Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star
Last night, Claudia and I began the first of our forays into making experimental music together. And when I say ‘experimental’, I mean neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing, except that “THAT sounds COOL!!” Neither of us know chords from ripcords, or have any musical training whatsoever. We’re playing by feel. And it feels like we’re playing--building forts with chairs & blankets and bringing in strings of Christmas lights to read & write by inside, eating cookie dough and painting each others’ nails. Claudia’s been doing this awhile, especially with singing, but I’m a newbie at structure-less creation. It pushes me past my damn boundaries, which usually have a noticeable left-brained bent to them. It’s very good for me to engage in, screwing around with my own boundaries is.
We used a portable keyboard, djembe (drum), conga, shakers, tambourine, all kinds of percussion instruments, and singing. All kinds of combinations and pairings--the ideas were flying! We got an idea of some directions we wanted to go in, so that when we borrow the digital recorder we’re supposed to borrow, we can record them. Then Claudia will compose a piece from those rough materials on her computer. In an analogy I can understand, it’s kind of like PhotoShop, using layers upon layers, with different pieces, different transparencies, to make a unified thing. It’s a collage with bits of string and lace and pieces of wood and breadcrumbs and cobalt blue glass and shards of rock candy. Interesting as hell!! Maybe not so refined, but you can’t take your eyes (ears) off it!!
And here we are. This is the roughness I want to slip into my art. Take away some of the crisp lines and perfect renderings and let some madness creep in. Let feeling take over for awhile. Not completely. I want a mixture of human and animal. Because we are this. When we say ‘fuck all’ to one or the other and embrace only the opposite one, we’re in for a bad time of it. We’re either out-of-control or repressed. Got to be a blending of them; the twain must meet. And meet they will, in my pieces. I can’t even conceive of what I will be conceiving of in the future--and that, boys and girls, makes me ecstatic!!!
We used a portable keyboard, djembe (drum), conga, shakers, tambourine, all kinds of percussion instruments, and singing. All kinds of combinations and pairings--the ideas were flying! We got an idea of some directions we wanted to go in, so that when we borrow the digital recorder we’re supposed to borrow, we can record them. Then Claudia will compose a piece from those rough materials on her computer. In an analogy I can understand, it’s kind of like PhotoShop, using layers upon layers, with different pieces, different transparencies, to make a unified thing. It’s a collage with bits of string and lace and pieces of wood and breadcrumbs and cobalt blue glass and shards of rock candy. Interesting as hell!! Maybe not so refined, but you can’t take your eyes (ears) off it!!
And here we are. This is the roughness I want to slip into my art. Take away some of the crisp lines and perfect renderings and let some madness creep in. Let feeling take over for awhile. Not completely. I want a mixture of human and animal. Because we are this. When we say ‘fuck all’ to one or the other and embrace only the opposite one, we’re in for a bad time of it. We’re either out-of-control or repressed. Got to be a blending of them; the twain must meet. And meet they will, in my pieces. I can’t even conceive of what I will be conceiving of in the future--and that, boys and girls, makes me ecstatic!!!
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