If you have 30 minutes of downtime

So I originally wrote this really long post on Friday/Saturday which I figured I did not want you all to suffer through. I had no clue how to concisely show what kind of music I like to make or how my mind operates...and then it came to me! I already did this once, about 2 years ago for a class (Reviewing the Arts). It was actually more of an artistic philosophy than a catalog of influences, potato tomato. But I'll splice in some concrete things for your listening and viewing enjoyment.

Here goes:
I create to challenge. I create music to fill and displace the stale basement air. In my best moments, I dig to find the truth that eludes conventional and, in some cases, sane thought processes. I was raised to be a devil’s advocate, a trait that drives my creative impulses and takes both serious and playful forms.

Art should be improvised—a moment of self-documentation and unbridled truth. Whatever the medium, the art exists as much (or even more) in the creation as the finished product. And as a performance artist, I find the greatest reward in the constant search. I stay nomadic, finding a new path every time I walk towards at an instrument. Improvisation is an experiment of metaphysical scientists being carried out in filthy laboratories. The goal of these experiments is therapy, indicating that the performance or creation of an object provides relief and greater meaning for the creator; an external meditation, a fermenting howl. Only after the artist finds a greater satisfaction should the audience even be recognized.

Music remains my expression of choice, although I have heard the more polarizing words ‘sound’ and ‘noise’ used to describe my work. I do not always agree with, but fully understand, these epithets, as I strive to erase many of the assumed limitations and rules of music while I am playing an instrument. The presumed ‘correct’ way to treat a guitar, proper technique on piano, and commonalities of Western music—they all choke the purity of raw creativity.

Instruments are only imperfect interfaces that musicians use to communicate their idealistic visions of sound. As the tool is inherently imperfect, everything I hear will always come up short. Knowing this, I search for new ways to fail, hopefully corrupting sound into something completely detached from my preconceptions.

So, thats something. I took out two paragraphs of that because I don't completely agree with them, so, excuse the choppiness. But concrete influences...I guess there's this paragraph, which I changed in the final version.

I would love to claim these ideas as my own, but it must be obvious that these ideas come from a very recognizable selection of artists that came before me. My curiosity about the realm of chance was undoubtedly inspired by 20^th-century visionary John Cage. He, more than any other artist, pushed to challenge the social assumptions of what ‘music’ is. I find the never-at-rest and aptly named band Sonic Youth and minimalist composer Steve Reich to be some of the most forward-thinking musical artists of our times. Not only do they create beautiful and fulfilling soundscapes, they do so by turning the meaning of limitation on its head. Outside of music, I have been a followed and believed in George Carlin since my teenage years. After my parents showed me Carlin on Campus, I have found courage to never take my consciousness for granted. Most of the musical product of punk usually disappoints me, but the immediacy and the energetic masochism of the creative process is a force I can connect with. But, more than all of these, I am driven by the search for one pure experience.

So yeah, I'm fueled by confusion and anger and restrictions and paradoxes and noise and societal rebellion and all that. It's all therapy, as I said in the writing. Basically, I begin to go crazy when I don't play music or use my creativity.

Here are some listening/viewing favorites

This first one is a clip of the first time I ever heard Sonic Youth, which became my favorite band almost instantly:

On Friday, I saw a show at the Empty Bottle, the artist was a guy who goes by his last name, Fennesz. He is an ambient/minimalist musician who uses technology as his slave. I've seen enough people with laptops on stage (zzzzzz...), clicking away and processing samples, but I've never seen anyone show a level of complete mastery like I saw Friday. It was a seamless 75-minute set that built slowly to an explosive climax--an extremely sexual performance. Twists and turns and beauty and passion and tension. And then, complete immersion. I'm having a really hard time choosing clips that do the sound quality justice, but here's one that seems passable:

This became pretty long anyways, but that's usually how I do things. GET USED TO IT

Inspire

What i find inspiring in all this is the way light in all of these various places differs from each other. I get inspired by realistic things that can play with each other. Light is a living thing that can be explored as much or as little as we choose. These places offer light of all different shapes and sizes. Soft and sweet as well as rigid strict and focused. Different light can give different feeling to a show and this difference can add or take away from the show. Playing with the realism and surrealism looks in this show makes it so that our options are endless and i look forward to playing with them.

my thoughts on all this

I find it inspiring when people put their cell phones down and turn off their ipods to take the risk of connecting with a stranger, forget about themselves for a moment and relate to people without that screen that we put up so often because we are concerned with what people will think of us. I find it inspiring when someone forgets about themselves in their concern for another person, like Samantha does with Jewel, and they let their self-constructions fall to the ground in order to do what they think is right for them to do. I enjoy seeing people do something not because they feel compelled by society of by peer pressure but because something inside them tells them that it is what they should do. something that is not dictated by their preoccupations with the future, but by their moment to moment existence. It is amazing to see someone go all out for something or someone they really believe in, and to see that succeed, result in change, makes me truly happy.
On a more practical side,I have been thinking about what I wish to convey with my design. I think the main thing projections can do in this show is convey the complexity, speed and violence that our thoughts have inside our heads, as well as the way our experience of events differs from what is actually going on. I want the projections to show what is really going on in samantha's mind. I want to show her convoluted, confused thoughts, drawings coming to life in frame by frame drawn animations, I want to see things bot the way they are but the way she sees them. In the end for me nothing in the play is objectively real. Of course there are things that are obviously not real, but ultimately everything that happens is sen through the filter of Sam's perceptions, and is therefore distorted. I don't want to show what is going on when sam enters the night club, i want to show what Sam's subconscious perceives on entering: the loud music, bright colors flashing in the dark, bodies writhing and touching each other, skin, sex, sweat, thirst, that need for contact which pervades the whole play. that need which people try to achieve in the most roundabout ways, thinking that by "letting themselves go", by "losing control" they can come closer to something real, when it is only by accepting things around one's self and by being genuine that one can truly connect. Striving for connection will never lead anywhere, it is when she lets go of everything and lies down next to Gabriel that Sam finds the only true connection she has.
I would like to play with silhouettes, with projecting on the floor (although this might be impossible) and i need to know whether you (Emily) want rear or front projections to be more emphasized. that is, if you want rear projections they will be a main feature compared to any other projection (and they can be on a surface like the jonsi concert, which already has a basic design on it (windows in fact could work great) but if you don't want rear projections (and save the possible hassle of setting up a projector backstage and not letting anyone cross in front of it unless it is part of the show, which could be awesome) we need to figure out how to to what we want with several front projectors. right now i think we could go for on large rear projection that covers most of our needs plus two more crazy projections from the front using possibly the film projector. if my projector is backstage that would also let me maneuver it without being on stage or in the middle of the audience (which however might be what you want). let's talk about it, and if any of you other guys have something to say about this, don't hesitate to comment.

What inspires me..

What inspire me is....
people of every race and culture coming together, embracing each other's unique ideas, and learning from one another. The idea of finding strength and unlimited possibility in our differences. Knowledge and understanding on the deepest level of humanity. we are all one. Only love is real... like the moment at the end of the play when Gabriel and Samantha acutally touch. Communication is key, communication on the level of humanity, outside of what is palpable, but what is true experience and understanding. PEOPLE NEED PEOPLE for SUPPORT of ONE ANOTHER
more to come...

Summary

So in directing class we always have to write a summary of the play we are directing. Every semester I have struggled with this, but every time it gets a bit easier. I managed to write the summary for Dead City in about 15 minutes, which I was very impressed with. It really helped me, because this play is so full of action, to define what exactly is happening on stage. I wanted to share it will ya'll:

Samantha Blossom, an optimistic forty-something advertising agent, dreams of Jewel, a young poet, staggering home on the pedestrian path near the West Side Highway at sunrise. Cut back to the morning before - June 16th, 2004. New York City. Samantha is preparing breakfast for her husband Gabriel in her Upper East Side apartmnent. Sorting through the mail, she finds a letter addressed to him from his music manager. The scent of the envelope raises in her a panic. She moves about her day in a half-daze, running into an annoying aquaintances, then zoning out to reminece about her secret online lover; imagining a friend's husband speaking to her from the grave while at his funeral; dreaming of her dead son in a seedy basement bar. She runs into Jewel, the daughter of an acqaintance, in an online magazine offive, then again at the library, and again in a maternity ward. Same is strangely drawn to this moody intellectual, and, having been sorely let down by her rendevous with her online lover on a dock near the Hudson, decides to follow Jewel to a lesbian nightclub, hoping that some meaningful connection can finally be made. Jewel becomes belligerant, and Sam drags her back to her apartment for hot cocoa. After Jewel leaves, Sam crawls back into bed with Gabriel, quickly recounting her day before passing out. In the dark, Gabriel is drawn to reveal his saucy affair with his manager, his suspicion of Sam's own infidelity, his fantasy of making love to Jewel, how amazed he was when Sam was pregnant, and how he can't connect ot her anymore. Waking Sam up, Gabriel tells her that all he needs is something small, and they fall asleep touching each other.

My summary of the change will probably change. More to come.

Meet Katie Spelman

Check out this blog post about the choreographer of Sideshow's Theories of the Sun (for which I just basically production managed). I think her approach to using movement in theatre is really inspirational. Sarah saw the play last night, and I think she liked the dancing - maybe she'll share more of her opinion when she joins this blog.

C'est tout.

Nivan is awesome, and so is this

These people have a plan :




Holy shit. Take a look at some of the pictures. That's what inspires me as art.

Nivan shared this with me on facebook (on the behalf of Adam Blanchard). I really wish he would share it on this blog, and write a little about that, but I don't know if that is ever gonna happen.

(I really don't like that the "web" is described as "the work of horrifyingly large arachnids." It made it less beautiful to me.)

I think at the center of what amazes me about this piece is that "'The installation is based on an idea for a dance performance in which the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between the pillars,' explains For Use’s Christoph Katzler. 'The dancers are stretching the tape while they move, so the resulting shape is a recording of the choreography.'” Sure, you could trace that pattern on the floor with paint, but they thought about it three dimensionally, using an unusual medium with which we usually have an very different way of contact.

Say that last part three times fast.

As I start into what is basically a two week tech process, I find that what I love about the video is how smoothly that technical process went. Of course, I'm sure there were points where certain people would stop and question something, but they had it planned out. What is so cool about our production of dead city is that so much of that really time consuming tech bullshit we can work through in a rehearsal room. I'll talk more about that at our little design meeting. But basically, this is gonna be good.

Sleep now.