FundamentallySound Blog

I was at the opening for Pause last night at Blackbird Space. My little sound installation consisted of two tiny speakers connected to a hidden iPod, the speakers on top of a cement cinderblock. This was flush against the concrete wall, upon which a small white label was affixed, with my name written in longhand. In short, it was invisible. And I was happy with this, I am not comfortable with materiality, I love sound because of its immateriality: it can float in the air, no need to even know where it is coming from, where it is going, or why. And my piece succeeded in this, with grunts, groans, pops, fizzes, and shimmering delicate waterfalls of metallic noise. All the while, people were chatting about all the usual topics, my sounds interweaving with their chitter-chatter.

I get the sense that Americans, at art openings, are obsessed with talking about their trips to Europe, almost as a means of confirming their validity as cultural agents. Such insecurity in the "local" culture, it's still surprising to me. I think at heart Americans are a very insecure people, exuding false bravado as a way of coping with their deep lack of self-identity and cultural superficiality. Why else the need to constantly brag? It's like men who have to buy a sportscar to compensate for their lack of...

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I'm part of a group show opening tomorrow night. Pause, curated by Rebecca Miller and Christopher Culver is opening at Blackbird Space in San Francisco Saturday night, from 6 to 10. The show will be up from January 27th to February 27th. I made an ambient sound installation, a sort of sonic texture. Sometimes it's very quiet, other times it leaps out. For about thirty minutes, it's swirly electronica with the cold heart of Oval but with the sentimentality of Fennesz. It's been a real pleasure to make such a long piece, knowing that it's just going to be seeping into the space continually over large periods of time. I made it to be a tangible and delicate part of the space. If you're in San Francisco, hope to see you there!

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I just posted Freddie #1 (footsteps) as a podcast, it's one in a series of short pieces made in collaboration with artist Deric Carner, to be included in our installation at Artists' Television Access in March. The piece is a celebration/invokation of the all-too-short life of Warhol superstar Freddie Herko, who leaped to his death, dancing out a window, in 1964.

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Another beautiful quote from Michel Foucault, this time from Madness and Civilization.

We must therefore listen attentively to every whisper of the world, trying to detect the images that have never made their way into poetry, the phantasms that have never reached a waking state.

He then goes on to stir up the waters.

No doubt this is an impossible task in two senses; first because it would force us to reconstitute the dust of those actual sufferings and foolish words that nothing preserves in time; second, and above all, because those sufferings and words exist only in the act of separation.

The first half is a kind of poetic mandate for artists. The second points at how futile the activity is.

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I enjoy his book reviews nearly as much as his books. We could all learn from his brutal and honest appraisals of the world, as seen through our own personal moral calculuses.

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But having started writing it, I just got tired of hearing myself complain again.

So I've decided to talk about how I love the film Whity by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. How could I love a film that is so so so bad. I mean it's just absolutely and completely bad in a way that makes it sterlingly perfect. It's a western, filmed in Spain (like several spaghetti westerns of its time), all of the dialogue is in German, and the music is of a strange polytonal variety that sounds vaguely similar to American country but has way too many complex chord progressions to be appreciated by anyone without at least a few years of music theory training and is something probably closer to a Hindemith piece than any form of popular song.

The dysfunctional family lives in a plantation home apparently in the American south, with their slaves wearing blackface and the white masters wearing some sort of ghostly green-face. The head slave, Whity, is the sexual stud, providing service for the whole family both male and female. The acting is so terribly overly-stylized it's nearly difficult to watch. The postures and movements of the actors are more closely related to experimental performance than anything like natural movement. The dialogue is nearly non-existent, close to a silent film.

Fassbinder described this film as his most personal ever made, and that extreme seriousness and attention to every detail, to a fault, shines through in every frame. Not one element of the film is left to chance, but is instead groomed to a level of over-sytlization that is extremely rich, but also completely alienating and disturbing. What he is trying to get to, and I believe he can't help himself, is a very profound understanding of human nature. But he is so serious about it, that it becomes something closer to a comedy. And it is this high-camp that saves it, he fails miserably but in the process he does nail all the things he's aiming for. But that doesn't make it any easier to watch.

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Last night I saw Jean Genet's one and only film, Un Chant d'Amour at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It was screened along with four Kenneth Anger films, including a new one he apparently made very recently.

By far the best was the silent Genet film. At only 25 minutes, it captures, pitch perfect, the feelings of longing between men who are in love but can't, for whatever reason, be together.

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Taken by Jano a couple of weeks ago.

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Today while filling out an art application, I ran into this question:

How did you end up where you are?

There are so many possible narratives I could weave, that somehow would connect the dots in my head, and would appear to make sense of my life. But I want to avoid the usual, "I started here, then went here, then learned this, then did this" kind of response.

I mean, in reality, where I am right now is the *only* place I could have ended up. Underneath all the coincidences, travels, chance meetings, there's just simply a fundamental drive to live life a certain way, and that is the force that has pushed me into the life I have. All the making music and travel and so on, that's just the part that somehow rises to the surface, but the core desire for a certain way of living is the thing that gives birth to it, and I'm not convinced we have much control over that; I guess I'm still skeptical when it comes to free will.

It's that nearly undefinable inner core of desire(?) that is the real answer to the question, I think. But I don't know if I have the power of language to describe what that core is.

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We had the first Three Pieces event last night in my little studio apartment. Somehow upwards of 40 or so people were squeezed in to see visual work by Barbara Garber, a wonderful dance piece by Biba Bell, and to hear contemplative and subtle electronic music by Equivicleft (a.k.a., Jeff Lubow).

Below, video documentation of my trip to the kitchen.

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Steve Jobs:

9:42am - "Well today, we're introducing THREE revolutionary new products. The first one is a widescreen ipod with touch controls" The crowd goes wild. "The second is a revolutinoary new mobile phone."

9:43am - "And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device." Tepid response on that last one, but he almost got a standing ovation on the phone.
"An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator.... these are NOT three separate devices!"

"And we are calling it iPhone!"

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...an "iPhone" is announced today, I may break down and be the proud owner of a cell phone again.

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Today I'm making some effort to get back into the mindframe of music work, upcoming projects, planning for Japan, and so on. But for about the last two weeks Jano and I have been completely in holiday mode. And what a holiday it's been.

I grew up not celebrating Christmas, my family was in this weird DIY religion which mixed all of the Jewish holidays (and dietary laws) with a kind of fundamental Protestant ethic and guilt. In it, all the usual Christian holidays were forbidden, Christmas being by far the biggest offender. After the church went bankrupt my parents gave up on it, and now they're more agnostic than anything else. But as a teenager, I would clandestinely celebrate Christmas, with my best friend M and her mother who was completely cosmopolitan and full of stories. These included her recollections of growing up in Manhattan as a little girl, being in a plane whose landing gear wouldn't come down, the runway lit by brave people holding candles, taking picnics with her friends to the hills in Israel, school trips to the Museum of Natural History, and so on. To a kid who grew up in the rural south, she may as well have been describing life on another planet. She was and is a kind of a second mother to me.

So I would secretly buy presents, wrap them, and leave them under the tree (oh my!) then on Christmas eve spend the night at M's house. Her mom would make us Bailey's and coffee, and I remember once she even let us watch My Own Private Idaho. Watching Keanu Reeves give head to River Phoenix (or was it the other way around?) with Christmas lights blinking all around the room, could it have been anymore subversive?

Since those early heady days I've not really cared much for the holiday season. But this year I had a blast with long afternoons spent at double features at the Castro Theater, sampling Peruvian food in the outer Mission, hours spent making playlists, dancing to nonstop Grace Jones videos and 80's disco to ring in the new year, long discussions about whether we are more Pierre et Gilles or Gilbert and George (definitely Gilbert and George, they're more conceptual), contemplating which city in the world would fit us best (Antwerp, in my opinion). For all this I have the lovely and handsome Jano to thank. Yes, 2007 looks promising.

Posted by at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)