Electro-Acoustic Improvisations II: A Sonic Narrative from the Far West

Electro-Acoustic Improvisations I (Album Art Remake) 

Electro-Acoustic Improvisations II (Album Art)

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." John Cage

Essentially one album, Electro-Acoustic Improvisations I & II are to be listened to in continuity, as a single expression of seeking through sound as voice and agency for the soul of the word. Electro-Acoustic Improvisations II is conceptually the final track of I, divided into 4 parts for listening.

Experiment with your ear, and look to the bottom of this post for an aural transport to the Far West.

Electro-Acoustic Improvisations II

On the margins of the vast, interlocking web of technology and nature, with broken instruments (both acoustic and electronic), we are beginners on the road to merging technology with all of life in this the human experience of Earth and the inner world as an evolutionary being of conscious development. 

Imagine sitting at the edge of a fire in the raw, teeming wilderness. The forest is thick. The air is heavy with an unbroken gamut of vegetable breathing. Warming your hands by the fire, under cover of starlight and the faint haunts of a new moon, the mind seeps and seethes with memories, dreams and reflections on the world “out there”. Civilization and its discontented fires of electric madness pour into your brain like an acid flashback. The Earth is still, yet your hands shake. So, before you is the music of the muses, the bare wonderment takes its own course into the heavens and hells of your own nature. Through music, the seeker of solitude purges the concrescence of electro-social distension. Discordant dissonance marries with harmonic essence as the jeering subtle flesh of mad electricity merges in the mind, hand and heart of one in touch with the strings, blood and fire of creative sound.  

Part I - The seeker discovers music as a beginner. The instrument is slightly out of tune, and the playing is imperfect. The melodies are introduced with electronic music, featuring static electric synthetic effects throughout. The seeker gains mental balance by overcoming the first break beyond the shores of civilization into the open expanse of nature beyond, where other, even more trying challenges are to be had in confrontation with the self, exposed and untended.  

Part II – With emboldened consciousness, the instrument and its sound are clearer. A fire has been set and night opens to the gorgeous possibilities of the sonic imagination. Electric distension is transformed into unseen beauty. The grandeur of melodic instrumentation opens up with a new strength of diversity. As the clouds above part to reveal pure sky, memory and reflection are enlightened through joining with traditions of seeking, as with the sonic movement into Middle-Eastern influenced lute music, translated to guitar in creative solitude with the empty awe of all-potent Nature. 

Yet, the seeker soon realizes this is only the beginning of the journey, and there have ever been electric distension scattered throughout the night’s hearth. By the end, the celebratory feel becomes more solemn as the seeker attains the first seed of self-knowledge, and understands the need to set one’s own pace and prepare certain deliberation before embarking on the pathless sojourn ahead. The music ends with the realization that it is dawn, and the horizon welcomes ahead.    

Part III – Reprieve from the journey, alongside a mountain ascent, beneath a cliff. Cool air from a spring entices the cold march of winter’s coming winds to turn and wade in the lush mountain air. Without a fire, music is the warmth. Creative passion warms from the inside with the brightest of flames. At first, blowing hard into the hands and fingers for the warm breath to spread throughout and allow for the wealth of instrumental music to unfold, the seeker stops playing as soon as it begins to rain. As in Taoist tradition, when the rain makes rhythmic motion, and the melodies of the thunderclouds fly with the magical presence of wind, one is to listen, and be humbled by the music of the spheres.  

Part IV – Beginning with a light touch of electronic moments, the music glides atop sounds of weather, especially as the seeker gets closer to the ocean. Following rivers, streams and tributaries, faring flash floods and rain-swept gullies, the seeker emerges from the wilderness with a great boon of discovery. A new instrument to behold! Notice, the music approaches harmonies with the natural way of impermanence and unity, as opposed to listening, where creative interaction with nature breeds a kind of musical kinship among humans and all life on Earth. As the seeker sights the ocean, the new instrument is played, ending the music and the journey. 

The new instrument is the xaphoon. Invented in the 1970’s in Hawaii, the xaphoon, also known as the bamboo sax, is a contemporary single-reed woodwind. The track ends with a homage to Jack Kerouac describing San Francisco, the very edge of the west, to crystallize the final xaphoon improvisation solo; a traversal of the “far west” in sound. 

Influences: Bill Frisell, Hamza El-Din, Vi An Diep, Steve Roach, Brian Eno, stones/minerals, earth, water/ice, winter, landscapes of the North American west, Jack Kerouac, fire, trees, reflection, solitude

See my previous post: Music of the Dream Author: Electro-Acoustic Improvisations I Release 

___________

On a clean, medical train through Sudan, my Nilotic companion eyes me with a piercing grin as we pass south of Juba into the New South. We have arrived at his hard-won home, South Sudan. His smile is buried deep within the pain of intergenerational loss, the hellfire of war still sting his reddening eyes as he tears up, the pictures of his innocent family smolders into the soil. The land speaks with his voice.

Southern Nubia by Friedrich Otto Georgi

A number of tourists from Europe and America depart from the train stop, as we all exit to proudly march through the gates of the newly formed customs center. Before I ready myself to stand up and follow in the foreigner’s line, I see the winking horror of rats, spiders and snakes twice the size of my face, gnawing at my brains in the middle of the first night. I’ve read such stories. This is open country for sub-Saharan life-threatening insects and arachnids galore. If only they sold us preventive supplies before stepping foot on the blood-torched burial grounds of a still cold reconciliation between tribes and kin. The first thing I see is a smile, wide and innocent as the all-embracing horizon. Before I entered Sudan, an asylum seeking Sudanese refugee in Egypt told me, “Sudan is the easiest place to kill someone.”

Tornai Man from Sudan by Gyula Tornai

I heave a sigh of relief as the other westerners depart into the folds of pyramidal shopping and freewheeling nature photography. I journey on, to the heart of the people. My friend is ever stoic, silent, basking in the wonders of a new nation in its infancy, victorious after so many losses, after so many needless ends, there is at least one fresh start to be had, and one that all can have a part in. Concrete residential towers spring up almost before my eyes, fresh paint lingers and drips throughout the dry stinging horizon of African sun.

African Riddle by John Mainga

Men work diligently, with the force of triumph, erecting monumental stone structures, for future generations to thrive, for the plentiful, abundant optimism of the future. The complexes are almost identical to the substandard suburban housing of greater Cairo, where many must have returned from as once-neglected refugees, now with a determined hand and proud say in social affairs. They don sun-deflecting head coverings, and traditional footwear made with scarlet fabric and coins. Women are nowhere to be seen.

Battle of Tamai by Geoffrey Douglas Giles

We drive on, deeper into the south. The more south we go, the fresher the earth, the more bare the optimism, the more innocent the smiles. The more south we go, welcomes are heard with more sincerity. The air is full of potential. The energy is warm, and the harshness that once thrived now sees a chance of dwindling beneath the pulsing chests of hard work. My friend dissipates into the sunlight now flooding our vehicle; as the inimitable human spirit washes us clean of fear.  

____________

The completion of this instrumental music project, "Electro-Acoustic Improvisations I & II " sets the ground for the next stage of my creative development, where I feature my experimental writing as spoken word together with my world music instrumentation. More art, music and writing next week! 

Seven Hours of Music: Natural Sounds of Subconscious Entrancement

When tired, listen. 

Music is the breath of life. 

Listen, I am tired. 

Asleep, I hear a visual language, 

A deeper mind. 

Music, now.

__________

She slips in the doorway while I lay in bed, listening. Grandma Nana’s come to pick me up for a day of visiting. Yet, aren’t those the footsteps of my wife? She enters with uncanny similarity.

A painting of the artist Kete Ephraim Marcus by Kete Ephraim Marcus 

A style of musical motion stamps on the floor of my eardrum with the gentle line of breath, issuing as her unspeaking voice through our apartment of dead morning air. She is memory, alive.

Morning, Interior by Maximillien Luce

As I wake to the glorious open space of an apartment, couched in the warm light of a restful morning, and my friend’s visiting. Apologetic and endeared, he respects my unconventional successes, gifting me seasonal greetings with the cheeky light of a sparkling card and pagan decoration.

Paris: In memory of the young deceased friend by Shalva Kikodze

We sit together in the freedom of being up and awake for the sun and its glowing gaze. The room is just so cool to comfort the body in an easy choice of soft, wooly over-garments. He begins to recite the melody of a waltz, for playing on the guitar.

Guitar and Pipe by Juan Gris

With heavenly beckoning, his sweet and delicate face points at the brown stand of Indonesian wood in the corner, my acoustic guitar. I repeat the melody, as it glides effortlessly on the airy surface of my mind.

_________

"The spiritual recluse

On a steep decline

Passing without Failure,

Churning with Thirst,

& Separated

from life"

excerpt from "Age of Fire"

Dream Music and the Creative Breath

Hear my beginnings on Xaphoon, a modern woodwind instrument.

Also, listen to Vi An's ambient, new single, "Souls of Flightless Birds" to hear my initial touches on Shakuhachi

To hear my more percussive beginnings see my earlier posts Busker's Gamble 1 & 2

________

My elementary school music teacher begins the session with an arcane eye, emitting positively unintelligible sentiment into the classroom. The entirety of the students’ awareness is razed in a moment of ineluctable meditation at the front of the room. The teacher is absorbed in trance, unable to begin the lesson. Then, she takes up an oboe, and begins a hypnotic hum, playing without her fingers. She bends her lips to the visionary yonder, bespeaking a ghostly insight into the sonic membrane of harmonious mystery. 

Three Black Women (1912) by Nicholas Kalamakoff 

As the hum begins to rise, a crack in the doorway spells fear in the eyes of my fellow students, watching as a three nude black women gracefully dance their way to the front of the room. Their light steps are unmatched in delicate beauty. The warmth of their presence is charming as the teacher begins to lather up and down immense, powerful scales. The dance heats with inner vivacity. Without fully recognizing, I have been completely entranced, alone in another room, seduced by the mad eyes of the superhuman subtleties emerging of the dance of sprites. The unity of music and dance is embodied in the untouchable, ebony enigmas. 

________

Sculpting our Music

to empathize with space,
emptied learning
devoid of causality,

to exist in nonsense happily,
with or without means to find the light to continue
and realize that meaning prevails in the ability to emancipate need into desire
and transform desire into being,

to see you,
in the flap of a wave thickening
in a sky filled with stars aglow
in the insect's wing,
eaten then,
raw in the toothless humanity
forming on the tip and base of the tongue
with each word-stopped breath of compassion

stating,
"subsist without things,
yet do not merge one with sheer being,
there is no escape from right,
take time to see,
play aloud to the soft distance
in each touch
on the eternal book
resting coolly
on the back of every pulse
moving through fingertips pressed over reality."

simply unlearn doing
by giving into the peace already;
know your surroundings,
truth does not move,
yet there is mystery in sound's effortless becoming
around and within the hand that pulls time into the heart
and plays breath
in tune to the sun's round birth canal of thoughtless entry
into an orbital law,

a return to archaic wisdom
in ancient instruments
and the rare music of inward listening
that shares all in the act of creative wondering

to explore the mind without friction
against the beat of our one heart,
drained now by love's unknown pleasures
offered to the inescapable friend,
who appears as death at the beginning of night,
freezing time
for a moment's celebration of temporal freedoms
grinning out of sight

Icicle Melts in the Warm Heart of a Loving Dream

It came to her in a Dream…

Listen to “Atlantea” & “Dreaming is all I can do”

______

There is a recurring dream-character. She is reminiscent of a Maya girl who I once gifted a jade ring to in her home village in southeastern Mexico, however this dream-character also has very French features and darker, thicker hair braided in a massive pony tail fatter than her spine, looking like it’s exploded with sparks of static electric strands of finer hair in the shadow-cast light. I can’t completely see her face.

There is a great distance between us as she is always cast in shadow. The scene is one of an arranged marriage, however my wife is beside, and who as I reflect now, is to become my second wife in dream! During the night of the marriage, however, I renew feelings of love for my first wife, who is my dream-woman in real life, and abandon the younger girl who is arranged to be married to me on this day.

As my parents leave the scene to run an errand for the wedding services, they tell me about their recent news, where they’ve become billionaires and are buying homes in Newport, RI, which will be sure to benefit me and my new married life. I respond with ghastly sarcasm and they leave indifferent in their swamped lives of money and possessions. I take a car for my wife and I, and we head down the road. We are in a place similar to Connecticut, resembling the industrial surroundings on the highway to New York City.

Next, I find myself singing, as the foreman of a folk band. With guitar in hand, we perform songs on stage in front of a lively sit-down crowd in the dim light of a downtown music venue. This music follows me into the living room of my father’s house.

My stepmother is there alone, cleaning the house by herself. I am in the center of the room, practicing my singing. As she nears, I begin to belt out ever-higher falsetto notes, as my heartbeat intensified and began to shake my whole being in loneliness and stark presence against the mundane vacuity of house-making before me.

As soon as I stopped, she raced a remote control car out into the hall, as I shrunk into one of the rooms, which to my surprise was still made for a small child. I wrapped myself in an undersized knit blanket and while still dreaming, thought that her actions symbolized not growing out of child rearing and only participating in people’s lives through objectified play, an inverted disconnected electronics. 

(The end of the dream juxtaposes with the electronic music reference above, where electronic creativity is central to making intimate connections. The Buddha resides in all things, even your computer!)

Interestingly, my wife’s dream this same night had me also marrying another woman. On the night before we were to be married, the entire family and even she slept together with us in a living room on the floor space. She could hear me arguing with my wife-to-be about. “This is not how it should be, this is not how people love one another,” I would say. She felt the same strong emotions that I felt in my dream in the same night, of longing for true experience with one’s love and feeling a sense of loss at having to watch them become distant. 

______

Choose Art

Art is a choice, between perception and dreaming, when both are combined in active creativity.

The residue of dreaming infused with an enlightened consciousness on the positive qualities of becoming increasingly aware of and interacting with dreams as an essential aspect of life, sometimes expresses itself in life as the perception of art as "dreams" within reality.

Delia Derbyshire, Electronic Music Pioneer

More of her Dreamwork

Bruce Haak and the "Unconscious Taste"

Spectral Analysis of an Mp3 by Havel Baude

Interviewer:

"Now, Bruce I've heard some of your tapes which is the reason why I invited you here today, and what impresses me most about them is that although you are using unfamiliar materials, the organization of them is very apparent and clear. Are you aware of the fact that you are organizing your material very logically?"

Bruce Haak:

"Yes, it is something that you absorb."

Interviewer:

"It's almost a taste for order."

Bruce Haak:

"It's a taste that you have almost unconsciously."


from the documentary film "Haak: The King of Techno"