking the office several hours before the work day began sitting at my desk and watching the orange sunlight pour through dusty venetian blinds: always that slightly rusty orange color--strangely toxic and never quite pure. Pixel by pixel, I manipulated my images as that damned diseased light crept across the carpet; Feldman's eerie placidity was an apt companion. In hindsight, it is surprising that I adore his music as much as I do! What a dreadful summer.

my friend + yours, erwin schrodinger

I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss something near and dear to my heart. I was recently reminded of Erwin Schrodinger's [1] text on philosophy and metaphysics, My View of the World; I thought I might share some of his work and my interpretations with you.

I began grad school this winter, and by mere chance, I picked up the aforementioned text and started to read. Finding Schrodinger’s interpretation of historical conditioning and ancestral memory profoundly influential I began to apply his ideas to other facets of my still-superficial inquiries. Obviously, I have a great deal more to read and learn, but the instinct is that Schrodinger's conditioning in congress with Riegl's kunstwollen* could be very powerful tools in discussing some of the more...challenging...pieces we're looking at programming next year (I'm talkin' Fluxus). But I digress, and that is another post for another evening.

Primarily addressing issues of metaphysics and consciousness, one of Schrodinger's more resonant ideas seeks to illuminate for the reader the notion of ancestral memory, specifically the idea that a single person carries with them the attitudes and experiences of their ancestors. In typically poetic fashion, Schrodinger writes: “…each of these bodies was at the same time blueprint, builder and material for the next one, so that a part of it grew into a copy of itself.” Indeed, “no self stands alone.”[2] There is so much more. It is pretty great.

I recently wrote a "thoughts and feelings" piece on some of this stuff, but it was essentially puff. At some point, I'd really like to put some of these things into motion, specifically this type of historical conditioning and its relationship to aesthetics. Someday. For now, I'd say go read Schrodinger. It is a quick little read, but one of the most inspirational texts I've come across in quite some time. I wouldn't be surprised if his name comes up again between now and then.

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[1] A quantum physicist of the early twentieth century, Schrodinger’s famous experiment, the so called cat-in-the-box is articulated here, by the ever-reliable source of scholarly import, Wikipedia. It'll do.

[2] Schrodinger, Erwin, My View of the World, trans. Cecily Hastings (Connecticut: Ox Bow Press, 1961) , 26-27

* Excerpt via a bastion of veracity and knowledge (Wikipedia):
"All human will is directed toward a satisfactory shaping of man's relationship to the world, within and beyond the individual. The plastic Kunstwollen regulates man's relationship to the sensibly perceptible appearance of things. Art expresses the way man wants to see things shaped or colored, just as the poetic Kunstwollen expreses the way man wants to imagine them. Man is not only a passive, sensory recipient, but also a desiring, active being who wishes to interpret the world in such a way (varying from one people, region, or epoch to another) that it most clearly and obligingly meets his desires. The character of this will is contained in what we call the worldview (again in the broadest sense): in religion, philosophy, science, even statecraft and law." (1) Essentially, Riegl's kunstwollen offers a new model to understand and "value" art. Rejecting the notion that the "best" art is naturalistic, Riegl suggests that the success of an artistic representation lies in its ability to express the so-called spirit of the times. What is particularly great about Riegl is that he is really making space for non-western art forms by allowing for the "worldview" to inform the way in which the art-object is conceived and subsequently read. Riegl is another one of those people about which I could write virtual page after virtual page. For now, the aforesaid distillation will have to do. As I intimated in the above text, I believe his theories to be extremely useful in looking at various art forms of the 20th century.

(1) Tr. C.S. Wood, The Vienna School reader: politics and art historical method in the 1930s (New York, 2000), 94-95