review of Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited "OPEN SPACE: POST"

review of

Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited

"OPEN SPACE: POST"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2355. "review of Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited "OPEN SPACE: POST""

- complete version

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- written September 26 - October 31, 2025 & uploaded to my Critic website on November 3, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticPOST.html

review of

Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited

"OPEN SPACE: POST"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 23-25, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticPOST.html

the truncated review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8036329063

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243444975-open-space-post

They did it again. These amazing editors have culled together a broad-minded intellectual tour de force of such unique & inspired depth that I have to wonder: Is this being noticed?! The contributors to "OPEN SPACE" are sometimes, maybe even often, people whose work I don't encounter elsewhere. I'm fairly widely published &, yet, I rarely meet anyone who's ever read ANYTHING by me - let alone several things in several different sources - say something in "OPEN SPACE" + RAMPIKE + Experimental Musical Instruments. I'd like to think such readers exist, I know I'm one of them - so why do I not read other publications in wch Craig Pepples & Joshua Banks Mailman publish? Of the many things that cd be read, there are, obviously, many that I'm missing. As I'm fond of saying, I know an enormous amount.. but there's an infinite amount that I don't know. Thank the Holy Ceiling Light to "OPEN SPACE" for exposing me to much of what I might otherwise miss. Alas, I doubt that I have the energy to make this review as thorough as I'd like.

I'll start off w/ Stuart Saunders Smith. He was a music professor at UMBC, a university I grew up somewhat near. He published scores by Pauline Oliveros, wch I have. I met him, way back when, & told him about the tapes I publish(ed). He expressed an interest in buying them. He didn't. He was reputed to have a fantastic collection of bird calls. He has a poem here called "Regrets, Regards, Return". It ends w/:

"Of course,

the trick

is to die, in a good mood!-" - p 3

To the left of these words is 2 measures of G clef notation w/ rests in them. Smith died in 2024. I hope he died in a good mood.

Many of the contributors & editors of "OPEN SPACE" are old. It's reasonable to expect to die sooner rather than later. I'm 72 & even tho I want to break Jeanne Calment's record & make it to 123 I don't really feel like I have the energy to make it much longer than 72. Who will write my memorial? I'm not sure I think anyone is qualified. Benjamin Boretz wrote one about Elaine Barkin, a primary mover of the "OPEN SPACE" scene & its predecessors who died recently. Boretz is certainly qualified to write about Barkin, a person he shared a deep connection w/ for decades. "After 74 years, the conversation is suddenly quiet." (p 4) Do we ever adjust to death? So many of us put so much energy & passion & inspiration into creating a body of work, into nurturing a like-minded community.. only to reach the anticipated but not necessarily welcome conclusion of seeing it start to decay. "The conversation had no bounds, and was never going to stop, and its reverberations will not subside..." (p 4) One can hope that one's contributions to life will outlive us - thusly giving at least our ideas a greater longevity than we, personally, will experience.

Dorota Czerner & her husband Russell Craig Richardson are the 2 editors I've gotten to know the best - wch isn't to say that I know them anywhere near enuf. Nonetheless, I feel an affection for them. Dorota's "in (on) touch", written on September 3, 2024, is a diary of a train journey. I picked the following excerpt in my review notes:

"What was the first element of those days? I want to say anxiety, but upon reflection, there was Silence. And if there was one then immediately there must've been two; and the two was birdsong." - p 7

That was a PLUS of quarantine.

"Another way of seeing this:

Peacocks danced on the empty streets of Mumbai." - p 9

I saw a herd of deer on the disc golf field at the local park - much more freely out in the open than they ordinarily wd be, usually they stay protected by the trees. I was the only human there.

As a teenager I was accused by my Conservative Republican Christian mother of being an "idealist". That wasn't intended as a compliment. It was interesting to read Boretz's take:

"Artistic idealism isn't like political idealism because it doesn't imagine itself as a path to a destination. It explicitly eschews knowing where it's going, but fantasizes that its engagement will lead to states of consciousness precisely unable being imagined from any point of entry into the space of the work. Because it is essential to its nature that it doesn't know where it's going." - p 10

As my introductory paragraph perhaps implies, "OPEN SPACE" seems to've gathered its own cultural nexus. One of the editors, Tildy Bayar, addresses this.

"On Open Space Culture"

[..]

"My idea is that the culture of Open Space is unique: it appeals to two demongraphics located at opposite ends of a continuum: those who naturally gravitate to 'nontraditional' environments because they're not comfortable or are not gonna make it in traditional ones (I count myself among these!), and those who make it just fine in traditional settings but find those settings more or less stifling or uninspiring, and thus are looking elsewhere for something interesting. A space within which both of these demographics can meaningfully contribute has proved mutually beneficial." - p 13

"We want to create a hospitable space for texts and graphics which, in one way or another, might feel somewhat marginal-or too 'under construction'-for other, kindred publications. The people who populate our contributing/ editing/ reading/ listening community are composers (in whatever medium), performers, historians, ethnologists, theorists, critics, philosophers, scholars and seekers of any kind who feel drawn to participate with us in scouting expressive frontiers. We hope you'll want to join this exchange.

"Open Space website, homepage" - p 14

That's clear, isn't it? & I think it's spot-on.

"A thing is a technique of looking. It has rights. A cannibal grammar. Bored. A networked vending machine, ignorance remains as a form of hospitality. To (whatever).

"Chris Mann, and the question. Open Space Magazine, issue 2, page 153. 2000." - p 18

For me, that's considerably less clear.. but still interesting & thought provoking. How can a thing have "rights"? What or who is "Bored"? How can ignorance be a form of hospitality?

Tildy Bayar's piece has its last page begin w/ a quote from the essential J.K. Randall:

"Legend has it that the Fervid Mystic buttonholed.

The Forensic Musician.

Said TFM: The Ultimate is Unknowable.

Replied TFM: True.

Misunderstanding the grounds of this disagreement,

A Bourgeois Rationalist says: The Existence of God

has been Demonstrated.

To which TFM replies: Blasphemy.

And to which TFM relies: Bullshit.

And to which An Existentialist Philosopher adds: God is Dead.

J.K. RANDALL, What Is It about About?. Open Space Magazine, issue 5, page 273. 2003." - p 20

&, then, Scott Gleason, "Thinking through Some Relations":

"I guess the issue is my deep-seated ambivalence about the master-student relationship. My inability to move past that. My desire for it on the one hand (for everything to be revealed), but my profound distrust of leaders and followers, myself very much included. Where, that is, is there independence in this? want to know what I don't know, and I suppose on some level I assume that others know more or better than I do. But of course, if the whole point is for me to know, then why look to others? For guidance, camaraderie, mutual understanding, friendship, certainly, and certainty. I have my music and my experience of music and my thoughts about music independent of others' thoughts, experiences, and musics. I've worked hard to be comfortable with that knowledge. "Don't tell me who or what to believe." That's an anarchist position, too." - p 21

Indeed, the above-quoted is anarchist philosophizing in action. To my mind, the conundrum of recognizing & appreciating the accomplishments, knowledge, & wisdom of other people need not be one of teacher-in-hierarchy-above-student. If one shares interests & enthusiasm w/ another person, neither person will be the ultimate expert or always in the position of not knowing. People/friends can share what they know that the other person doesn't know. Acknowledging someone as an elder doesn't mean that one has to kiss their ass. If that seems to be what they want then, IMO, they're not friends, so why bother?!

Benjamin Boretz, a composer/theorist/educator/player who goes way back & who founded & edits OPEN SPACE, has made it to his 80s. May we both continue to be as active as Elliott Carter was - all the way to 103. I, personally, doubt that I'll make it that long but I'm sure I'll continue to be productive up to the bitter-sweet end. Ben is still productive in his 80s. Here's an excerpt from his "THE AWARENESS OF CHART" poem (this shd be centered):

the two recorders

in the Sonatina of Gottes Zeit

shimmering seconds

with/against each other

as one but

necessarily in two

but still,

here,

a pianist

alone

initiates the shimmering frisson"

- p 23

Pages 26-29 feature what strikes me as Chinese (although written in Japanese) Concrete Poetry even tho, unable to read Japanese, I can't really confirm that.

"(The artwork on the previous pages is by Xingzhou Shen. They are four poems or wordscapes in Japanese, the artist's first attempts at composing in that language, and are entitled Neon, Crow, Fallen Leaves, and Translation). - p 30

Whether the semantic content is reinforced by the visual presentation, as I think it wd if this were Concrete Poetry, I find these poems to visually enrich this issue - once again demonstrating the editors' sensitivity.

Then there's Andrew Zhou's "Inventing Paul Zukofsky". I love Paul Zukosky's violin playing & his repertoire (- as I explain in my review of his father's famous poem ""A"" (see the unfortunately truncated review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9957415-a ). He's yet-another person I'm sorry to've not met. As such, Zhou's article was of great interest to me:

"I have recently found refuge in bookstores, the only place in a city of strict lockdown ordinances where you can seek free asylum from the dulling comforts of home and the bone-piercing chill of the Pacific Northwest.1"

[..]

"I began this essay in Seattle, WA, in January 2020, at a time when the city would allow no indoor spaces (restaurants, gyms, museums) to be open to the public for prolonged stay. The essay was completed in Central New York."

[Zhou's memory is faulty here since the QUARANTYRRANY didn't start until March, 2020 - see my bk written as "Amir-ul Kafirs" entitled: "Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC": http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2020.09PANDEMIC.html ]

[..]

"Since the end of 2019, I have been sorting through the legacy of the late American violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky, who passed away in 2017, in Hong Kong,where he spent his final years. The finding aid-"the inventory," as I now call it, with the requisite article-which comprises at least one hundred and thirteen numbered boxes for his personal scores alone, is a listing of items of potential historical importance. Some gems so far harvested" a response from Charles Seeger to PZ's request for the as-of-then-undiscovered violin sonata of Ruth Crawford, Steve Reich's Violin Phase, which PZ recorded, as well as a previously unpublished-I almost think of it as inexistent it has been so scrubbed from the histories-pre-1965 score from Mr. Reich whose provenance I still have yet to ascertain." - p 31

During the QUARANTYRANNY I've become distrustul of the NYT b/c they've so flagrantly lied in service of propaganda - referring, e.g., to a German rally that Robert F. Kennedy spoke to as a nazi one. A friend of mine who attended that & sent me photos from it told me it was more like a Hippie festival, the pictures backing this up. Let's not forget that the NYT attacked Martin Luther King Jr as a 'traitor' when he publicly criticized the US's assault on Vietnam in the 1960s.

"I think of Mark Liberman's apologia of PZ's charm and friendliness, in direct response to Margalit Fox's rather dour New York Times obituary of him, etched with acid and grump. I feel no need to defend a man I never met." - p 34

Defaming someone after their death is something propagandists can get away w/ w/o much likelihood of lawsuit reaction. I fully expect it to happen to me - or, even more, for me to be 'erased' from the internet - the USA's version of disappearing someone. Zhou feels "no need to defend a man [he] never met" but I do: the obvious genius of PZ's violin playing is what truly defines him as a human to me.

"Many writers on life face the hurdle of accessing an archive" [..] "I, by contrast, have a glut of materila from a man who relentlessly occupied himself with misinterpretations of his father's work and yet made no known plans to direct the future of his own. The anxiety of PZ's inventory is not just its material abundance but its neighborliness to and muted exchanges with his father's pseudo-diaristic poetry and prose." - p 39

When I reviewd Louis Zukofsky's ""A"" I was warned by my poet friend, Eddie Watkins, that Paul might take exception to my review - as he, reputedly, had so many times before. I was relieved when he didn't (that I know of) b/c I have high admiration for him & expressed this copiously in the review.

Zhou's essay is followed by Craig Pepples' "The Imaginary Library of Paul Zukofsky":

"(Yuji Takahashi called him "mad scientist" for the range of his imagination with its bias toward the impirical, and...)" - p 40

Here's how my review of ""A"" begins:

"I knew about Paul Zukofsky, Louis' son, before I ever encountered mention of Louis. Paul's a violinist, Paul's probably the 1st violinist I ever started thinking of as a 'great violinist' - probably largely b/c his repertoire was so appealing to me. The 1st records I ever got by him were the double-record set of Ives' "Sonatas for Violin & Piano" - wch I got in early 1975 when I was a mere 21 yr old. I'm listening to that now as I write this. Later that yr I got the excellent Mainstream label's "New Music for Violin and Piano" w/ works on it by George Crumb, Charles Wuorinen, Isang Yun, & John Cage. Both of these publications also feature the piano playing of Gilbert Kalish. Somewhere along the line I heard a record of Zukofsky playing solo violin works by Glass & Scelsi & ? [Reich]. Eventually I picked up the excellent box-set entitled "Music for a 20th Century Violinist" w/ works by Shapey, Riegger, Cage, Crumb, Mennin, Feldman, Sahl, Brant, Wolpe, Piston, Sessions, Babbitt, Berger, & Sollberger - again w/ Kalish. Paul was a man after my own 'heart' - someone largely dedicated to 20th century classical, mostly 'avant-garde'." - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9957415-a

Pepples quotes from PZ's drafted notes re his scores & editions of score:

"marked copies of Feldman, Maceda, Wuorinen; the collection of Messiaen scores (keep even those not marked); Stockhausen, Berio, Cardew, the original Fluxus magazines. And also a permanent collection of books: the initial printing of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science (and Mathematica), Erhard Karkoschka's Notation in New Music, and books that I've learned from: Hindemith's book on ear training, and Nicholas Slonimsky, especially the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and the Lexicon of Musical Invective." - p 43

As a person who loves scores & books & new music the above is drool-material. In fact, I've made a movie using the "Lexicon of Musical Invective" that the reader may find entertaining:

427. "mmm056: Invecticon!"

- shot at the Who Unit? in Pittsburgh on June 21, 2015, at mm 56

- Featuring tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Ben Opie

- largely inspired by the Nicolas Slonimsky edited "Lexicon of Musical Invective" & its "Invecticon"

- 32:48

- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/427.-mmm-056-invecticon-yt

Then, if reading from front to back as I do, the reader gets to Jody Diamond's preface to "ALONES composition for one musician from frog peak music (a composers' collective" in wch my ire is roused:

"when the pandemic started I was playing in five different gamelan groups

music-making as a collective activity, as contribution and response

an intermingling of human breath and movement transformed into groupsound

"And then suddenly

we were at all home, alone

completely, indefinitely" - p 47

Why "ire"? B/c it's my opinion that the so-called "pandemic" was a highly exaggerated non-emergency that primarly served the purpose of restructuring the economy to make the rich even richer wch also helped establish (& test) what I call a Medical Industry Police State. As such, I get very annoyed when otherwise intelligent people unquestioningly refer to the 'reality' of the 'pandemic' as if it's a given fact, in no way open to criticism. For those of you who think that yr so-called opinions on the subject (really just rc'vd sound bites) are more thoughtful than my own opinions, I highly recommend that you read 2 bks of mine: "Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2020.09PANDEMIC.html ) & "THE SCIENCE (volume one)" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2022SCIENCE.html ). It's extremely unlikely that you'll read either of them (they're both long) but if you're honest you might at least admit that as objects they bespeak of dedications to their subjects far beyond the pale.

In other words, I think that Diamond's social isolation was completely unnecessary. I was 66 yrs old when the QUARANTYRANNY started & recently diagnosed as diabetic. As such, I was in the high risk group. Nonetheless, I wore a mask as little as possible (basically only when I went grocery shopping & wdn't've been allowed in w/o one) & I socialized w/ like-minded friends w/o social distancing &, hey!, guess what?!, I'm still alive. Whether I even got covid-19 is unknown to me & of no interest since any sickness I had was so mild it didn't matter. But I digress (sortof).

Richard Kostelanetz, a writer always of interest to me, provides "Music Flowers (after Louis Zukofsky)" in wch he uses only music words:

"mazurka

legno

instrumentation

allegro

boogie-woogie" - p 54

What that has to do w/ LZ or what its structure is beyond the obvious restricted word choices is beyond me. I'm, obviously, missing something.

David Lidov's "my Neo-Classicism" follows. I generally dislike or have minimal interest in Neo-Classicism but I like Lidov's approach/attitude & even listened to hie QR-provided sound examples & enjoyed them.

"On matters of system and technique, I feel fairly sure I know my material or at least used to know when I was younger. My writing on the other topic, Neo-classicism, is more improvisatory and less expert." - p 58

Ha ha! I can relate! When I was younger I was very meticulous to make sure I was writing accurately.. NOW, instead of confirming some things I might say, I accept my potential sloppiness. That wd've been inexcusable to my younger self.

He gets into Bach vs Rameau:

"Bach's insistence, as reported by his student, that good music must alternate consonance and dissonance without impairing the harmonic flow remains a suggestive proclamation for me, particularly because of its distinction between harmony and consonance, perhaps just what Bach did not find in Rameau's then newly popular harmonic theory, which he rejected." - p 60

This is, basically, beyond me (although I did acquire a copy of Rameau's "Treatise on Harmony" w/ the intention of reading it) b/c even though I've listened to music by both & found them easy enuf to distinguish from each other, my theoretical understandings of music are mostly confined to music after 1885. Still, Lidov's statement intriques me & will inform future listenings.

Lidov introduces me to "Fano Lattices":

"The Fano numbers are "N" (any integer) plus "N" squared plus one. E.g., if "N" is 3, then 3 +9 + 1, or 13. The first Fano numbers are 3, 7, 13, and 21. The series goes on, but my babies are 7 and 13. Seven is better for explaining things because its lattice is only three dimensional; We can smah it flat and represent it on paper. Thirteen, for me, has been more helpful in making music, but its Fano lattice is four-dimensional and perhaps un-visualizable." - p 70

Perhaps the above excerpt is more comprehensible to you than it is to me now. Quoting it out-of-context tends to displace it. I don't, e.g., understand why 3 is the 1st Fano number - what is it derived from? I get "3 +9 [ie: 3 squared] + 1, or 13" but I can't retrofit 3, 7, & 21. 7 squared is 49 + 1 is 50. What initial "N" wd produce a Fano number of 3, 7, & 21? Let's take 21: subtract 1 to get 20. What number plus its square yields 20? 4. So why isn't 4 a Fano Number when 3 & 13 are? This might be explained in Lidov's text but I'm not rereading it, I read it once, wrote my review notes & now I'm trying to make sense working from those. I'm intrigued. I wrote a math bk 17 yrs ago ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2017Paradigm.html ) & I didn't run across Fano numbers in the 5 yrs when I was researching for that. I've run across Fibonacci numbers used in harmony but this is something quite different.

Ah, ok, I was laying in bed thinking about this when I realized, DUH!, that these Fanov numbers are derived starting from 1: 1 + 1 squared (= 1) + 1 = 3, 2 + 2 squared (= 4) + 1 = 7, 3 + 3 squared (= 9) + 1 = 13.. An alternate way of calculating the progression is to add on the next even number following the difference between the last 2 Fanov numbers. E.G.: the difference between 13 & 21 is 8, therefore the next Fanov number after 21 is 21 + 10 = 31, 31 + 12 = 43, 43 + 14 = 57, etc.. I like it. It makes me want to create a numerical progression named after myself: tENT numbers: starting w/ 1, using only integers & adding its cube & then subtracting 100 yields the tENT number. 1 + 1 cubed (1) - 100 = -98, 2 + 2 cubed (8) - 100 = -90, 3 + 3 cubed (27) - 100 = -73, 4 + 4 cubed (64) - 100 = -32, 5 + 5 cubed (125) - 100 = 30. I went that far to see what the 1st positive integer wd be. I have no idea what practical use there is for tENT numbers (& they may already exist under a different name) but some clever mathematician might recognize it immediately. If only it cd alternate between negative & positive numbers, that wd be more interesting. What sort of progression wd make that possible?

That's simple.. but not elegant. I hereby declare tENTA numbers: Using only integers & starting w/ one add one + one cubed (one) = 2 & subtract one to one decimal place (1.0) = 1, the next number in the progression: start w/ 2 & add 2 cubed (8) = 10 & ADD one shifted one decimal place to the left (10.0) = 20, 3 + 3 cubed (27) = 30 MINUS one shifted 2 decimal places to the left (100.0) = -70, 4 + 4 cubed (64) = 68 & ADD one shifted 3 decimal places to the left (1000.0) = 1,068, 5 + 5 cubed (125) = 130 MINUS 10,000.0 = -9,870. So far we have this: 1 to 20 to -70 to 1,068 to -9,870. Can you predict what the next number will be? 6 + 6 cubed (216) = 222 + 100,000 = 100,222. I still don't see the pattern. 7 + 7 cubed (343) = 350 - 1,000,000 = -999,650. By now, I've probably made a mistake. Don't mind me.

20 (increase by 19)

-70 (decrease by 90)

1,068 (increase by 1,138)

-9,870 (decrease by 10,938)

100,222 (increase by 110,092)

-999,650 (decrease by 1,099,872)

I'm not spoofing Lidov, by the by, I love playing w/ numbers like this.

Sheesh, while I'm at it, I might as well name a disease after myself. 1st, tho, I want to mention that I've already named a disorder: AMD, Adminstrator Meeting Disorder. My movie about that is on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/601.-amd . But back to a disease: How about the disease of believing that nature is your enemy & that the DOCTOR GODS are superior to nature? Shall I call that tENTATIVELY's Disease? But I digress.

Next is Christopher DeLaurenti's "Flags can do nothing without trumpets":

"In his 1957 essay "Experimental Music," John Cage suggested that one direction music might head toward is theatre because "that art more than music resembles nature." Four decades later, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari decreed "flags can do nothing without trumpets."" - p 73

That's the 1st paragraph of a section called "Intent", followed by "Setting", then "Stage Plot", "Instruments", "Performance Preparation", &

"List of Recordings

"A Record the retrieval or making the flag(s) with a handheld recording device (running wireless lavalier microphones attached to every participant is also welcome but complicated). The recording should include casual dialogue; site specific sounds; and spontaneous expressions of unease, doubt, planning, and excitement.

"More than one person can make recordings, but keep in mind that more recordings obligate more listening, editing, and selection. The recordings will not and should not sound real; it will likely sound somewhat recessed and remote. Make sure to edit out any proper names, including those of the performers. The resulting sound file should seem continuous with no obvious gaps or truncations.

"The length of this recording should allow enough time for performers to take their places in section A and continue listening intently, most likely 4 to 6 minutes. From this recording, three moments or sections should be located and copied to sound file C." - p 76

Then there's "Structure", "Performance", "A Field Recording Overture and Leaf Sharing", &

"A Field Recording Overture and Leaf Sharing (continued)"

wch begins:

"Optional action: If you have two small leaves, other available performers should go into or among the audience and hold a two or more threaded dried leaves and place the leaves in contact with each other close to the listener's ear. This should be done slowly, kindly, wordlessly. Leave the small leaf with the audience member." - p 78

Now, you'll probably note that I haven't provided a capsule review of the above or an abstract, I've just quoted sections that I found interesting. In fact, I'd love to witness this piece performed & I wonder if it's likely to ever be performed when & where I can witness it. Like, perhaps, everything in OPEN SPACE, this is idiosyncratic & original.

Next, Jon Forshee's "Speaking of Meaning: Electroacoustic Music of Electrowave 2024 or Dialogue between Ibn Sina & Ibn Rusd on Musical Being":

"Ibn Rushid: Why me too! That's exactly why I'm here. Electrowave, the Rocky Mountain Electronic Music Festival (chuckles), absolutely. Forshee again, right? Hosted right here at the beautiful University of Colorado Colorado Springs..." - p 81

Is that something I wish I'd known about & cd've afforded attending? Probably. Is that something I might've enjoyed participating in & attending? Probably. I reckon it was an academic thing, something noised about primarily in academic circles - hence I didn't know about it.

Recently, I made a website about festivals I've had some connection to ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Festivals.html ) - for the most part ones I've participated in. These festivals have usually been ones dominated by cultural conspiracy, unlike an Electronic Music Festival the focus hasn't been on a particular medium. I tried to participate in an Electroacoustic Music Festival in BalTimOre in the 1980s. I submitted "Chinese for Celli" (1985) (on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/045.-chinese-for-celli-tape-53) & "Transparent SMILE Monty Cantsin performing with White Colours" (1985) (on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/transparent-smile ). I was rejected. One of the acts accepted was a guy who played synth-wash muzak w/ ONE slide of a planet projected as his visual. I actually booed that I thought it was so mediocre. Nonetheless, he made the cut & I didn't - & he had an expensive synthesizer. I can claim to've started making electroacoustic music no later than 1976 - &, yet, I feel fairly sure I'd be rejected from any academic festival, even after almost 50 yrs of work in the field.

That pessimistic attitude in mind, I'm still intrigued. Is all of the music an advertisement for new software &/or hardware? Or can people like myself, working at the low-budget end of things ("Kit'n'Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics)": on the Internet Archive in one piece here: https://archive.org/details/412.-kitn-caboodle ), be respected? I guest-lectured in the Electro-Acoustic Music Class at the University of Pittsburgh once. I thought what I presented was exceptional - even if it did involve trash-picked speakers & old suitcases & audio K7 players. Yrs later, I met a student from that class - he had a vague memory of someone's presentation but didn't remember me specifically. Apparently, I didn't make much of an impression.

Here's a glimpse at some of my relevant work:

735. "Electronics"

- 4K 30p Stereo

- 44:14

- edit finished February 8, 2024

- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/electronics-final

Am I promoting myself? Definitely, I'm 72 yrs old, largely rejected & neglected & I don't want to die a bitter man - but I'm not trying to get invited to the Rocky Mountain Electronic Music Festival or any other electronic music festival. If I were to be invited & were to attend I don't think I'd wow anyone, I'm too lo-tech. I might be of as little interest to the festival audience as I apparently was to the Pitt student. Still, it might be fun.

Ahem.

Next up is Fred Lerdahl's "Remembering Jacques-Louis Monod (1927-2020)". There's alotof memorializing in OPEN SPACE. Remember, most of the contributors are old people, we've all had deep love & appreciation for (creative) people in our lives who, then, aren't there anymore. For me, it was Franz Kamin, James Mansback "Sarmad" Brody, "Blaster" Al Ackerman.. Fortunately, we have the love & the ability to memorialize these folks in detail & respectfully.

"The artistic center of Jacque's life was the Schoenberg school, and. through it, the polyphonic tradition of Western music. He saw music history as a linear trajectory. Once he said to me that Le sacre du printemps is a bad piece of music: its reliance on overlaid ostinati and sequential ballet numbers is too primitive to take seriously; Pierrot Lunaire, by contrast, is a consummate work of art, a polyphonic treasure that brought music to its next historical stage." - p 89

Ha ha! I was listening to the local classical music radio stn a little while ago, I've been listening to it recently during breakfast b/c I have a radio in my kitchen. They played Charles Ives's "Housatonic" mvmt from his "Three Places in New England". The DJ felt compelled to make a comment about how 'crazy' the piece was, or some such. They don't play Ives very often. The piece is over 110 yrs old &, yet, in the conservative classical world it still jolts & disturbs. Same goes for Schönberg: people who think they like classical music still refer to him w/ distaste b/c of his "atonal" music. I love Pierrot Lunaire & it's definitely in my top 100, maybe even my top 10, favorite compositions. &, yet, ignorant classical music snobs won't even listen to his work (or play it on the classical music stn) - w/o knowing how diverse his work is, how incredibly dramatic it is. They shd listen to his adaptations of Mahler to get an idea of how well-rounded his work is.

Then there's Gryphon Rus's "Calder and Sound". I like Calder's work, he painted an airplane, there's a movie of his miniature circus that John Cage did the music for. OPEN SPACE is the perfect context in wch to present this aspect of Calder, something not commented on much b/c he's an artist &, hence, expected to stay in a narrow niche.

"In the scope of Calder's immense oeuvre (thousands of sculptures, more than 22,000 documented works in all media), I have identified nearly four dozen intentionally sound-producing mobiles. Calder's first employment of sound can be traced to the late 1920s with Cirque Calder (1926-31), an event rife with extemporized noises, bells, harmonicas and cymbals. His incorporation of gongs into his sculpture followed, beginning in the early 1930s and continuing through the mid-1970s." - p 95

Footnote 36 on page 107 provides this:

"Not long after this exhibition, "sound sculptor" Harry Bertoia followed in Calder's footsteps by formalizing the use of metal for its sound properties. Bertoia began in 1960 to stretch and bend metal rods into drifting formations resembling desert grasses. Sensitive to wind and touch, these tonal pieces approximate meteorological phenomena with thick beds of hissing tintinnabulation." - p 107

Those Bertoia sculptures are dear to me. I had the pleasure of accessing the "Sonambient Theater" in eastern Pennsylvania wch contains a multitude of Bertoia's sound scupltures. A large part of my movie entitled "Anonymous Family Reunion" was shot there ( https://archive.org/details/185.-anonymous-family-reunion ).

Earle Brown is one of my favorite composers & if I already knew the following story I'd forgotten it & was glad to be reminded:

"In 1963, Brown received a commission from Diego Masson, the son of André Masson, to write a piece for his First Percussion Quartet of Paris. In a gesture of homage to his hero, Brown began work on a composition to be conducted by a mobile. He visited Calder in his studio in Saché, France, to propose the idea, and Calder was, by Brown's account, immediately intrigued. To radicalise the concept further, the mobile also would be played as an instrument. Three years later, Calder's monumental standing mobile Chef d'orchestre (1966) arrived in Paris (fig. 11). Brown had assigned cues for the percussionists corresponding to the mobile's presumed colors. As it arrived painted entirely red, he hastily adapted his composition to its monochromatic scheme.

"Chef d'orchestre has been described as a "bony, angular, multi-limbed conductor." Its fourteen circular and ovoid elements, which hover within a drummer's reach, provide different pitches, apart from two of the same. When struck with mallets the mobile produces round, short-decay gongs. Brown's Calder Piece (1963-66) places four percussionists at corners equidistant to Chef d'orchestre and equipped with a battery of more than 100 percussion instruments. At several points, the percussionists advance upon the mobile, striking its bobbing forms, and leaving it swinging, sprint back to "read" its varying configurations. In order to interpret its gestures, the percussionist imagine the mobile's "petals" on the page, and play the phrases traced by the shape." - p 105

Michael Handler Ruby's "POEMS BASED ON SOUNDS" is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in. The idea of listening to sounds in his environment & then 'translating' those into words he cd hear as similar fascinates me & appeals to me.

"I wrote the long poem "Wave Talk," following the roughly 12-hour cycle from one high tide to the next. I wrote the poem along Gardiner's Bay near Cedar Point, where the waves aren't very large. Here's one short section:

"Yes I will

Uh huh Uh huh

I think it's best

You were going to say

You Think so

I think it's best

"Afterward Then

I think it's best

You will

Only if you foresee

Get going on it

I think it's best" - pp 108-109

"By the early 1990s, my poems based on sounds took a very different direction, one I certainly didn't connect at the time with waves and birdcalls. I carried out a homophonic translation of a section of the Aeneid, "translating" the Latin sounds into an English text. Virgil's "Sic fatur lacrimomans" becomes

"Sick fatter lack remains, classic admit it happiness

a tan deem you both is come are you mad bitter roar is.

A verdant peel a cup or us; tomb dented tenaciously" - p 109

There are poets who make "Ignorant Translations" (Chris Mason) where they read a poem in a language they don't speak & then translate it just based on the way it seems to them - mainly thru linguistic similarities. For that matter, my most recent bk, "How to write poetry" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2025.06.01Poetry.html ) is in a similar vein: Using a speech-to-text app I made non lingual sounds & preserved the app's attempt to 'hear' those as language. I find the result both interesting as language & hilarious.

The back of OPEN SPACE provides contact info for the contributors. Ruby's email is listed. This distinguishes OPEN SPACE from other, IMO more pompous, publications b/c it shows a willingness to communicate, an open-mindedness that I've been manifesting since my earliest days in Mail Art, in 1978. Given that I relish communication w/ people in general & people w/ similar interests in particular I see this sharing of contact info to be very important. W/ communities as esoteric as that of OPEN SPACE friendly communication can be very inspiring & often lacking in our more local lives where there may not be many people who even have any idea what we're talking about.

Jody Diamond's "The Gifts of the Pandemic" starts off w/ an image of the cover of BALUNGAN w/ COVID-19 spikes radiating out from a gong. This image wd appeal to me (& does anyway) if I didn't find the insidiousness of the plandemic social control so extreme. Goodbye civil rights.

"When the pandemic hit, I was playing in a different gamelan group five days a week. Monday was Balinese gamelan at Bard with Nyoman Suadin and Sue Pilla. On Tuesday I took the train to New York City to play with the composers' collective Gamelan Son of Lion. Wednesday, I taught at SUNY New Paltz with the instruments of Lou Harrson's Gamelan Si Betty. Thursday was gamelan degung across the river in Kingston with Dorcinda Knauth and the Catskill Mountain Gamelan. On Friday, I went back to the city, joining Kusuma Laras at the Indonesian Consulate to play the classical music of Central Java. All of these came to a complete stop.

"-Jody Diamond" - p 120

I'm sure I have recordings w/ Diamond playing on them. I love gamelan music. As such, Diamond wd've previously been a positive figure in my music-listening world. It's possible I even have a recording of one or more of her compositions (on tape, where I didn't find them in a cursory search in my aRCHIVE). HOWEVER, I vehemently reject what I call the "monolithic narrative" about COVID-19. Here's an excerpt from my bk on the subject:

"I started noticing a mass media emphasis on a deadly virus pandemic. The public had been prepped for such an event for decades. There had been books such as Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" (1994) on Ebola, Mike Davis's "The Monster at our Door" (2005) on the Avian Flu, & Robin Cook's "Pandemic" (2018) on Gene-Editing Biotechnology. Then there were the mainstream movies: Wolfgang Petersen's "Outbreak" (1995) based on "The Hot Zone", Richard Pearce's "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" (2006) on H5N1 Avian Flu, Jason Connery's "Pandemic" (2008) on a virus developed as a bioweapon, & John Suits's "Pandemic" (2016) on an unidentified virus.

"I have an interest in the disaster movie genre partially because I like seeing the special effects & partially because I'm interested in how public response is depicted. Since some of them try to be realistic about this I like seeing what 1st-responder plans are already in place. I've seen all the above-mentioned movies by now & I've read "The Hot Zone" & may read the other books if & when I have the time. What those hadn't prepped me for was the more subtle terror that I started seeing in March, 2020.

"Because the mass media was placing so much emphasis on the spectacular deadliness possibilities I saw people keeping distance from each other, glimpsing around furtively for signs of sickness, & inching their shoulders toward their ears in classic Reichian Character Armoring. This was completely mass-media-induced because nowhere, at least in my environment, were there any signs whatsoever of a pandemic: no extraordinary sick people visible. It wasn't like we were seeing bodies brought out of houses & burned in piles on the streets. &, yet, the terror was obvious.

"One would think that people would be aware by now that the mass media keeps its audience's attention by constantly parading the latest spectacle of death & destruction - whether it's war or crime or civil unrest or disease, there has to be something to keep people in a state of fear strong enough to motivate them to want to know more & to look to their preferred 'news' sources for the latest. One would think that this overemphasis on fear-mongering would be so familiar by now that people would understand that it's just Business-As-Usual & not let themselves be manipulated by it.

"No such luck, this particular media campaign was so omnipresent & so cleverly designed to be the-new-threat-that's-replaced-that-old-boring-terrorism that almost everyone was taken in by it. ALMOST everyone. The few of us outside that demographic were soon to find that there was a price to pay for being outsiders, for being resistant to such manipulation, transparent or otherwise. My opinion was, & still is, that this mass media manipulation had reached a new extreme of causing widespread mental illness, paranoia at a minimum, & that this mental illness was at least as big of a threat as the coronavirus, if not more so."

- "Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC"

The full bk is 1,186pp long. You won't read it - but, chances are, whether you're 'liberal' or 'conservative', you WILL express contempt for me for even writing it. I'm an anarchist & a free thinker, the latter being not very popular even in anarchist circles.

SO, everything I encounter that's predicated on a belief in the deadly virus threat that then gets into the 'gift' it brought by forcing people into social isolation (so that we cd be more introspective, e.g., HA HA - I'm already very introspective, thank you very much NOT) is contemptible to me. Imagine if yr closest subculture were one consisting of scientists who all, across the board, started expressing a belief in GOD that went completely against the grain of all logic they'd previously expressed - w/o even noticing the contradiction - that's what I found the situation akin to. Leftists were now vehemently pro-police-state & supportive of 'their governors', a position that wd've been solidly right-wing, &, as such, objectionable to them, in the past. Liberals who'd never been in the tiniest bit political activists were now proudly touting themselves as shining knights in self-righteous armor & renouncing actual political activists as right-wing scum. & the lessons of the Anti-Globalization Mvmt, arguably one of the most successful activist mvmts since that against the Vietnam War? Totally forgotten (or never learned in the 1st place).

"For the online Pekan Komponist (new music festival) in Jakarta on November 6-7, 2021, I was honored to be invited to make a presentation. There were two requirements: it had to be all new compositions, and the sound files were due in four weeks. Wait-what? We had been in pandemic lockdown for over a year. I had no access to musicians, and no work in progress." - pp 120-121

To me, that's just proof of how subjugated Diamond was. Even in 2018, pre-plandemic, I'd been using the internet to perform & record duets w/ people in locales far from me: "2018.06.29 duet with Stephen Bradley - BalTimOre, MD - via FaceTime": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.29Stephen; "2018.06.28 duet with AG Davis - Florida - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.28AG; "2018.06.24 duet with William Davison - Toronto, Canada - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.24William; "2018.06.23 duet with Neely Bruce - Middleton, CT - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.23Neely; "2018.06.22 duet with Skizz Cyzyk - BalTimOre, MD - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.22Skizz; "2018.06.20 duet with Spat Cannon - Leeds, England - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.20Spat; "2018.06.18 duet with Tom DiVenti - Eastern Pennsylvania - via FaceTime": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.18Tom; "2018.06.16 duet with Michael Pestel - Middleton, CT - via FaceTime": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.16Michael; "2018.06.15 duet with Warren Burt - Australia - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.15Warren; "2018.06.09 duet with Slavek Kwi (Artificial Memory Trace) - Ireland - 'telepathically' (involving file exchange)": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.09SlavekKwi; "2018.06.08 duet with Little Fyodor - Denver, CO - via Skype": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.08LittleFyodor; "2018.06.06 duet with Dick Turner - Paris, France - via file exchange": https://archive.org/details/2018.06.06Dick - & that was even before Zoom's 'coincidental' rise to cornering the internet conference market at the beginning of the quarantine.

The point is, the quarantine & all its ludicrous medical police state repressions is no excuse for having "no access to musicians, and no work in progress". One can, at a minimum, be composing independent of whether or not there're any players available at the time - but, then, here's what irks me: people rolled over & played dead on command, no resistance whatsoever. I just continued, as much as possible, as if there were no real emergency to prevent me from doing so, wch there wasn't. Remember that 2 wk lockdown that isn't even quite over w/ over 5 yrs later? Remember those free vaccinations that cost what now? I've heard $200 a pop now that the SHEEPLE are thoroughly indoctrinated into accepting the vaccine as 'necessary'. Funny, I was/am in the high risk group, I didn't follow orders, I'm still alive. One friend of mine told me that I was "100 times more likely to die than" him - &, yeah, I'll be dead soon, maybe even at age 72 - but it'll be because I've worn my body out with a hard life - not b/c I've refused to be a guinea pig for the mad scientists. How long will it be before a requirement that punching out our ear-drums will be a 'gift' of the PLANDEMIC? - y'know, to prevent us from hearing 'misinformation'. Ok, I'm being melodramatic to make a point.

Now, this has nothing to do w/ Jody Diamond's music, wch I'm sure is excellent - but it has plenty to do w/ the "POST" theme of this OPEN SPACE.

Annea Lockwood / Bruce Odland / David Behrman 's "A little guidebook for home listening": Sheesh, Annea Lockwood? Always interesting. Bruce Odland? Don't know him but the company he keeps is promising. David Behrman? A pioneer (along w/ Lockwood).

"Listening with an awareness that all around you are other life-forms simultaneously listening and sensing with you plant roots, owls, centipedes, cicadas mutually intertwined with the web vibrations which animate and surround our planet." - p 124

Yet-another premise that completely resonates w/ me. It's being presented in OPEN SPACE along w/ everything else is just astounding.

"Listening to the Goddess" by Heide Hatry. The person under scrutiny being Carolee Schneemann. I had the pleasure of meeting Schneemann when she came to the Maryland Institute College of Art to show "Kitch's Last Meal", a super-8 film leading up to the death of her cat. We then talked further at a party at a house where I lived. I showed her my small collection of broken umbrellas that I'd scavenged from the streets & used in a 'portable variable ceiling' action. At some point, I recall out having an email exchange. Decades later, I talked w/ her over the phone when I was seeking people to interview for my documentary about my recently deceased friend Franz Kamin. One of my regrets in life is that I didn't interview her in person at that time. Various things interfered w/ that possibility & then she was dead. I've always had respect for her & her work, her film not only being an erotic wonder but also one of the best direct-on-film films I've ever witnessed. Hence, this article was of great interest to me.

"When I met Carolee Schneemann, at 3PM on July 9, 2006, following the lecture during the Into Me/Out of Me exhibition at PS1, I experienced an epiphany. It was as if she were the artwork that was changing my life before my eyes; her focus, her attentiveness even in a loud, crowded room, her ascent above the fray, her grace, her way of being, and of course the amazing things she was saying were utterly mesmerizing. Although I had been living as an artist for only three years Carolee embraced me as a colleague, my vast ignorance notwithstanding." - p 135

"We also talked a lot about sex and how important it was to her, and how much she suffered when she didn't have it."

[..]

"I'm sad that I was never able to persuade her to continue making the body work that would express the mystery, glory, depth, elegance, and strength of the aging female body as she'd already done for the eye-mind-body in her youth. After all I've been through, she said, I won't give them the satisfaction of seeing my body in decay." - p 137

I feel ya, Carolee. I've recently had over 700 movies of mine removed from public accessibility, 50 yrs of work, b/c my onesownthoughts YouTube channel of 18 yrs was TERMINATED, ostensibly for violations of community guidelines. No Pro Bono lawyer has been found willing to represent me. A tiny percentage of my work on YouTube had nudity, there was an even tinier amt that cd've been construed as sexual. Now I'm an old man, if I even talk to a young woman I'm 'hitting on her'. Of course, it's more ok if I seem impotent or generally flaccid but I'm not, I'm still horny as a goat.

Fernando Garcin Romeu's 'POST, POSTS, GAMES & RESISTANCE" gets into the Spanish Civil War. As an anarchist, that's another subject dear to me. I've spent some time in Spain, even staying a few blocks from the CNT bkstore.

"My grandpa Fernando was born in 1908, and in 1936 he fought against Fascism.

"He had three daughters: Sol, Fernanda and Sylvia.

"My father, when I was born, named me Fernando after my grandfather, who left no sons." - p 139

Page 140 offers this interesting tidbit as a footnote:

"Streets in Valencia are often namd after local or national notable people or 'heroes'. In the 20th Century, when a régime changed, so would many street names. New heroes; old names not to be mentioned. Thus, naming streets has a strong political, emotional and affective meaning, not always apparent to 'outsiders'." - p 140

Sascia Pellegrini's "Photographic Cartography: Establishing Reality Through The Conditioning of the Senses":

"I therefore argue that these maps, matrices, and chronologies (calendars and recurrences) are designed with the purpose of maintaining soical order: a status quo, a conditioning of behaviors and habits in a given habitus of the senses." - p 147

Interesting. Mario Vargas Llosa, one of my favorite novelists, wrote a novel translated into English as "Death in the Andes" (1993). Here's an excerpt of my review of that:

""Death in the Andes" is a novel about disappearances in a highly troubled area of Peru. The main investigator of these disappearances is "Corporal Lituma", a character that's appeared in at least one other Vargas-Llosa novel. The Corporal suspects the "Sendero" (Sendero Luminosa - the "Shining Path" Maoists of Peru) who're referred to as "terrucos" ('terrorists') & who're active in the area. This immediately both peaks my interest & complicates matters for me. Any group referred to as "terrorists" may very well be so by my standards but I always have to wonder whether whoever's calling them that may not represent something even worse. In other words, the state obviously relies on terrorism to maintain its power & relies on calling its enemies "terrorists" in order to defame them.

"My impression, though, perhaps based on too little info, is that the Sendero were/are dogmatic militants w/ a hard party line. This impression is supported by "Death in the Andes" so it rings true for me. Here's a sample of the interaction between a Sendero & an ecological activist that they're about to execute:

""'Are you going to kill me?' she asked, hearing her voice break for the first time.

"The one in the leather jacket looked into her eyes without blinking.

"'This is war, and you are a lackey of our class enemy,' he explained, staring at her with blank eyes, delivering his monologue in an expressionless voice. 'You don't even realize that you are a tool of imperialism and the bourgeois state. Even worse, you permit yourself the luxury of a clear conscience, seeing yourself as Peru's Good Samaritan. Your case is typical.'

"'Can you explain that to me?' she said. 'In all sincerity, I don't understand. What am I a typical case of?'

"'The intellectual who betrays the people,' he said with the same serene, icy confidence. 'The intellectual who serves bourgeois power and the ruling class. What you do here has nothing to do with the environment. It has to do with your class and with power. You come here with bureaucrats, the newspapers provide publicity, and the government wins a battle. Who said that this was liberated territory? That a part of the New Democracy has been established in this zone? A lie. There's the proof. Look at the photographs. A bourgeois peace reigns in the Andes. You don't know this either, but a new nation is being born here. With a good deal of blood and suffering. We can show no mercy to such powerful enemies.'"

"While Vargas-Llosa clearly considers the Sendero to be terrorists & while this writing can easily be classified as propaganda against them, just how unfair is it? I don't live in Peru, it's a hard call for me. The intellectual points presented above seem like a very clear analysis - nonetheless, it's being used to justify executions & any ideology used for that is repulsive to me. I'm not personally in any hurry to kill anyone."

- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/94351.Death_in_the_Andes

My memory of the above is vague. My, perhaps inadequate & inaccurate, take on the implications of the execution of the ecological activist is that mapping of the Amazon is involved &, while such mapping is justified as for scientific research, this mapping narrows down the areas where people can hide who are maintaining their indigenous ways. I'm reminded of an H. Beam Piper novel called "Lord Kalvan of the Otherwhen" that I read recently in wch the main character slips into an alternate universe similar to his own but earlier in historical development. As w/ Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", the character becomes powerful by using his historically later knowledge of warfare to the advantage of the Prince he allies w/. One of the things he explains is how crucial maps are for warfare. ANYWAY, the point is that maps & other ways of putting reality in grids aren't necessarily friendly to biomorphic living.

"I am leaving home: taking a walk toward the subway station that, after a twenty-five-minute ride, will take me near my working place. I shut the door behind me and proceed to the nearest lift: after pushing a circular button, a purple arrow-shaped light appears in the center of it: a bell-like sound follows. At the arrival of the lift, a second bell sound signals the opening of the doors. The lift takes me to the ground floor, where a third bell sound marks the opening of the lift's doors. I am walking out of the building, and I follow a well-known path that, after a ten-minute walk among alternating shadows of trees and metal shelters that protect from the scorching sun, or sudden heavy tropical thunderstorms, leads me to the subway station. Near the subway station I pass a bus stop. A few metres later, I have to wait at a crossroad for the pedestrian green light. Once I cross the road, I am at the entrance of the subway: escalators, elevators, gates, waiting for a train." - pp 148-149

"Imaginary Landscapes

"Returning to my web map I switch to street view and zoom in to street level: an ingenious idea that puts you literally on the level of the street with a series of 360-degree photographs that should lead you, in the fashion of a bird-eye topographic view, to your selected destination, while also providing the feel of augmented reality: a more dynamic, personal 'presence' within the virtuality of the experience. Something very different from what I could have imagined is occurring instead. I am suddenly catapaulted onto the highway, which is next to the walkway, the stage of my trail of virtual breadcrumbs: this happens because whoever took pictures of this same area was in fact in a car or a bus or some other means of transport moving on the highway" - p 151

These Street View photographers were a common sight in Pittsburgh, where I live, for a while. The cameras were mounted on top of cars, perhaps as many as 8 lenses (or more?) arranged equidistant from each other in a circle pointed outward. Two acquaintances of mine had the inspiration to stage things for a Street View photographer:

"Street View Project: Sampsonia Way

"- Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, us@

"- Saturday, May 3, 2008

"- This wasn't my project & my participation in it was minimally performative but I like the idea of it so much that I have to list it here. As far as I know, this project was created by Robin Hewlett (who invited me) & Ben Kinsley. As I understand it, Google maps have an option of providing a street view that's created by shooting panaromic photos that computer users can navigate thru like a video game - seeing what the actual street looks like. Ben & Robin conceived of having preplanned actions happening on the street during the time that they'd invite the Google Street View team to drive thru & photograph it. I wore my turkey-feather suit & wings (the wings had been used in my "Generic As-Beenism" action from 1987-1989) & posed at the beginning of the photographer's route.

"The photographer made 3 passes: in the 1st, I was in a doorway, in the 2nd I was being play-acting searched by play-acting under-cover cops, & in the 3rd I was dumpster diving. The 1st & 3rd can be seen on Street View.

"Other people's activities included guys moving mirrors off a U-Haul, Parade Directors, a Marching Band, Parade Spectators, a Mad Scientist Lab, a Garage Band, Marathon Runners, Doug's + Ham, a Giant Chicken sculpture, actual firemen rescuing a toy cat from in a tree or some such, a biker rally, & an Angaron Battle."

- entry 357 - http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOutline2008.html

It was unclear to me where Pellegrini was located when she was writing this article. "While waiting at the platform, announcements in four different languages (English, Chinese, Malaysian, and Hindi) emphasize what to do and what not to do" - p 153

Singapore? Kuala Lumpur?

Next up? My "mud" score for an interabilities violin quartet. To put it mildly, I'm DELIGHTED to have this included. The title is meant to be a humorous elevation in status of something ordinarily considered to be lowly, in the case of this score of awkwardness, it promotes a sort of 'harmony of awkwardness'. Throughout most of my (d) composing life I've managed to have works performed shortly after they were created. Alas, in the recent past I've d composed 3 new works that haven't been performed. This is one of them. It's not b/c it's too complex, plenty of my older works were/are far more difficult.

""mud" - an interabilities violin quartet - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March-April, 2024E.V.

"The name "mud" is an abbreviation of "mudras", the ritual hand-poses of the Buddha priests and the Shiva priests of Bali. Seven mudras have been picked as fingering positions for the violin neck. This is NOT meant to 'make any sense' except insofar as the awkwardness of the positions may produce what would ordinarily be less-than-desirable sound quality. The intention ISN'T to create or evoke a ritualistic feel, instead, it's to create a clumsy 'muddiness'.

"Four violins are to be used: a half-size one, a 3/4 size one, a full adult sized one, all acoustic - & an full adult sized electric one. The acoustic violins may be amplified, if deemed necessary for all 4 to be heard equally, but it's preferable if the electric violinist plays at the acoustic violin volumes. The reason for using 4 different violins is to increase the awkwardness & to exploit the differences that'll be produced in pitch & pitch quality.

"To make playing this even physically doable, the player is encouraged to use what I'm calling here a 'folk position' with the base of the violin in one's lap & the top of the neck parallel to the player's chest - this is in contrast to the more common 'classical' position in which the base of the violin is held between the chin & the shoulder so that the violin protrudes out from the body at a roughly 90% angle.

"The score is fairly straight-forward: a photograph shows the fingering position to be used. The measures are divided by the conventional vertical line. However, the measures have no tempo or meter & each player is to play at whatever pace they're moved to. Each measure is numbered. Players may repeat & prolong the measure at their whim. There's no rule calling for any simultaneity. Players may try to stay in sync with each other or not, it's not a competition. Therefore, if one player finishes long before the others that's fine. If another player ends long after the other players that's also fine. If everyone ends at the same time that's fine.

"The electric violinist is encouraged to use effects. These can be as supportive &/or disruptive of what might be playable acoustically as the player wishes. My main request is that volume be kept low except, perhaps, for rare bursts of drama.

"Each measure has a word that tells what bowing or plucking technique to use. Sometimes the technique will carry over into the next measure. Usually, that won't be the case. Here're the terms:

"col legno battuto - striking the strings w/ the wood of the bow

col legno trotto - bowing w/ the wood of the bow

détaché - playing each note w/ a separate bow stroke

double stopping - playing 2 notes simultaneously

legato - playing multiple notes w/ one bow stroke

pizzicato - plucking the strings

quadruple stopping - playing 4 notes simultaneously (or close to it)

ricochet - bouncing the bow off the strings

sul ponticello - bowing over the bridge

sul tasto - bowing over the neck

tremolo - fast repetition in bowing or plucking

triple stopping - playing 3 notes simultaneously (or close to it)" - p 160

It's my hope that readers of OPEN SPACE will decide to play this & let me know.

Guiilherme Zelig's "The Invisible Threat":

"Professor Ary Ruy watched television with great curiosity when the news made reference to those three unexplained deaths that occurred on the same day. It didn't cross his mind that this might just be a sensationalist headline. The people of that time could no longer distinguish fake news from real news very well.

"He began to speak up and believe more piously when the news programs of all the networks began to do their part in relation to scaring the population: warning that a new type of virus may have affected the three victims. It was humanity's greatest fear: the virus. Never before have these invisible creatures been feared more than after the pandemic that had occurred a few decades before." - pp 179-180

When I was observing & researching during the 1st 5 mnths of the so-called COVID-19 pandemic I started looking at what pop culture had been creating re viruses in the preceeding decades. One thing that I noticed was how extreme a fear of viruses was being promoted in fictional movies. Almost across-the-board, the idea of a virus causing death to all of humanity &/or the turning of most people into zombies was common. It was a formula for horror success. I describeded these movies & the descriptions made it into my "Unconscious Suffocation" bk:

""Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" (2006, director: Richard Pearce). It's an 'End of the World' disaster movie, meaning end-of-human-life movie, in which, obviously, the Avian Flu is the cause of death. I enjoy disaster movies, I like to see how the official responses are depicted, what the WHO does, what happens in an earthquake, in a big fire, whatever. The thing is, this is an action movie, things are exaggerated, albeit with an intent of 'realism'. It seems to me most realistic that humanity might be wiped out not by a virus but by catastrophic environmental change or military action." - "Unconscious Suffocation"

One movie, called "PANDEMIC" (2008) has this:

"The movie starts with a long shot showing a man on horseback in sillhouette riding on a ridge. Shots gradually show him closer. He's a modern-day rancher in his early 40s in apparent good health. He gets back to his ranch & puts the horse in a stall. His heart then starts to beat violently, he falls over & tries to make it out of the barn but his blood vessels in his face start to rupture & his orifices start to bleed & he appears to die. This happens within seconds." - "Unconscious Suffocation"

Another movie called "PANDEMIC" (2016) has this:

"The head doctor who's briefing her takes her on a tour of the cells in which the 5 types of pandemic casualties are located. Type 1 is possibly curable, type 2 is hemmorhaging, type 3 has suffered massive brain damage from the hemmorhaging, type 4 is "hibernating". The doctor explains that at 1st it was thought that they were dead because they have no detectable vital signs but it turns out that they revive & that whoever revives 1st will immediately kill whoever is around them without knowing why. Type 5 are permanently extremely violent & homicidal." - "Unconscious Suffocation"

The 2 ultimate disaster tropes strike me as preparing the general public to believe in the most outrageous things about viruses - &, yet, viruses have never caused even a sinlge person to turn into a zombie - nor has any virus wiped out most of human life. These 2 scenarios are extremely exaggerated for horror-movie-apocalpyse purposes. To my mind, what DID turn millions (or even billions) of people into zombies (if we think of zombies as people devoid of upper-level brainpower) was the mass media's incredibly over-the-top fear-mongering campaign.

"A horror movie that reminds me of the current pandemic nightmare is Johnny Kevorkian's 2018 "Await Further Instructions". Here's a link to a short trailer for it: https://youtu.be/cExGHt350NE . It's so much like this PANDEMIC PANIC that it's actually terrifying. In a way it's too disturbing for me to even recommend it right now. The basic plot is that a family gets together for Christmas & finds themselves trapped in their house taking instructions from their TV sets. The family is, for the most part, racist, patriarchical, & robopathic - & those that deviate from this stupidity are not well-received." - "Unconscious Suffocation"

"Out Of Touch | Kevin James Short Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfGAktuU93s&feature=emb_logo

[In this short movie 2 guys are running from helicopter & tracking-dog pursuit, the production values are high so the drama of it is compelling - their crime? They shook hands & made dinner plans in a park.. without masks on - a flashback shows masked people reporting them to police with their cell-phones] - "Unconscious Suffocation"

"Ary becomes very curious about these suspicious deaths.

"He opened his computer and began to examine the comments made by doctors and virtual virology experts about those deaths in particular. The fear that had already been creeping up on Ary began to grow.

"No-one was convincing in their analysis. Sometimes they said that it was a project to try to wipe out the population that still insisted on going out to the physical shops, sometimes they said that it was the evolution of some species of animal that had developed it.

"All the arguments seemed to have the depth of a saucer. Of course, Ary Ruy consumed them without any critical sense of trying to contest them, despite the academic position he held." - OPEN SPACE POST, p 180

"Our friend and colleague, Guilherme Zelig of Sao Paulo, Brazil, wrote this dystopian novella during the pandemic. It will be published next year (2025) in that country. We are pleased to anticipate this with a short translation (by humans) of the book's beginning into English.

"But this doesn't explain everything. By 2024, as we head to press, a new element of potential totalitarian and surveillance control has emerged: Artificial Intelligence. For the moment, A.I. is ostensibly working for us; who knows what situation will pertain by the time Guilherme's book is available?

"In the meantime (another good title for a dystopian story) our tame and still friendly A.I. has designed the various book covers printed here, and written a press blurb to accompany them, neatly and seamlessly taking over the functions of copy writing and graphic design." - p 182

Here are the beginning & end paragraphs of the AI-generated bk review:

"Invisible Threat (a Ameaça Invisivel), the debut novel of Brazilian author Guilherme Zelig, presents a chilling, satirical vision of a dystopian future. In this world, a mysterious phenomenon cause people to die from reading books, echoing themes from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 but with a deadly twist."

[..]

"Invisible Threat is a compelling and timely novel that resonates deeply in our digital age. Guilherme Zelig has crafted a thought-provoking story that underscores the vital role of literature in shaping and sustaining an informed society. This debut marks Zelig as a promising voice in contemporary fiction, making "Invisible Threat a must-read for those concerned about the future of culture and intellect." - p 183

If the above writing seems 'normal' to you, as if it's something that any college-educated human might write, it might be b/c those same 'college-educated human's might be, as writers, little more than slaves to algorithms w/o even having to be AIs themselves. "Slaves" in the sense that these humans are trained to believe that the Chicago Manual of Style is a leading light of 'correctness' & trained to think that most aspects of their potential writing that display idiosyncracies are 'incorrect' &, therefore, undesirable. It's my opinion that AI writing is modelled after unimaginative writing & that humans then model themselves after this lack of imagination. Even comparing Zelig's plot to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 strikes me as rather twisted & only accurate b/c both bks refer to bks & dystopia - w/o their meanings being very much the same at all.

I'm reminded of 2 bks I read recently: William Barton's "When Heaven Fell" (1995) & H. Beam Piper's "Uller Uprising" (1952). Both of them depict a future where savage bombings of an ilk comparable to or beyond hydrogen bombs are used to suppress peoples trying to maintain their sovereignty over their planets. I more or less hated Barton's bk but enjoyed Piper's - even though Piper uses completely shallow justifications for the bombing in a way that most post-WWII SF writers were very much against. Why did I still like Piper's writing & detest Barton's? This is a dilemma for me. Barton's writing seemed very formulaic, almost as if an AI had written it. His plot is sociopathic. Piper still comes across in his writing like a HUMAN, flawed, stupid.. but still not reduced to a mechanism yet.

As for AI & its encroachment on humanity? In early September, 2024, I wrote an article called "Obituaries" for an anti-civ anarchist journal that may or may not have published it. Here's an excerpt:

"Use ObitWriter®, our free AI-powered obituary-writing assistant, to create a well-written obituary in minutes.

"I found this offer very entertaining: What could be more heartfelt than having an AI write a memorial to a deceased loved one? I shared this offer with my friend Florian Cramer in Rotterdam. He sent back three obituaries made using ChapGPT: one for me, one for himself, and one for the collective neoist identity Monty Cantsin. His conclusion was "AI=BS". I have no problem agreeing with that.

"In the meantime, I used ObitWriter to write an obit for "Chocolate Bunny" (no resemblance to persons living or dead intended). I gave the bare minimum of information, I wasn't sure whether something so obviously fictional would pass muster. This process yielded:

"Chocolate F. Bunny passed away on August 25, 2024, in Pittsburgh, PA. Further details and arrangements will be shared as they become available.

"I was hoping for something a bit more ludicrous but given how little input I gave them this minimalism isn't surprising. I don't know how the "F." got there. At any rate, I thought that this Chocolate Bunny bit would now Rest In Peace, but, nooooo..

"You're just a few steps away from

publishing Chocolate Bunny's obituary.

"For a mere $89 I could get this obituary placed somewhere where other people could see it and, if they're lucky, get involved in this process themselves. Just imagine! They could write something about Chocolate Bunny and then get their deep memorial published, we could enter a new age of profound feeling spread wide. Chocolate Bunny's poor departed soul could melt in a brown puddle of warmth."

Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Peter Lamborn Wilson:

""The title of my book is Cauda Pavonis, and the subtitle is esoteric antinomianism in Yezidi Tradition. Cauda Pavonis is Latin for 'Peacock's Tail', which in alchemy symbolizes the beauty of the material world. The book is about the Yezidis, you may have heard of them, they're a group in Iraq and Syria who were targetted by Isis for genocide and managed to fight back, many of them have left their homeland and gone to Germany and America and elsewhere. In the middle east people call them 'devil worshippers', and that is supposed to be the reason why orthodox Moslems are obliged to hate them.

"Is this true? They certainly don't admit to it."

[..]

"OPEN SPACE MAGAZINE: questions around T.A.Z. and Covid

"With the current impossibility of physically meeting up with other people, isn't it neverless better to use the internet to form a nucleus and try to put something out?" - p 184

"impossibility of physically meeting up with other people"!!!!! It was never in the least bit 'impossible' to 'meet up with other people' - despite the ridiculously oppressive pseudo-health-concerns of the QUARANTYRANNY. I met up w/ other people, I was in the high risk category, I'm still alive. It's this type of non-introspective total acceptance of the crack-down on civil liberties under the guise of public health that makes me find other people so damned depressing - esp people as intelligent as the OPEN SPACE editors.

"PLW:

I would say it's impossible. The way we're living now is the way the internet wants us to live. Isolated consumers. When we're no longer afraid of dying when we open the door, we just live this way voluntarily, because we're afraid of everything. And we send away to Amazon for our food and we turn on our TV - some screen - in order to entertain and keep our hands warm. And that's the future. At least that's the future that we're facing. And this lockdown is certainly not helping any." - p 185

The lockdown's not intended to help any, it's intended to usher us into our electronic coffins & to make sure we're so brainwashed that we don't realize that we can leave it or have the energy to even try. Sadly, even PLW was a believer:

PLW: "Maybe we can blame global warming, for global epidemics. That would be appropriate. I rather think it's true. It's already been suggested, that forest clearance, and therefore proximity to animals, in a bad way, not a good way, is a factor in spreading epidemics.

And that clearance of forests, of course, began already in the neolithic, which is when events, or pandemic situations began to emerge, according to archeology and history. So it makes perfect sense. The more we do it, the sicker we'll get. And that to me the internet is a symptom of that disease. A symptom and a cause. It's not a method for liberation at all." - p 186

I have no problem w/ thinking that the increased clearance of forests is bad for us, bad for the air we breathe. I do question whether archeology & history really know when & why pandemics started. As for proximity to animals? For me, that's playing too much into 'nature-is-out-to-kill-you'. For me, death is just a part of a natural cycle. I feel like my body is decaying & that I'll probably die sooner rather than later - but I don't think of that so much as 'ill-health' as I do as just a natural part of my cycle. Sure, if I hadn't worked myself so hard & played so hard maybe I'd drag on longer, even much longer - but it's understandable that my body's worn out, I'm lucky to've made it to 72.

Fátima Vale's "Glorious is my Rebellion...":

"GLORIOUS IS MY REBELLION WHEN I RISE

It is not the resumé of a public presentation

when I yield to your words

Shard from someone else's sculpture

shells harvested from the floor in another craftsman's shop

a craftsman

among many craftsmen

shards

shells

cast away

in the society of outcasts" - p 189

That's the 1st stanza. I like it but I think I'm influenced by the full page color foto on the facing page of a vivacious-appearing woman presumed to be the author, possibly giving a reading. Next up is David Lidov's "The Drought in Eden" wch I find to have an interesting premise:

"[The] Sumerians. . .with their mad irrigation schemes, turned what the Jews considered Eden and the Christians call Paradise into a desert.

Ronald Wright, A Historyof Progress, 2005.

"Drought in Eden is a full-length adaptation of the Biblical tale of the Garden understood as our collective memory of an historical ecological crisis caused by greed. (as above)" - p 193

"Philip Corner out of John's Cage":

"But to start off there is one thing I'd like to say and that is that I have heard so often that Cage is important as a theorist, a philosopher, his writings and innovations are important, and to me that is not so important! I find that I like his music and there are people saying "No, his music isn't so good". I feel that his music is wonderful." - p 195

I was delighted to read that. I have a HUGE collection of recordings of Cage's music. His work is so inspired & so diverse that I think that most people who have an opinion about it at all are highly unlikely to know about enuf of it to have a well-rounded selection that they've heard. How many people have heard this selection, e.g.:

"Two Pieces for Piano" (1935)

"Bacchanale" (1938)

"Imaginary Landscape No. 1" (1939)

"Double Music" (1941), w/ Lou Harrison

"Credo in Us" (1942)

"The City Wears a Slouch Hat" (1942), music for a Kenneth Patchen radio play

"The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs" (1942)

"The Seasons" (1947)

"Suite for Toy Piano" (1948)

"String Quartet in Four Parts" (1950)

"Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orcehstra" (1951)

"26'1.1499" for a String Player" (1955)

"Radio Music" (1956)

"27'10.554" for a Percussionist" (1956)

"Concert for Piano and Orchestra" (1957-58)

"Aria" (1958)

"Fontana Mix" (1958)

"Cartridge Music" (1960)

"Theatre Piece" (1960)

"Variations IV" (1963)

"HPSCHD" (1969)

"Song Books (Solos for Voice 3-92)" (1970)

"Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake" (1979)

"Ryoanji" (1983)

"But What About the Noise of Crumpling Paper Which He Used to do in Order to Paint the Series of "Papiers Froisses" or Tearing Up Paper to Make "Papiers Dechires?" Arp Was Stimulated by Water (Sea, Lake, and Flowing Waters, River), Forests" (1985)

"Five Stone Wind" (1988)

Those are just a few of my personal favorites, all of wch I have recordings of, 2 of wch I've performed. There's quite a difference between "Two Pieces for Piano" & "Credo in Us" & "The Seasons" & "Aria" & "HPSCHD" & "Ryoanji" - all of them are utterly fantastic, to me, & I'm sure I'll be returning to them again & again for the rest of my life. It's to-be-expected that many people will dislike the noisier ones but there's so much variety that I'd hope that people cd appreciate that facet alone.

This Corner article is an interview w/ him conducted November 20, 2020, by Deborah Walker & Matthieu Saladin:

"P.C. - Well, I think in a way the ultimate slowness is no change at all and Deborah knows that I've done that, taken it to an extreme. I call it Elementals, where it specifically says "no conscious change, indefinite prolongation". And that's the piece that was done many years ago that lasted five days. Of course that makes me think of John Cage and this thing called ASLSP as slow as possible where people are doing this ridiculous thing of playing one note for three years or something...

"M.S. - In Halberstadt in Germany...

"P.C. - Excuse [m]y saying so, but that's a stupid thing to do because you can't hear the slowness! It's a kind of intellectual idea of doing something and since it's the name of John Cage they can do that thing." - p 205

One might not be able to hear it but one can experience it, one can experience waiting for the next note. My own "MELODY" (February, 1991) has a similar concept & was, I'm proud to say, (d) composed independently of Cage's "ASLSP" (1985) wch I didn't find out about until much later. The version being performed in Halberstadt is for organ (1987). There's at least one recording of it for piano performed by Sabine Liebner that fits on one CD. That's roughly 54 minutes. I find it entirely too fast - but one can certainly 'hear the slowness'.

Corner composed some pieces based on etchings inspired by Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" that he was asked to write & perform by René Block in the 1980s. The result is a score & a record called "Pictures of pictures from pictures of pictures":

"You've probably never seen the score... I made copies of the score to go with the portfolio with the etchings in them, so that each one had a copy of ten pages of my score, which I made with coloring, suggesting the quality of the sound for each movement. But nobody knows those, they've never been published! As I say they come with the edition, but as René told me recently when I asked him to send a copy to my archive in Northwestern University, he said nobody has ever bought one. In other words, nobody knows these things at all!" - p 207

I found the record & the score online. It was tempting to buy both but I have to restrain myself from such extravagances. This thing of "nobody knows these things at all!" is something I can certainly identify w/. I've always valued obscurity but it sure does get lonely.

Dean Rosenthal's "Graphic Scores and Embroidery: A Conversation with Anne Rhodes" aroused my interest. I do alotof sewing, alotof making clothes & other things to be worn & I've always found other needlecrafts to be of interest: coverlets, quilts, embroidery. Combine that w/ scoring & you've got a winner.

"DR: In what ways have you found embroiering your scores has impacted your own performance practice as a musician? Has it?

"AR: The act of embroidering definitely helps me come up with new ideas for ways in which I use traditional sound and extended techniques. But I think the greater impact has come from performing the finished product."

[..]

"Braxton's "Falling River Music" compositions, on the other hand, are vibrant and painterly, and he has such high-quality copies made that they are nearly identical to the originals. I find those much more inspiring.

"Reading sewn music is another experience altogther. The fabric and thread are distinctly textured. While the images are two-dimensional, they are in slight relief on the surface of the fabric. I think - I hope - these qualities invite improvisors to think about the textures and timbres of their sounds as much as the shapes, pitches, rhythms, and dynamics." - p 215

My reviewer's note to myself is "I'm not convinced".. but rereading the above now I think: 'sure, why not?' Rosenthal asks Rhodes: "Have you seen this innovation as a gendered response to graphic scores?" (p 215) to wch Rhodes replies:

"Anyway, there was a time when I think subconsciously wanted to fit in and be treated like "one of the boys." I would do things like dressing for gigs in a more casual or androgynous way than I normally enjoyed, or try to tone down the higher-pitched sounds and bel canto influences in my improvisation. Eventually, I was able to acknowledge and intervene with those impulses and to question the value of repressing my authentic gender expression in order to conform. It feels as though bringing sewing into my music allows me to offer something that is not only unique and personal, but which has unapologetically feminine associations." - p 216

Oh, well, here I go again, saying something that I know people will find objectionable: I find the above annoyingly sexist. Ever heard of tailors? I've been sewing for 54 yrs, since I was 18 yrs old. While sewing may have "unapologetically feminine associations" those associations are no less stupid than saying that 'composing has unapologetically male associations', e.g.. As for wanting to "be treated like "one of the boys"": well, that's her problem. I've played music w/ women. When I've invited them to be part of a project it's just been because I figure they'd have something to offer it, something as an individual that has nothing to do w/ their gender, something that wd contribute to the music. As for repressing her "authentic gender expression in order to conform": I seriously doubt that any male musician I've ever played w/ wd've been anything but surprised by such a thing. I'm just myself, I'm not "one of the boys" or "one of the girls". Oh, well. I think the embroidered scores are potentially very interesting.

"Jo Kondo: Homo audiens Translator's preface by Daryl Jamieson":

"1973. Sen no Ongaku also became the title of his first book, which he published in 1979 (the key elements of which are summarized in this volume in Appendix 1).

"That was to be the first of to date seven books (a figure which excludes his great volume of articles, contributions to edited volumes, co-authored texts, and translations from English to Japanese of writers such as John Cage [collected essays], David Hughes [A History of European Music], and Mark Evan Bonds [Music as Thought], among others). These books range widely in topic, from reflections on his own music and detailed discussions of contemporary music to music history in general (including his most recent, 2019's Monogatari seiyo ongakushi [The Story of Western Music], an award-winning history of music from the Middle ages to the nineteen seventies aimed at young readers). An overriding concern trhoughout his musical life and the principle focus of Homo audiens has been the aesthetics of music." - p 218

I know nothing about Kondo or his music. If I were to pull something vague out of my memory I might speculate that I have a recording of him playing trumpet on a Japanese improvisation record. But I cd be completely wrong.

"Building from that conclusion, Chapter III asks, if communication cannot be the purpose of making music, what purpose can there be? 'No purpose' comes the answer, in what appears at first glance to be the most Zen-influenced section in the book, particularly with regard ro the concept of purposelessness (however, while logical argument is transcended in traditional Zen, Kondo sets that concept in a logical framework). But far from straying into mysticism, it is at this point that Kondo's argument is at its most socially concerned, making the case that purposelessness is itself the expression of true human freedom" - p 220

That appeals to me. I'm reminded of my answer on Goodreads to the question "What is the Meaning of Life?":

""The Meaning of Life"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

October 6, 2016

"Wow! I've actually been asked a question on GoodReads after writing here for 9 years. Thank you! The question is "What is the meaning of life?" The questioner, John, spelled all the words in their usual manner & followed conventional grammar. As such, he left me little obvious room for responding to the question as if it were in several discrete parts: What is the? What is the meaning? What is the meaning of? etc.. John has "liked" my verbose criticism of Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans so he's obviously open to wordplay.

"Given that I've always found the question "What is the meaning of life?" to be an absolutely ludicrous pseudo-profundity, I find it hard to believe that any intelligent person would ask it seriously. Therefore, I suspect John of asking me this as a way of challenging my abilities to come up with a good punchline. But, 1st, why am I critical of the question? Generally, I'm critical of it because its usual implication is that there's a central purpose to life such as 'Life only has meaning through serving God's will' or "Life only has meaning gleaned through repeated witnessings of Monty Python's movie entitled "The Meaning of Life"'.

"Apparently, even defining "life" to produce a meaning for it as a word is problematic:

""Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids or potential artificial life as living. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved.

""The definition of life is controversial. The current definition [according to whom?] is that organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. However, many other biological definitions have been proposed, and there are also some borderline cases, such as viruses. Biophysicists have also proposed some definitions, many being based on chemical systems. There are also some living systems theories, such as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that the Earth is alive; the former first developed by James Grier Miller. Another one is that life is the property of ecological systems, and yet another is the complex systems biology, a branch or subfield of mathematical biology. Some other systemic definitions includes the theory involving the darwinian dynamic, and the operator theory. However, throughout history, there have been many other theories and definitions about life such as materialism, the belief that everything is made out of matter and that life is merely a complex form of it; hylomorphism, the belief that all things are a combination of matter and form, and the form of a living thing is its soul; spontaneous generation, the belief that life repeatedly emerge[s] from non-life; and vitalism, a discredited scientific hypothesis that living organisms possess a "life force" or "vital spark". Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. Life on Earth arose 3.84.1 billion years ago. It is widely accepted that current life on Earth descended from an RNA world, but RNA based life may not have been the first. The mechanism by which life began on Earth is unknown, although many hypotheses have been formulated, most based on the MillerUrey experiment. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

"I tend to think that everything is "alive" in the hylozoistic sense. I don't however, think of things as having "souls" or "spirits" - including humans. I think of us more as being temporary arrangements of matter that produce characteristics dependent on the nature of the conglomerate. Some arrangements of matter produce energy flows that produce consciousness. I have no method for determining whether some forms of matter have what I would recognize as consciousness or not. As such, I tend to think of matter that doesn't appear to me to have consciousness or the ability to move independently of forces outside of itself as being "inanimate" but not necessarily not alive - stones, for example.

"Since I've found that the more consciousness a thing has the higher my likelihood of interfacing with it on a satisfactory level is, the purpose of my life has often tended to be to seek out such positive interactions & to avoid the ones where humans of apparently lower degrees of consciousness propel objects of apparent inanimateness at me - such as stones or bullets. Thus, the meaning of life, in the sense of 'purpose', might be to "dodge the bullet". Otherwise, I think that life is meaningless - which I have no problem with whatsoever given that I can still enjoy the heck out of it anyway. In fact, I'm not sure that a Meaning of Life might not just ruin the whole business for me by oversimplifying things."

- https://www.goodreads.com/author/1054095.Tentatively_A_Convenience/questions

Craig Pepples, an OPEN SPACE reg'lar, chimes in re Kondo w/: "Jo Kondo's Hagoromo stands proud and alone." (p 224) + much more, such as this: "Pound and Fenellosa's version of the Noh play is spooky and remote" (p 225) - but I just quoted that tidbit to give me an excuse to link to my Fenellosa-inspired movie: "Fenollosa's Chinese" - a short animation inspired by Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character As A Medium For Poetry" - on my Vimeo channel here: https://vimeo.com/164504907 .

"According to Waley (and others) "the story of the mortal who stole an angel's cloak and so prevented her return to heaven is very widely spread. It exists, with variations and complications, in India, China, Japan, the Liu Chiu Islands, and Sweden. The story of Hasan in the Arabian Nights, is an elaboration of the same theme". It is one of the many attempts of myth to explain how dance, and/or music, arose on earth." - p 227

Wow. Interesting. Does that strike any of you as somehow 'weird'?! What if the myth were rooted in an actual event, an extra-terrestrial coming to earth to get a little sex action from some fellow homonids who hadn't started dancing or playing music yet? Wdn't that constitute bestiality?! Then the human steals the ET's transportation device b/c they don't want their new partner to leave them high & dry. Is that the origin myth for James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" too?

George Quasha's "Blake's Transformation of Reading":

"An optimal Blake reader would be something distinct, at least in part, from a good reader of Blake, an appreciator, whether at the level of the earnest close-reading student or at the exalted scholarly level; whether it's one enviably able to interpret his poems or one flush with knowledge of the full oeuvre in all its intricate richness; or whether it's one masterfully able to theorize the complex poetics or define its place in the canon. Let's pretend that it's worth posing this inexact question-no, impossible question-if for no other reason than to put us in a productive state of doubt about our own relation to, as Robert Duncan insisted, the Divine Blake. For even the most learned reader of Blake-indeed especially such a reader-knows that there is no mastery of Blake's work, the very idea of which would violate its core principles and interfere with realization of its interminable unfolding of readerly experience. If not mastery, then what? Suppose there's no word or concept or position that accounts for the distinction optimal Blake reader, which by the very fact of its declaration, is brought immediately into question-and there it stays. Without the status of clear definition, it becomes a matter of self-definition, a declaraion on one's own behalf, and almost certainly under continuous threat of self-doubt." - p 229

It took me many mnths to read this incarnation of OPEN SPACE. I think part of the reason why is b/c so many of the contributors are as immersed in their disciplines & as enthusiastic about them as GQ is. Have you ever known of a person keen on poetry who ISN'T a poet?! Now, I absolutely love avant-garde music from 1885 to 2025. & I make it. AND I absolutely love movies. & I make them. So one might think that I'd have a similar love for poetry. BUT, the thing is, an illiterate can listen to avant-garde music & check out a movie. But to read poetry one has to have an intellectual skill-set. So it's not the same. I have that skill-set but the experience of reading poetry requires a type of concentration that listening to avant-garde music doesn't. When I listen to AGM I'm usually paying close attn b/c it engrosses me, every nuance of originality & inspiration engrosses me - but I'm still immersed in the music as long as I'm w/in listening range regardless of whether I'm paying rapt attn or not. Not so w/ reading poetry, either I'm paying attn or it's not there.

I 'discovered' Blake for myself possibly as early as when I was a teenager. I immediately liked the illuminated manuscripts, the overall visual aesthetic of combining flowing images w/ flowing words - but I never became the optimal Blake reader or anything close to it. I think the writing didn't have all those 20th century touches that I was desperately seeking. Quasha has a reverence for Blake, & I'm glad of it. But I will NEVER have that feeling for any poetry or poet. I'm too much of an atheist, a poetheist. Still, even from my poetheistic POV, Quasha's reading is valuable.

"Accordingly Blake created a novel process and syntax both verbal and visual as the oscillatory poles of contrary reading. It is this state of engagement that arouses what he saw as the ever dynamic contrary states of the soul, which can incite an alchemical Marriage of Heaven & Hell." - p 234

Then there's Dorota Czerner & Jerome Rothenberg. Dorota's a very personable editor of OPEN SPACE & a ex-pat Polish poet now in the US. Rothenberg is someone who came to my attn long ago for all sorts of good reasons. & now he's dead as of 2024. & their conversation is titled here "On Poland/1931 & the Pathways of Translation".

"JR:

My people were obviously from Poland or from a town in Poland but did not think of themselves in any meaningful way as Polish. The same for the language of course my father had little of it; my mother, who went through a secular gymnasium, was educated in Polish but never used it in my hearing. Both however were fluent speakers and literate readers of Yiddish the mother tongue or mamlushn, for which they were strong advocates. And in a curious way, while writing Poland/1931, I thought of myself as doing a translation, somehow, of an imaginary Yiddish ur-text, which could only make sense as a perfect and strongly idiomatic English --- with some rare lapses, let me add, into a kind of cockeyed and comic dialect or accent." - p 245

When I read "My people were obviously from Poland or from a town in Poland but did not think of themselves in any meaningful way as Polish. The same for the language of course my father had little of it" I thought of Alan Berliner's documentary about his father called "Nobody's Business" wch I just watched in the last couple of days. Berliner's father didn't give a flying fish fry fuck about his Polish ancestors but Alan edited in some historical footage of Polish Jews that was fascinating for me.

DC: "Can we propose that Poland / 1931 fills some of the blanks left in Polish poetry? And that by putting the names to the lives as they were lived (before being lost) there, even if only through the anecdotal stories and memories of others who made it to the New World, some of the Polish Jewishness can be reclaimed? Even by simply repeating the words "Jew", "Jewish" over and over, inside a poem." - p 249

DC: "I believe that Poland/ 1931 successfully carries the lore of the Jewish traditions between the Old & the New World also by portraying the daily excesses of life, its secret, or not so secret transgressions. We read about the ancestral scenes that may include pots in which fish and pork are made into one stew, sausages are dropped into the Shabbat cholent, or the wild nights spent in the gentiles' brothels. Greedy rich men practice black magic. Famous Rabbis fornicate with willing shikhas. The sexual prowess of a certain Zadik is legendary, so is the size of his genitals. The killers from "The Murder Incorporated" carry the pictures of rabbis with big cocks . . . The language too combines the biblical with the vulgar, sometimes in the same poem.

"Can we risk musing that a culture must be intensely alive to play with its own demons?" - p 250

Russell Craig Richardson's "The Foxing of Memory" explores Tarkovsky's fantastic movie "Stalker" (1979):

"A Russian crew in 1977 captures moving images of the aftermath of a catastrophe which doesn't occur until almost a decade later. Shot in an identical landscape Estonia for Ukraine; man-made disaster for an extra-terrestrial visitation overlapping two pasts, so that one explains and exploits the other. Stalker made as a horror homage to Chernobyl." - p 256

"Andrei Tarkovsky's film is an adaptation of an earlier novella, Roadside Picnic, published in 1972 by the Russian brothers Arkaday and Boris Strugatsky.

"Tarkovsky stated that the only things he took from the book were the two words "Stalker" and "Zone"." - p 256

I find Richardson's posing of the idea that Stalker is a kind of premonition of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe very interesting. I'm fairly widely read & otherwise knowledgable about Chernobyl & placing Stalker as an advance vision of it makes sense to me. For the decades since I read Roadside Picnic & saw Stalker I've been under the impression that it was more of a reference to the Tungaska event:

"The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908.

"The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga felled a large number of trees, over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness accounts suggest up to three people may have died. The explosion is attributed to a meteor air burst, the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 5060 metres (160200 feet) wide. ?

"The asteroid approached from the east-south-east, probably with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s; 98,004 km/h (Mach 80). Though the incident is classified as an impact event, the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than hitting the Earth's surface, leaving no impact crater."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Apparently, however, I was either misinformed by whatever I read to that effect or I got it garbled in my own memory:

"An alien spacecraft is also the explanation in Polish science fiction writer Stanis?aw Lem's 1951 novel The Astronauts and its 1960 film adaptation The Silent Star, as well as in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1965 novel Monday Begins on Saturday," - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event_in_fiction

Then I found this online to further explicate:

"The sinister story behind the 100%-rated film that killed its director, his wife, and the lead actor

"To portray the desolate landscape of the plot, Tarkovsky chose an industrial region near the Jägala River in Estonia. However, the location hid an invisible danger. In the 1970s and 1980s, a chemical plant operated upstream, dumping toxic waste into the water. During filming, the crew noticed strange phenomena, such as snow falling in the summer and white foam floating in the river - details that, although incorporated into the film, were, in reality, signs of contamination.

"Vladimir Sharun, the film's sound technician, reported years later that the environment was toxic. He said that members of the crew, especially women, developed severe allergic reactions on their faces during filming. But the most tragic consequences would appear years later. Tarkovsky died in 1986, at the age of 54, from lung cancer. His wife Larissa Tarkovskaya and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn, who played "The Writer" in the film, also died from the same disease. Sharun believes the deaths were linked to exposure to hazardous substances during filming."

- https://www.facebook.com/groups/902349343110685/posts/24622214717364148/

"In March 2022, this last element of creative irresponsibility duly manifests itself: the moebius strip of reality and fiction given its half-twist and spliced when Russian forces push their military front down from Minsk, through the Pripyat marshes, and take over the Zone of Alienation as a staging post to their attack on K'yiv. We have no information whether the majority of young conscripts in the Russian forces are aware of their location, or the history of Chernobyl/Chornobyl, or of Tarkovsky's film, or the confusing hybrid video games, or the HBO/Sky TV mini-series, or any of the source books. We only know that they plow up dust in the Red Forest that has been settling for forty years, and begin coming down with respiratory complaints." - pp 259-260

I recommend Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl" & Frederik Pohl's "Chernobyl" on the subject. I think it might've been a Belarusyn correspondent of mine in Mogilev (one of the places hardest hit by Chernobyl radiation) that told me that Belarusyn President Lukashenko was encouraging people to go back to the 'Zone', the irradiated area, & to go back to farming - claiming that it's alright now. Maybe the invasion of Ukraine thru the 'Zone' is a way of using Russian soldiers as guinea pigs to test how the radioactivity will effect them now. I wrote an article about the Russian invasion of Ukraine called "What am I Missing?!" ( https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-i-missing-3e5c738613ab ) & maybe what I was missing is that very possibility, the possibility that soldiers, once again, are being used not only as cannon fodder but as experimental subjects for technological/scientific/medical research - taking it for granted that the researchers have the 'right' to destroy the soldiers' lives

Joe Richman & David Sachs' "The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky":

"Joe Richman (NPR): Noah Creshevsky was a composer who wrote experimental electronic music. He called it hyperrealism. He died a few years ago at the age of 75. But before he died, he made a surprising decision. His husband, David Sachs, tells the story." - p 261

That's a very interesting premise for me. I don't really know Creshevsky's music (perhaps I have a recording of 1 or more pieces on an OPEN SPACE CD) but since electroacoustic/electronic music is very important to my musical interests I'm now listening forward to hearing something by him.

"No one knew he was going to die for several months. He had bladder cancer and he declined to have his bladder removed. He was 75, and he thought this was the beginning of a slope, and he didn't want to go down it. And I remember the surgeon was stunned because no one had ever declined." - p 261

Smart man. My mom ostensibly died at age 93 of bladder cancer but I think the hospice she was in killed her off w/ phenobarbital. Anyway, I'm 72 & I'm at the beginning of a downward slope & I have no intention of having the medical industry drag out my life in an increasingly disabled & miserable way. I accept death (although I'm not in any hurry). What if he hadn't even gotten a diagnosis of bladder cancer? He wd've been in pain but that pain wdn't've been augmented by the psychological factor of a diagnosis - & if he didn't take painkillers he wdn't've made the cancer worse by over-riding his body's alarm system.

Dorota Czerner & Noah Creshevsky's "sharing a space":

DC: "A handful of verselets. Let out of the captivity of their first paper-set shapes, the words spin off tossed into a fresh eddy by our shared desire to create a new work.

Like the white skirts of Aldo Mondino's Dervisci, which lent the mood to my poetic images, each verse, each shaving of a miniscule sound-node quivers, occurs, recurs, refuses to stay still, to behave in the night cove, and as itself, as other, within the other, gains momentum." - p 264

DC: "To quote Brion Gysin, the inventor of the cut-up technique" - p 264

Objection. Tristan Tzara deserves more credit for 'inventing' the cut-up, as does Bob Cobbing.

Fred E. Maus's "Truth in Musicology":

"For me, and for other political liberals who live in the Charlottesville area, a special heightening of political anxiety (already staggeringly high) came with the 2017 "Unite the Right" events-an unannounced Friday night torch-lit march with anti-Semite and Nazi slogans on the central grounds of the University of Virginia, and a Saturday right-wing rally and anti-racist counter-protest in downtown Charlottesville, leading to shocking violence when white supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others.

"One big part of the overall stressful situation is the shamelessness with which Donald Trump and his associates tell lies. His staff and political allies typically back him up on false statements, as does the popular right-wing channel Fox News. The segregation of news audiences between Fox (normally loyal to Trump) and other news sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN (often critical of Trump) means that people in the U.S. essentially live in two different worlds, each constituted by attitudes and beliefs incompatible with those of the other world. This is the situation people sometimes refer to as "post-truth." Right-wing political actors have agreed, through use of media and other political speech, to maintain an alternative world-view to which many lies are central." - p 270

Oooooohhhhhhh-Kkkkkkaaaaaaaayyyyy. I was raised by Conservative Republican Christians. I'm an anarchist. I doubt that even my parents wd've thought that James Alex Fields, Jr's murderous action was ok. My parents weren't pro-KKK. My mom was alive when Rump 1st ran for office & she told me she wasn't going to vote for him. That was the 1st time in her life she didn't just automatically vote Republican. The point is that I don't think it was only "political liberals who live in the Charlottesville area" who objected to the Charlottesville right-wing activities - even conservative Republicans cd be repulsed by it.

2nd, I don't think Republicans have a monopoly on lying; Democrats lie too. Almost every human lies as a regular part of the process of trying to get their own way & to otherwise escape responsibility. 3rd, there is no "post-truth" era, there was never truth in politics, EVER. I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who finds Rump about as repulsive as he can get, & from the perspective of someone who's been at odds w/ conservatism my whole life. ALSO, Fox 'News' exemplifies the utter falseness of TV 'News' in general. That doesn't mean, however, that The New York Times, et al, don't also have a propaganda line that they support. They do. I don't think that Conservatism automatically = Right Wing / Racist. It's this extreme demonizing that helps cloud clarity of perception. Human relations, even in today's Rump-exaggerated viciousness, have never been simply the Good Guys vs the Bad Guys w/ nothing else in between.

"Between 2006 and 2008, Suzanna G. Cusick published several essays on the use of music in U.S. interrogation programs-music used as torture.5"

"5 Suzanne G. Cusick, "Music as Torture / Music as Weapon," TRANS 10 (2006), unpaginated; "'You are in a place that is out of this world . . .': Music in the Detention Camps of the 'Global War on Terror,'" Journal of the Society for American Music 2/1 (2008); "Musicology, Torture, Repair," Radical Musicology 3 (2008), unpaginated." - p 272

When the Bush administration openly advocated torture was when the USA lost any pretense at being humanitarian. Unfortunately, the US had been using torture long before then - since at least the time of the Vietnam War - & the torture they were using was even more foul than what was happening at Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo Bay. Sad to say, for those who'd like to think that no liberals wd enable such atrocities, it just ain't so.

"The most disturbing thing about Gina Haspel getting confirmed as America's next CIA director is the fact that she won that position after overseeing torture at a CIA black site and destroying evidence that it took place. But the most surprising thing is that six Democratic senators cast the decisive votes that sealed Haspel's victory." (May 21, 2018) - https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/05/21/gina-haspel-confirmed-bipartisan-support-miles-howard

Now here's one Republican's response to Haspel's nomination:

"Republican senator Rand Paul said that he would oppose the nomination, saying: "To really appoint the head cheerleader for waterboarding to be head of the CIA? I mean, how could you trust somebody who did that to be in charge of the CIA? To read of her glee during the waterboarding is just absolutely appalling."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Haspel

"Bonnie Gordon's essay "What Mr. Jefferson Didn't Hear" takes up the topic of Thomas Jefferson's realtion to music, familiar in sentimentalized depictions as an aspect of Jefferson's multifacted greatness. Gordon notes that Jefferson's music collections and activities have little to offer to conventional musicology or ethnomusicology. But "Jefferson's archive provides an ideal case for examining the entanglement of music and sound with power structures in a racist chattel slavery society.""

[..]

"The owner of a large number of enslaved people, Jefferson must have been familiar with Black music and other Black sounds, but they played almost no role in his music collecting and his writing about music and sound. Black sound, Gordon suggests, was noise for Jefferson, disagreeable and threatening to societal order." - p 274

What a great article. These are exactly the kinds of things I'm interested in that I rarely (or never) run across critiques of. It's yet-another sign of OPEN SPACE's greatness that it appears here. I recently had the pleasure of meeting TJ Anderson, Jr, whose father is a composer who I have recordings of 3 works by. In correspondence conducted thru a mutual friend TJ informed us that he got to meet one of my favorite poets, Melvin B. Tolson, b/c his father did a piece using his poetry. Once I realized that TJ stands for Thomas Jefferson I had to wonder how a black man wd feel about having that name. I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that the use of TJ instead of the full name is a way of avoiding the reference. Then again, who named his father that & why? & why did his father pass the name along? It seems likely that the name has some positive associations for them - but maybe not.

Barry Wiener, who I've never heard of, contributes something on "Ursula Mamlok's Path to the New Music". I've never heard of her either. Good, that means I'm more likely to learn something.

"Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923. In her early teens, she studied piano and composition in Berlin with Gustav Ernest [Gustav Ernst Seeligsohn] (18581941), a distinguished composer, conductor, pianist, and musicologist who died in the Holocaust after fleeing to the Netherlands. Throughout her life, Mamlok cherished her well-worn copy of Ernest's book Johannes Brahms: Persönlichkeit, Leben and Schaffen (1930). Ernest provided Mamlok with a rigorous traditional musical training that served as a solid basis for her later excursions into more advanced idioms. In February 1939, Mamlok fled with her parents from Nazi Germany to Guayaquil, Ecuador." - p 280

"During the 196162 concert season, Mamlok attended a series of lectures on contemporary music given by Schoenberg's son-in-law Felix Greissle at the New School. Greissle presented live performances of music by Roger Sessions, Ralph Shapey, George Perle, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. When Ralph Shapey spoke about his work at the end of 1961, Mamlok asked to become his pupil. Shapey was one of Wolpe's most important students. Originally a violinist, he had become a prominent composer and an important conductor of new music. Wolpe and Schoenberg heavily influenced his early works, but in the mid-1950s he began to employ texture, timbre, and static blocks of sound in a manner that reflected his interest in the music of Varèse, which he championed as a conductor." - p 288

Whew! I have an interest in all those composers. One of the truly fantastic & wonderful things about life is that they exist, that their music(s) exist, & that these interconnections exist & can be spelled out for me by someone in the 'know'.

"String Quartet No. 1 (1962/63)

The second piece that Mamlok wrote under Shapey's tutelage was the three-movement String Quartet No. 1 (1962/63). In this work, Mamlok refined her use of the musical techniques that she had first employed in Designs. In the autograph score, the music is unbarred. As in the score of Designs, rhythmic coordination between the parts is indicated by dotted lines instead of bar lines, and by a sixteenth-note grid above the music." - p 291

There's an excerpt from the score for Designs on the facing page but there are bar lines & no "sixteenth-note grid above the music." That's presumably b/c this is the published score in wch such unusual features might've been removed. There're 2 more relevant illustrations on the following pages, this time re the String Quartet. The 1st is a table showing the series structure. The 2nd is a page from the published score in wch sections are singled out by outlines. Again, none of what Weiner refers to in the "autograph score". That's too bad, my curiousity had been piqued. I wanted to see "rhythmic coordination between the parts [a]s indicated by dotted lines instead of bar lines, and by a sixteenth-note grid above the music."

Benjamin Boretz's "On JKR's wGAP 7":

"You should listen to Jim Randall's GAP7.

To be one with a one that is music

To be one with a music that is after music" - p 298

SO, I went down a floor to my (M)Usic Rm & climbed a step ladder to get to the middle box of "CDs from friends", wch is quite an impressive collection of rare recordings (if I do say so myself). I looked thru my OPEN SPACE CDs & didn't find "GAP7" but I did find "GAP6" on CD 13 so I'm listening to that right now. I have an ongoing interest in Randall's music & have probably listened to more of it than most. In fact, in the "Further reading" section in his Wikipedia entry there's a link to this: "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (2013). Review of J.K. Randall's To Astonish the Roses" wch I'm honored to have included. Alas, the Winkipedia link seems to be broken so I found it here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18597563-to-astonish-the-roses---7-emails-to-walter-branchi . There's a page from GAP7's score 2 pages later in Boretz's article. It seems to be just as sparse a piano piece as GAP6, if not even more so. Whole measures w/ just rests, only one chord at the beginning, many held notes, dynamics more on the pianissimo end of things. Boretz continues "On Playing CONVERGE":

"That is what happened when, sometimes, it truly happened; habits are hardwired; they usurp the ground of authenticity, masquerade as reality, obtrude between you and your perhaps contaminated hope to achieve transparency with your partners, all of you separately struggling with the same impediments to being actually together" - p 302

I find that a lovely description of the subtler problems of playing music w/ others or just playing music at all. As far as habits "being "hardwired"? I've commented on that before (although I wdn't use the expression "hardwired"): noting that in my early days as a teenager playing guitar I practiced scales & riffs until they were a part of my standard bag of tricks. Then I overused them & I probably still do to this day (although I don't play guitar very much). In order to subvert these habits I do things like tune the guitar(s) differently, play different types of guitar (lap guitar, triple-necked guitar, mini-guitar), & activate the strings w/ an expansion beyond my most common finger-picking & fret-usage (e-bow, slides, custom capos). As for "actually being together"? I find that the more accomplished players are more likely to do this thru imitation & contrast, etc.. - but even they fall back on their vocabulary. To counter this, I like to create structured improvisation scores that bypass the possibility of habits by creating novel physical restrictions that interfere w/ rote (such the score for "mud"). That doesn't prevent or contribute to "actually playing together" although in the case of "mud" there's a harmony of awkwardness generated (in theory).

Craig Pepples:

"How much are music questions

really questions about feeling?" - p 304

Much of the music I love strikes people w/ more populist tastes as 'cold' & 'emotionless'. My response to that is that all music is emotional, even mathematically inclined music. Some people respond emotionally to math (I do). I didn't really start having a love of music until I was adolescent.

SOME of the music I dislike strikes ME as 'cold' & "emotionless". MOST of the music I dislike (generally popular music) strikes me as extremely emotional - but that doesn't help it any. The 'cold' music (well, really, I'm just thinking of work by one or two people) I dislike is made by people who seem to think they're applying 'scientific' music theory but who strike me as uninspired & shallow. The other music, the popular music, covers a wide gamut of emotions I find unpleasant: bullying, schmaltz, propaganda..

"The conversation was unhurried, thoughtful, yet not without a deeply felt word or two, including the most radical music manifesto I ever heard: not "Schoenberg is dead" or "Stockhausen serves imperialism" but "I want people who hear my music to become my friends" Ben's hope that Open Space might be such a society of freinds, not a faceless public waiting to be impressed." - p 304

Interesting. I must say that I love Schoenberg's music, for me he's certainly not dead. I think people overemphasize him as a one-trick dodecaphonic pony. Not so. I also don't think that "Stockhausen serves imperialism" (the name of a bk by Cornelius Cardew who was once one of Stockhausen's many highly accomplished assistants), I don't think that at all. Stockhausen's music does serve the imagination. As for "I want people who hear my music to become my friends": HEAR! HEAR! I'm in complete agreement, I'm not sure it's ever happened to me. It seems that my (M)Usic is universally too 'difficult' for people, not as in: 'too difficult to play' (although there's a little of that in there) but more like 'too difficult to exist in the same space w/'.

"Paradoxically, the people who try for that kind of self-erasure (cf. Josef Hauer throwing the I Ching in 1920s Vienna) are often the ones whose art is the most personal." - p 305

I only have one recording w/ work by Hauer on it that I know of: "Wirkung der Neuen Wiener Schule im Lied" on the Odeon record label & faturing Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau & Aribert Reimann. The record sides are labelled 9 & 10 so this must be part of a series. I got the record in 1976, when I was still in my early 20s. The German title translates as "The Songs of the New Viennese School" & the work of Hauer, Schoenberg, Webern, Apostel, Krenek, von Einem, Pessas, Beck is presented. It was probably thanks to this record that I learned that Hauer was a contemporaneous pioneer of dodecaphony alongside of Schoenberg & someone who worked independently of him, not one of his many fantastic students. This was exciting to me & marked Hauer as a composer to hear more music by. Pepples's mention of his using the I Ching is even more exciting. &, yet, I STILL only have the one record, on wch there are only 2 songs by him! The liner notes for this record have this to say:

"Joseph Matthias Hauer (18831959) stood as a lone wolf in opposition to Schönberg. He claimed to have experimented with the twelve-tone series before Schönberg. Hauer worked with 44 basic patterns out of the 479.001,600 possibilities of combining the twelve tones. The soft, mystic tone of his musical language was based on the conviction that music is "mathematics in its highest sense" and that atonal music represents the "personification of absolute musical objectivity". Hauer spent the end of his life in Vienna, half-forgotten, a recluse, misunderstood and outcast." - Karl Schumann translated by E. D. Echols

Are there really "479.001,600 possibilities of combining the twelve tones"?! I'm sure there's some simple math equation to prove that. The online AI overview confirms that number & provides this:

"The mathematical formula for this is 12!, or "12 factorial".

12! = 12 ? 11 ? 10 ? 9 ? 8 ? 7 ? 6 ? 5 ? 4 ? 3 ? 2 ? 1 = 479,001,600"

I don't know about you but I find such calculations to be fascinating. What if one were to compose a piece in wch all 479,001,600 possibilities were to be used?! As for "Hauer spent the end of his life in Vienna, half-forgotten, a recluse, misunderstood and outcast"?! I can relate! I looked online for recordings of his work & found a fair amt so if & when I have money again it's about time I got them & listened to them! Thank you, Pepples, for reminding me!!

Joshua Banks Mailman reviews OPEN SPACE CD 48, the cover of wch is shown at the end of his article. Alas, the cover has dark green text against a black background & the quality of its reproduction is such that I had to look at it w/ a magnifying glass to make it out. Here's a bit about Forshee's "Apokatastasis":

"This maracas-based episode (in the fifth minute) combines the timbral and chordal sophistication and nuance of Spectralist music with the less teleological rhythmic sensibility of Farben from Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16. Here the idea of a chardal-timbral see-sawing pervades." - p 307

Mailman reappears a bit later w/ "Counterfactuals in Language AI":

"Consider the "right to explanation" in the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). Thanks in part to Julia Stoyanich's efforts, NY passes a law in 2021 requiring that job seekers rejected by an AI-infused hiring process have the right to learn the specific explanation for their rejection." - p 326

I'm glad someone's paying attn!! AIs & algorithms are being used by lazy humans & what I call "algorithm slaves" to create a new 'underclass' of rejected people who're even more defenseless against these 'hooded judges' than ever before. Given that there's no way AI &/or algorithms can understand subtleties of human behavior (such as a sense of humor) people are bound to be kicked to the wayside just for not squarely fitting into the unertanen hierarchy. My onesownthoughts YouTube channel (50 yrs of works, over 740 works uploaded over 18 yrs) was TERMINATED recently, ostensibly b/c of my posting this movie: "You Hid to be There" ( https://archive.org/details/you-hid-to-be-there ). It seems likely to me that the algorithm that wd've sounded the alert against the movie simply 'looked for' things deemed offensive & that the human being who rubber-stamped the TERMINATION only went to the 'offending' passages (if they even checked out any of it at all) & didn't actually witness the whole 3:08:08 of the movie. This is part of what I now officially call THE NEW SUPERFICIALITY, a superficiality in wch humans save themselves the work of actually learning about something by letting a MACHINE make decisions that it's in no way qualified to make. Mailman's article is pleasingly detailed (although, alas, I doubt that I've retained very much of it despite my having read the entire thing carefully).

"As I mentioned above, RAG (retrieval augmented generation, alos known as relevant answer generation) has become the de facto approach for guiding LLM-driven GenAI systems (chatbots) toward appropriate or even optimal responses. The premise of RAG is that if snippets of relevant truthful text are directly supplied to the generative LLM along with your question, then it's less likely to hallucinate, and in that sense provides better response. "Hallucinating" is AI industry jargon for: fabricating erroneus responses.

"As is well known, hallucinations arise because LLMs, though trained thoroughly and carefully on massive amounts of human written texts from the internet, are still not omniscient, but tend to issue responses in a uniformly confident tone. Surprising? Actually it shouldn't be. It makes sense, as the famus critique goes: LLMs are essentially parroting the text they have been trained on. Because LLMs are trained not on people's sometimes tentative or evolving inner thoughts, but rather on the verbalizations of those thoughts that reached an assuredness threshold sufficient for a person to post for all to read on the biggest ever public forum that is the internet. So perhaps it's understandable that LLMs skew toward overconfidence - they are what they eat." - p 332

After reading the above I asked this question online:

"Are there any GenAI responses that begin w/ "I'm not sure about this"?"

One online reply to that question is this "An Operational Taxonomy of AI Alignment Approaches" article on Medium by Adnan Masood, PhD:

"What "alignment" means - and why it matters now

"AI alignment means designing and operating AI so it reliably does what people intend while respecting human constraints (safety, rights, laws).

Systems are moving from demos to workflows. Misalignment at that point is not theoretical - it becomes biased approvals, leaked data, unsafe code, or persuasive but wrong advice.

"What alignment is - and isn't

Alignment vs. safety: Alignment is the aim (do what we intend); safety is the outcome (don't cause harm)."

- https://medium.com/@adnanmasood/an-operational-taxonomy-of-ai-alignment-approaches

Can an AI "respect" something? I think not. Can it avoid "biased approvals, leaked data, unsafe code, or persuasive but wrong advice"? Probably, at least as far as "leaked data, unsafe code" go - in a mechanical sense. It seems to me that AI is widely perceived as more 'objective' than humans. As such, it can be perceived as more infallible - ie:, as Mailman writes, "confident". It's not likely to precede a statement w/ "I'm not sure about this" or any other qualifier that might contextualize its weakness more clearly - but even if it did it wd be prefabricated rather than 'felt'.

Veit Stratmann's "Walking in Glasgow, Marcher à Glasgow, Wandern in Glasgow" is preceeded by an explanation that makes no sense to me at all:

"What happened was that, since 2012, I have built up a body of text/image works on public spaces that, for different reasons, became black holes in the world, outside the world while in the world, spaces that had fallen out of time and out of the social and political space." - p 348

It's "black holes" that catches me up. It seems that what's being described is probably places that have fallen into neglect as a result of disuse. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. But neglected spaces don't suck everything around them into them in an intense gravity well, they just collapse.

"Löcher im Raster, holes in a grid, trous dans une trame

Löcher in der Stadt, hole in the city, des trous dans la ville" - p 352

Jacek Dziubinski's "Distillates": This has stark geometrical drawings.

"We can thus understand the controversy stirred by one of those utilitarian discourses that shape the vision of everyday life by constantly referring to it and drawing its life juices from it. Using a hackneyed, flat language, because we are not interested in seeing through its mechanisms or exploring its crannies, all we want is consume language skills this aborbs us so much that we are blind to anything else." - p 357

"The gulf separating man and any other biological organism is no less than the one dividing him from his own life. Everything within himself is a mystery to him, an impenetrable enigma." - p 360

Really? I don't find that everything w/in myself "is a mystery to" me. Oh, well.. there are times when people say things that seem proclamatory that just do nothing for me at all. I reckon the above is just one of those times.

Pedro R. Rivdeneira's novel "Song of Anonymous" begins:

i stumble into the hallway and see Anders sitting at the kitchen table with a lage glass of water and a vial of painkillers take a couple of these it will help you with the hangover tomorrow he says getting up make sure you drink all the water i'm going to sleep see you tomorrow he says tiredly and walks away down the hall to his room. i wash down a couple of pills abd after finishing off the water, stagger over to the guest room and close the door. Sitting on the edge of the bed, i slowly take off my soiled clothes and throw them on the floor in a corner and then lie down on my back in the darkness, face up toward the ceiling. In the midst of the dark silence, i hear the light, intermittent sounds of scraping and tapping on the windowpane caused by the branches of a bush outside moved by a breeze. As i slowly begin to drift away, the scraping and tapping gradually becomes the gentle sound of a raspy voice, at first distant, then growing closer like yourself I'm a prisoner it says softly like everyone else a prisoner in this labyrinth the vast machine that engulfs us" - p 366

Full pages are collages of text.

"my darkness a vast into the stars listening to of the that to the in the it is only looking at last the last not about but a bout an about face without orders that disorders into off course an ebullient turbubabulence" - p 369

"one of my favorite books by Derrida is Glas though I can't say I fully understand all of it and I don't care much for all the biblical stuff she says pausing a bit I mean I think especially with a work like Glas understanding knowing is an ongoing process . . . I mean you don't read something like that just once and that's it you come back to it and re-read like you would with a work of art a novel or a poem she says looking at me and blushing again yeah I like or liked Glas too i say trying to sound supportive again one of my favorites by him is or was I should say Dissemination though like you I can't say I understood all of it either but I think I understood it better than Finnegan's Wake i say beginning to laugh oh goodness!" - p 369

At 1st I thought that the lower case "i"s were just for the (presumably anonymous) character but then he switches, apparently randomly, to upper case "I"s. I was reading Ron Silliman's writing at the same time as I was reading this & he makes reference to Derrida too. It's Finnegans Wake, there's no apostrophe, that's a common mistake - but then it gets corrected on the next page:

"have you read "Finnegans Wake?" she asks yes I mean I read about halfway through it I say I tried reading it the way I would normally read any other novel or an essay but found it resisted that kind of reading like a lot of poetry I think it's a lot closer to poetry really than prose in fiction I think it also foregrounds the music of language maybe Joyce was thinking of language as a kind of music it defies penetration it defies mastery I say looking around distractedly it's kind of like listening to the running water of a river or creek or listening to music . . ." - p 370

I've read "Finnegans Wake" all the way thru. Since it's sd to be cyclical & it's sd that one can read directly from the end to the beginning I read it starting on page 556 where the text that John Cage drew from for his song "The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs" is & then when I got to the end I started at the beginning & read thru until I got to page 556 again. For me, Joyce turns English into Irish. It's too full of meaning, a holus-bolus of sorts, to think of it as being "like listening to the running water of a river or creek".

"composers especially experimental composers have been inverting and de-hierarchisizing binary oppositions for ages long before Derrida and de Man and all the others came along the theorists just appropriated those ideas for themselves and made their posh academic careers with them i say grimacing take Russolo and the Futurists with their noise machines at the beginning of the last century or in the late nineteen forties the Musique Concrete composers Pierre Shafer" [sic - Schaeffer] "and Pierre Henri" [sic - Henry] "who made tape compositions collages using everyday sounds from the streets factories train stations the radio animal sounds as well as traditional instruments and in the nineteen fifties you have the advent of electronic synthesis in the works of Stockhausen de Koenig" [sic - Gottfried Michael Koenig] "Ligeti Xenakis etc. in which noise and pitch are treated as equal and then there's Cage with his chance operations calling into question the order vs. disorder opposition and Lachenmann who foregrounds the noises inherent in traditional instruments which historically have been suppressed thus inverting the pitch vs. noise opposition" - pp 370-371

The novel up to this point, after the intro, consists of a conversation between 2 friends. I cd use more conversations like this in my own life. It seems that I had them when I was younger when people were less caught up in their rat race & more concerned w/ philosophical issues of creativity. I'm particularly pleased to see Helmut Lachenmann included, he's currently one of my favorite composers. While his work w/ expanded instrumental technique is certainly highly developed I can say that his work in general is very diverse & always highly meticulous. I've never heard anything that wasn't astonishingly sensitively composed.

Eventually, the author reveals himself:

"a man an academic a composer a writer in his early forties who finds himself in a crisis who feels that what he's dedicated his life to teaching composing writing are more and more marginal endeavors in today's world this consumer driven capitalist society we live in Elise is laughing you mean you were writing an autobiographical novel about what's happening to you now? about the stuff you were talking about at the Grote Markt Square? well sort of i respond" - p 374

Ah, yes, "marginal endeavors".. are such things as experimental composing "more and more marginal endeavors in today's world this consumer driven capitalist society we live in"?! I'm not sure. I, personally, am definitely more marginalized than ever. Then again, what ISN'T marginalized? What's central to the people around me?! I've never found there to be much interest in the things that I find to be of profound importance - they're too esoteric for most people other than those directly involved w/ them.. - &, yet, there're so many recordings of music out there of music that I find absolutely phenomenal!!, I'll never hear them all!! Yesterday, under impetus from a quoted article in this OPEN SPACE, I ordered 3 new CDs of music by Josef Matthias Hauer. The mere fact that the musicians exist who play his music, that they've recorded it & made it available for sale boggles my mind. How many people are there to support such a thing w/ their/our interest?! It seems that that particular 'gene pool' wd be too small! Our endeavors may be marginal or marginalized but the world is big enuf & filled w/ enuf inquiring minds for such things to matter.

W/ the help of a brain researcher I conducted an experiment in wch fMRI detected the reaction in the brains of 2 research volunteers to a sophisticated movie of mine the usefulness of wch to common activities is far-from-apparent. One of the results of this experiment is a movie called "Subtitles ('16mm <- brains' version)" that can be found on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/276.-subtitles-16mm-brains . The purpose of the experiment was to see if any indication of stimulus to higher cognitive functions as a result of exposure to the movie cd be found. Admittedly, the 'results' are far too primitive & minimal to be worth anything but I still think there's hope there.

" what was that about? Elise asks seemingly intrigued I was inspired by Argentine composer Oscar Bazan's concept of musica austera austere music in which he sought the essence for a kind of musical practice in those who suffer those who go hungry in the dispossessed and undereducated countries i say he thought that much of the problem of music of the twentieth century was to discover that there was no soul" - p 376

I only have one recording by Bazan, on the "New Music from South America" - New Sound Composers/Performers Group, a fantastic record I was fortunate enuf to acquire in 1985. & what do I find by him on Discogs? That record.. & nothing else!! More to find & listen to.

"my writing is really a kind of writhing I scribble about without trying to make connections without trying to complete ideas make them whole consistent and coherent develop a continuity I also doodle around . . . I scribble between the lines of others' writing I often scribble on their lines in books novels poems magazines and newspapers journals . . . I scribble between them and around them I scribble and doodle on their margins writing a new text I'll write on their texts like an invasive species a weed or a vine i say trying to catch my breath I appropriate them by applying my scissors cutting and pasting them in my notebooks I create islands by scribbling rivers lakes and wavy oceans of scribbles and doodles around them i say, suddenly feeling energized. Elise is looking at me with a wide grin and a crazed expression in her eyes which makes them sparkle if I am a writer I guess you can say I'm a transgressive writer . . . a lot of the scribbling is asemic i continue in a frenzy the hand takes over" - p 379

Hence the collages. This incarnation of OPEN SPACE may just be the most wide-ranging one yet - & why not? More limited publications keep a tight reign on the subjects to be covered w/in. OPEN SPACE encourages the eclectic - for me, it's amazing & impressive what the editors manage to collect. Articles from & about large portions of the world. It's my kind of thing.

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