FundamentallySound Blog

I was talking to Deric the other day at the Owl Tree. I was going on and on about Americans this, Americans that, etc. Deric made the observation that one can talk about the majority of Americans, as this is a populist society, the majority actually do hold some high degree of power. Conversely, Europe has strongly admirable traits like cultural funding, public art, and so on which are the result of decisions made by a very few. This is not something that I didn't know, but somehow hearing it put succinctly made me feel a little more forgiving of the things that I dislike in this country.

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The most recent oddly titled but strangely compelling community I've joined on Mixi.

I mean how would I have a gay life without art? ???

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POW Ensemble performing Robert Johnson's Judgement Day and Ellington's Don't mean a thing at the Audio Art Festival in Krakow, 12 November 2006.

Marije Nie, who I had the pleasure of meeting in San Francisco, is tap dancing.

Also, Luc Houtkamp - saxophone & computer, Joseph Bowie - vocals & trombone, Tom Tlalim - computer & theremin.

via Luc Houtkamp's livejournal.

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Celeste Hutchins, an electronic composer, has come up with a smart way of getting commissions: by putting the auctions on eBay. I think this is a great idea and may actual be an opportunity for a composer to be paid something approaching a reasonable price for their work. I don't know if this will take off, but it's certainly a good first step in the right direction.

Celeste's Current Auctions:
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2

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For a long time I haven't been able to remember my dreams. But the last few nights I have, and every night I am dreaming of being in Tokyo, each time in a state of near panic because I'm late for my flight, or the train is about to come, constantly running late, packing suitcases, worrying over details, being completely flustered about the minutiae required to get from point A to point B. I wish my dreams could at least be a little more nuanced and interesting now that I'm remembering them again.

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The second Three Pieces will take place on April 3rd, from 7 to 9. It's a pretty exciting lineup, with Gregg Kowalsky, Chris Cobb (with Sonya Derman), and Scott Kiernan (Zenith Foundation). Please note, doors close at 7:30.

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The last couple of days I've had a pretty nasty cold. In fact yesterday I spent the whole day wrapped up under the covers drinking hot tea and trying to ignore my craving for ice cream.

Being sick and having a fever, sweating, and all that, it brings back vivid memories of being a kid and staying home from school, completely baffled by the things adults do in those hours between 9 to 5. But I knew what I liked to do, and that was lay in bed listening to the double cassette release of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Either that or anything by Bananarama. Even back then my tastes vacillated between sugar-pop and highly eccentric experimentalism. This was long before Classical Bob was mixing Suzanne Vega and David Tudor. Or Steve Reich getting remixed every which way but loose.

In a surprising way, I think I actually enjoy being sick, to some degree anyway. As long it is nothing serious, and just a common cold, I love the way it allows me to just cancel all of my appointments with impunity and abandon. No need to explain other than to say, "I'm sick." No responsibility except to rest, tend to myself, and drink lots of liquids. It's really not so bad, it's actually rather fun.

When I have a cold now, and when I feel feverish, I might was well be 15 again. The sensations are the same, the memories so clear, I close my eyes and expect to hear the opening guitar chords of that Lamb track "Back In NYC." In fact, for nostalgia's sake, I might just try to find a copy and listen to it while I doze off tonight. Nothing like that weird music plus a good fever to lull me into strange, but fun, altered states.

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Yeah, I'm a sucker for this sort of music. Peter, Bjorn & John on YouTube (thanks Nora).

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Two nights ago I watched the film She's One Of Us. It's a kind of dark, lean, and stylish thriller that takes place in French suburbia. Suburban life, the kind that is often lauded in America, seems to be a breeding ground for strange nightmares in the French unconscious.

The director went with a soundtrack of muted minimal electronic washes with pointed glitch-like beats, the relentless continuity of this sound world creates a buildup of introversion that only rarely found outlet in the visual activity. The protagonist/antagonist is a quiet woman who seems to have lived as a loner her whole life, with no social skill and deep distrust of larger society. As she finally learns how to navigate contemporary French culture, she does so in an off-kilter way, often killing, mauling, and cheating those around her.

As havoc is created onscreen, the music remains quiet, impenetrable, and focused. I love these plays of incongruity, finding materials that don't match, but that don't match in just the right way. The square can't receive the circle, but the way in which it is deflected is fascinating.

In Here. There. (Distance Study 1), my collaboration with Mr. Jano Cortijo, a wonderful artist who happens to also be my boyfriend (currently in long-distance mode, but he did blog here all-too-briefly), I'm trying to work through the video he is making, figuring out how my music will "not fit" in just the right way. His approach is one of quiet and poignant contemplation, simplicity working as a means to convey a crystaline conceptual point, much in the style of say Felix Gonzales-Torres, an artist we both deeply admire.

Me, on the other hand, I'm some sort of multi-striped creature that points sonic fragments in every direction. But these contradictions set up an interesting interplay. The trick, again, is finding that "not-fitting" that fits in just the right way.

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After the demise of Friendster, I had given up on social networking sites. And for a while it seemed MySpace was the only alternative, but it is just so ugly I could never force myself to use it. Apparently there are ways to code the html yourself to make it look better, but those enigmatic techniques are shrouded in mystery and spoken in low tones. I've been trying to construct a MySpace page but I just don't know if I have the patience.

In the meantime there's Mixi, a Japanese version of Friendster, but with a lot more features. It's based on the user actually knowing people in real life, which is the way I prefer it, and completely not the case with MySpace. Then there's Facebook which looks to be the closest American alternative to Mixi. I think it's great, I don't know why more people aren't using it. It's also based on you actually knowing people in real life, and it's full of smart photo features, and the interface is uncluttered and virtually commercial free. For the gays, we've got Dlist which is a little more frisky than others listed above, but not quite as overtly slutty as the alternatives like gay.com or gaydar.

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There are some interesting discussions floating around out there at the moment. I too have been following the Momus vs Marxy debate for a long time, and I've totally learned a lot. When Marxy said he was going to start blogging for Clast, the blog presence of the marketing firm he works for, I really didn't know what to think. Then today Jean Snow breaks out with a fiery tirade defending Marxy against notions of selling out and working for the man and so on. Digiki seems to just find the way Clast operates to be non-innovative and boring, but doesn't see any real ethical issues there.

For me, it seems that the issue of selling out is just, well, a total NON-issue in Japan. Content and its distribution are going to be controlled by certain social and power groups, whether it be the company you work for or your family, and you've got to scratch their back too. When I did Pecha Kucha in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, one whole presentation was spent advertising upcoming events at SuperDeluxe. My first reaction was not an approving one, after all that space could have been given to an up-and-coming designer or artist who could make a big break by showing their work. But after reconsidering, it actually seems more honest to acknowledge your benefactors, if they scratch my back the least I can do is scratch theirs. The only people this kind of nepotism would bother are those westerners, like myself, who have some naive idea that public acknowledgment of these kinds of ties are somehow unseemly. But why live in a fantasy world? Of course they need money and support to make these things happen, of course Jean Snow needs advertisers on his page to pay for what he does, and lucky him that he has such a large audience to make it worthwhile!

There is something very nostalgic about the idea that one should keep their hands unsullied from this kind of business. Does the recent Meet The Composer grant I got for a performance at the Meridian Gallery somehow change the music I make? Not by a long shot! In fact, when I get paid to make music, it usually turns out to be the most unmarketable and uncompromising music I do, not consciously, but perhaps by some unconscious need to redouble efforts to not be tainted by that money, which must be inherently dirty, of course. How silly I am. People like Jean Snow, Digiki, and Marxy are much more realistic about these things.

But then, what can I say, when I actually did get around to reading Clast I couldn't help but be totally disappointed to see that Marxy was putting his brain to work help sell "refreshing" alcohol products to an under 35 age group that was no longer interested in traditional drinking habits.

No, I am not anti-marketing, and I am also not NOT pro-marketing (r., did I get that right?). But I am definitely not pro-sell-stupid-stuff-for-lots-of-money-just-because-we-can! If all the intelligent marketers of the world could just unite! No... That's not quite right either.

I guess the best we can do is just be as ethical as we can and try to make sure that our day job isn't something that is going to make the world worse, which actually is probably extraordinarily difficult. Selling refreshing alcohol products? Well, if people are going to drink, they might as well do so out of bottles with smart packaging.

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I've made a couple of changes around the blog, all the links are now green (it's the new orange!) and I've added a Facebook javascript badge on the right side. I love Facebook but hardly anyone I know is using it. Come on people, join! I know, I know, the last thing you need is another online networking site...

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I've been reading David Rakoff's Fraud while on my trip to Tokyo last week. In some ways it seems an odd choice, the writings of a quintessential New Yorker (and proud of it!!) seem out of place in a city like Tokyo, where people avoid confrontation, never eat while walking on the streets, and generally avoid situations that might cause stress to themselves or others. Definitely not New York.

Rakoff's acerbic observations on America put the differences of Japan in a more stark relief. And maybe the fact that Rakoff himself lived in Japan for a few years allow him the distance to see America as clearly as he does.

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Me in full-on Buddy Cole mode, last week.

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Reading Patrick Smith's columns (he's even responded to my email questions directly) in Salon always remind me of how magical flying still is. For just a few hundred dollars, you can be almost anywhere in the world you want. There are still some things in this world that are pretty ok.

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Last night at the screening of Haircut (No. 1) at ATA Gallery, the film started, with a scratchy flicker. 6, 5, 4... Suddenly there was the image of a shirtless Freddie Herko on the screen, wearing tight white jeans, leaving nothing to the imagination. He sort of delicately moves around the space, obviously a dancer, but with a body that defies its balletic training. Hairy chested and muscular, he's a study in contrast: feline finesse on the one hand, burly midwestern swagger on the other. The other men onscreen are talking and moving, the scenario is unclear but suggestive. The frames begin to stutter abruptly, which at first only adds to the ghost-like mystique of this 1966 film. Then, suddenly, just square white light onscreen. Somehow appropriate to the subject, we find out that the film just broke. The projectionist says he could splice it but since it belongs to the MOMA in New York, and he's not really familiar with this projector, the responsible choice is to leave it as is and cancel the event.

Thus ended the San Francisco screening of one of the only Warhol films that features Herko. There was one member of the audience, an older man, who had seen Herko perform several times and shared the experiences. But then, much like Herko's life, the event was suddenly over. Those of us who remained made our way through the drizzly night to Amnesia for a beer.

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I should make this a Digiki fan page. His new Polypunk is just perfect.

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For Freddie, my collaboration with Deric Carner, opened on February 28th at Artists' Television Access. It's an evocation of the life and untimely death of the fascinating and obscure dancer Freddie Herko, a part of Warhol's factory crew. He danced to his death out a window in Manhattan, while listening to Mozart after taking a long bath.

Deric's installation work is just stunning, the cabinets he made to display the work as well as the drawings, icons, and posters are delicate yet challenging and tough. He also currently has a show up over in Oakland at 21 Grand.

Anyhow, the piece is now installed in the Window at ATA, on Valencia Street. According to reports so far (I've not even seen the final version yet as I've been in Tokyo), the music actually works better on the street, the hard-edges of my sounds are exaggerated through the use of the lofi speakers.

I am going to go see it tomorrow night at the screening of Haircut at ATA, it's a very hard to find Warhol film that Deric got ahold of, somehow.

Here are some images of the work, both inside at the opening and the current iteration in the window.

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The M.I.A. ++ Blue Monday mix that DIGIKI put together live freestyle Sunday night was magic! The event at Highti was way too much fun, amazing people, totally great space. Let's do it again!!

Digiki in action.

Rob and Digiki on the train.

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I'm currently hanging out at Highti, about to morph into DJ Smacky. Great space, amazing people, they've had this space for about three years now. It really reminds me of the Overtoom 301 space in Amsterdam. I doubt Japan has any government programs to fund a space like this like though, which is a shame.

DJ Smacky, tonight, is going to rock it Spanish-language style with the long-distance help of das Buckster.

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When Shostakovich was speaking to the Keller Quartet about how to play his chamber piece Music For Thought, he instructed them to, "...play it so that flies drop dead in the air and the audience leaves the hall from sheer boredom."

That's what I strive for in my live music, if that's what it indeed is, music I mean, as well! I want to reach that introspective point where those who are willing to go the whole way with me stay, and those who are bored simply leave.

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I wake up around 9 to a lovely call from Jano in Austria after my night of bar-hopping with Digiki and Robert. After a quick jog, I buy bento and a canned coffee at 7-11. I come back to this charming apartment a friend has extraordinarily graciously lent me while I am here, post some pictures on my blog, skype with an old friend in the deep south, transfer the video of my performance last night at Mogra, a very cool cafe/gallery, arrange my clothes into a wash pile, have interspersed moments of melancholy because I am leaving in two days, and just feel myself afloat in the sea of spectacle and ancient ghosts that is Tokyo. All the while loud crows are having very serious conversations above the city.

Then, tonight, I'm very much looking forward to the event at Highti that Satoshi has organized.

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If I were Japanese, I would want people to know me as transparent, playful, curious, a frequent traveler, nocturnal, humble, someone who prefers gesture over elucidation, loves precision and surface and most of all precise surfaces, is always silly, curious, sometimes quiet, and is obsessive about obscure forms of art and music.

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