A Note on the Writing
The words included in this
paper are an attempt to create a writing environment parallel
to that of musical improvisation. This was achieved by
using the Surrealist technique of automatic writing while
listening to a representative number of improvised recordings.
The process was simple: press 'play' on the CD player
and begin writing, without stopping, until the end of
the track. Some of the shorter tracks were revisited,
so the process was repeated, resulting in an act similar
to a second or third take in jazz music.
The writing is a free, spontaneously generated
stream of consciousness fully stimulated by the music.
As a result, content roams actively, logic is, for the
most part, abolished while vivid imagery and emotion develops
in sync with the direction of the music. The title for
each piece of writing is a freely associated 'riff' using
the composer/performer's original title as the foundation.
Ultimately, this writing exemplifies the presence of 'personal
narratives' as discussed by George Lewis and the Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in their critical
writings on this subject.
Six classifications of improvisation and
nine composer/performers were used to generate the writings
including: Indeterminacy (Christian Wolff), Graphic Scores
(John Cage, Fred Frith, Rudolph Komorous, Morton Feldman),
Freedom (AMM), Jazz Innovation (George Russell), Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (Art Ensemble
of Chicago) and European Free Music (Hans Reichel).
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I just let it happen.
…unknown poetry in which I can progress.
—Anthony Pay
Listening is equally an exercise in existence.
—Eddie Prévost |
A Stool for Violence or Possibility I
for Christian Wolff
Uneven hesitated, lifted delicately
into a chance of lucid pairs. You seem to pluck the waves of understanding
left solid and gentle. Or how you choose to react in an uneven
manner indicates how you squeal literally for the keeping of a
silver tickle. Happening forward, we skip the particles that mean
the most. We lift without hesitation the significance of a controlled
stew, the evening depth of all our uneasiness. Everything breathes
you say, then everything breathes. Nothing is breathing, so we
duende altogether by way of the frost melted off by noon.
A Stool for Violence or Possibility II
for Christian Wolff
Lighter than the level set to
frequently blunder. Active incomparable objects divided into the
lost essence of misplaced treasure. You weld to the tense time
sack of blown proportion. Discipline does not mean the dirty skins
have been rewarded their list to do the marriage of flicked or
borrowed singing.
A Stool for Violence or Possibility III
for Christian Wolff
Confused. Relinquished. The uncontrolled
living dropping pins as favors to smooth. Elements of nature condensed
into cobras. Side-stepped or silk strewn about. Stay on the steps
now as if a gang of liberated going makes your eye go there. Down.
Go there and shout the single most compression of too many times.
Stop the story space that goes to bed each night. Sunk. Swept
into passages transformed unduly divine.
Variable Intentions I
for John Cage
Very good intention guided by
all the clubs and contusions. A simple nothing saying this is
equal in the temple of having no trouble. Overall length magnified
by the root of wanting more. Whispered twang continues to efface
the favorite stories trapped between the legs of Japanese beetles.
Hard case because I am soft. Worried about edges nowhere. Everything
makes the use turned upside down. But what is the captured demeanor
you insist upon? This wind is wound to points and lines, marking
the boundary of how our hairs grow. Repeat the worst, "I
wish I slapped the guards of my centering something." This
can be the effort of the conversation intended to tame the things
we don't see. Yes, maybe the cracks in the window are a
sign of gentle caress.
Gentle Jump
for Fred Frith
Cried through the full compass twitch having
hit the scene without knowing, deadly. Slowly the ease, flakes
in early dawn demise. Boiled maps escaping as a civilization of
petrified bird wings whisked through each attempt to embark on
pain pushed both north and south. Divide your hurting life into
vapors of mice, so you can lift your eyes, ripped out as pebbles.
Broken sentiment doubled as a system of limping happy dog life.
Squeeze that this gone, watch the shapes smooth away, and don't
drag the trampoline so fun. Wrinkled crazy death mat wavered,
sliced, wicked, tipped, tongued down every worn alley. Scoured
up dungeon dragging diagrams only numbed up, knocked out, crash-landed
dregs. Many, many cave lives left to weep. The dirty pores of
always lengthy snails. Battery of beatings leave the margin of
details dim. Crept completely close to the heat framed by pears
half gone for another rest. All other substitutions murmur of
coughs in a weakened state of hysteria. Only now can the liberty
of my front door open without a squelch.
Only This
for Rudolf Komorous
Corrupt conjunctions stand up to a twittering
lament. Gone in circles. Thistle. That thousand time signal sent
to the general public, blown up and landed over there. Snake pit.
Don't do that! Double this! Extruded into points of caramel
led astray. Say the birds will ring thirty gongs throughout the
day. Thistle. Parted selves of growing books converge into wafers
on mountainsides of apprehension. Go.
Chances
for Rudolf Komorous
Depth charged funeral lingering through the tiny
tinctures of formal ties. Simplified instructions extend for now,
forging offness of the self, even winced at the forgetting long
sunken or slipped. Distances develop as the texture of liver strewn
thinner than the blackest of blanket rage.
Sweat Queen
for Rudolf Komorous
All done, adorned with the wilt imposed by demons.
Decided to make the dust rot subtle. Sleep the light from berries
out of hindsight denied. Interpret no more without me.
First Perfection
for Morton Feldman
Although I box courage to plow the courtyard
free of clutter, I know no escape. Offer the delicate attention
so much a surrender laid down to ask me there. You chart the captured
clash of left-right-left. Roll over, now it is time to eat some
colored punches. Wait. Pleasurable distance makes a horse run
like the seclusion of its cause.
Third Exception
for Morton Feldman
Completed the extra process to fluff up the measure
of bound acts, thus kind and clever pillowed awakening. Here or
there in the lighted hallway that says you stand there like squares
of bread rising in the morning sun. Spread the butter with bacon
and watch the traffic move around like swirling seeds. Lessened,
we keep hundreds of trinkets in our pockets to remind us of the
lives we've lost. Cracked or shattered arms sent home with
extra postage. Tasted the result of waiting to determine the wanting.
A Mental Slice
for AMM
A couple encounters sliced slowly, maybe silently
in a sliver of a morning most cumbersome. Here, greeting killer
whales as they hit the house sideways, staying inside to keep
the warm or the nice intact. Earthenware slowly cracked out a
map that leads to the inside of your craft. Stories of raw meat
having accidentally taken the time to leave us and find other
places to grip or spoil. Harsh attention pleases the other side
of muscular drought. Whole arms laid to rest as logs pushed out
to sea. The wavering temptation to excuse the sun and see clearly
is a jargon of oceans dumb with recent departure. The "mis-"
part of words broken off, making friends with lovely failure.
Floats the way to, in and out of making it all happen, maybe too
tight. The severance is drenched in moonlight, so tell me you
are there. Yes, I convert the smile in your throat as you glaze
the inevitable construction of sliding away. Open the door of
hours. Help the air out in order to lift yourself into daylight.
Lay down beside the natural twist you make with your fingers.
The tiny lives controlled in a constant mishing and mashing. Languished
throughout, you walk into tomorrow and wipe the end off the fruits
having played your face. You are the elapsed inquiry of time,
of tinkered things. You push the pepper into doorjambs posing
as days lost in danger or detail. Dig out the orientation of your
longing such that it blends like ants in pores of lace adorned
with reason. Illuminate how you tend to tip from side to side
as you lose the chasm that holds you together. Upright angels
through arches of pummeled indignation. The punctuation is mere
meat to creep in. No more elevation of the taste to leave here.
A statue of the definition unfolds into my bed that I see through
hairs. Each contact of the saw blade leaves more for you to see,
each softened compartment confirmed by echoes sliced into earth.
Come into the already awareness of leftover caricatures. This
is all a part of the beauty of well-groomed grass manifest as
infinity. Grateful inclusion of delicate explosions catered to
spoons or the dangling expanse of your solarized mouth parts.
Chromosome Verse Part I
for George Russell
Uncranked intergalactic conditions disguised
as an empty flask of around-the-corner episodes sipping everyday
life. Living except laughter as the tongue flips through portraits
of starts exposing tomorrow's toothy smile. The impossible
capsule of out-there transportation whirled through depths of
just becoming a tiny, happy flair.
Chromosome Verse Part II
for George Russell
A few extra myths have slapped the leather well,
have commodified the colors of dawn working their way through
gracious mountain refrain. Downtown walkways even come up black
through the roots of clouds. Wishful barge pushing, pulling out
the warbling ligaments ensconced in gifts washed there as stars
or heavy spots.
Chromosome Verse Part II: Reconsidered
for George Russell
Play in the determined land of folksy uncovered
dilemmas. Warped regularly in delightful infections clung to rituals
uncovered, thus flattened flavors including each grommet tied
to the seat of your sliding. Mornings more corrupt, so we slightly
approach. This darling day flung throughout the canvas of our
sunken selves.
Chromosome Verse Part III
for George Russell
To tease the delivery completes the confusion
crept from the unity of our underparts. The cosmic carrier of
all denial let loose to flap into countless days of crushed property.
Horses galloping through gifts of grandiose clocks, the trot so
tempered by touches without the wonder of the want disturbs the
entrance and says "No more." Here is some joy, some
everything to sip on, so the sip includes swinging the unknown
for more than quarters.
A Sense of
for Art Ensemble of Chicago
Only the swiftest songbirds uncaged. Now, this
is some bitter dreaming to lose the hardened diasporic touch.
Help the ringing of lost trouble lay low in the marsh of untold
starting. Go to other entwined darted traditions of a probably
belief bounced trajectory. Sift through the accountable past-time
of completely cooled streams, fling the ever pleasant eclipse
into nights we see coming. Elsewhere the condition of possessive
hands of faces thrust in the street light and the memory of common
sense. Let him say the spontaneous toughness on his fingertips,
say the tough other in a silent tug of war. Understood more as
a passing train than the history of spices afloat in your soup.
Please tell me the things left to pass by, tell us all the lightening
suites having come to visit. Say hello and whimper as the survival
of daylight lifts up all started stops. Go on over there, swift
slots having gone so far. Jerks and paper bones fighting the length
of Africa. Hours keep playing the crime on the edge singled out
as a motif of collapsing handshakes. Worthwhile touch of temples
torn from the thickness of each flicker, flipped, then flashed
into exhaustion. The bounce of templates off to the no-world.
Stay here, linked.
Maybe
for Hans Reichel
A comfortable tingle of stretched sublime, leapt from demands
said square. Tender tide of compulsion torn to separate leaves
of a blown size (equator of the punch). Bagged acceptance or rejection
taking place in harrowing dimensions ignored by the disasters
of dictionaries? Seen. Please more rapture pulled political as
a sworn cap carried to the wooden bottom you've prepared.
Maybe Too
for Hans Reichel
This in the contradiction crafted from the lips
of crepe paper. Slippery tugs telling the tapestry to wiggle,
to slap or slip into the calves of men already flavored with well-being.
Still figures of women might spit if the moments delve into complete
reminiscence. This is the happen that is so.
The Wealth in Death
for Hans Reichel
Crumbling already enough countries keep the swiftness
of softness alive in a blaze of falling. Steep under the cuts
of knock-down to take the wooden ball away. Thrown out of the
cleaving expanse drawn so near. Unraveled from wheat, ever so
sweet the digging sensation of pulses pulled out and examined
(compulsion to bury thumbtacks moved further away). Today explodes
into pieces of fortification wasted in an attempt to actualize
everyone left standing. Swaggering democratic from tin-tin tortures.
Plummet the aviary of fragrant swells and include the whistle
of exposed flint. Tell these airs to make a mistake of the night
to cancel it out. Play this scraped tangle and club the blubber
to please. Establish each hit as a time to use your senses accurately,
to reach out the welcomed surface left partly in the noonday sun.
Harbors held on to for the sake of keeping time. How about the
dimple of division poured into moons that define weeping from
sleeping? Escape the misguided corpse in evidence of the slack.
Slowly cushioned back and forth, so creeps the collisions that
hardly martyr the inches of confusion made to test aloud. No more
tides to move easily through the crank of night.
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