(beautiful) sounds of Africa

A sharing: a short video featuring music from th Baka tribe in Africa:

wherewhen AndR?

Words I have hardly given to this blogthing, & so, presumably, to some friends that read it. Hellohi! I will place myself in spacetime for you.

past

Fall Semester of School for Designing a Society ended, climaxing w/ a concert at our very house, La Casa. We had musicks, stories, essays, hangings, recitations, installations, & an intermission w/ popcorn jam. Jacob & I joined our goodfriend Rob in an aggregate we call, tentatively, JARBAND, to play one rock-ish version of Nodal Nim's 'how to ferment the colon' & a piece of theatre composed by Rob called, very tentatively, Cockroach Opera, & featuring Nodal Nim's 'stripes' w/ new lyrics by Rob & renamed 'gripes'. I enjoyed it & want more more more of it.

Visited at that time did Dogbody Lathus, goodfriend o' me, who now intends w/ Tilly T, alsogoodfriend, to move to Urbana for living & future SDaSing!

I took Greyhound home to Troy, NY & saw goodfriends from timespast. Had lots of jolly asynchronous conversation, wrote a lot, & generally felt at peace w/ universe. Spent Xmas w/ my mom & her man Bob. Made good food & good musick improvisationally w/ Scotty. Remembered how to meditate.

Greyhounded back to Urbana, IL to spend New Years w/ goodfriends out here. Anna hosted a gettogether gamenight, & we played Apples to Apples & Boggle, chatted, & made musick out of banjo, saw, toy piano, & apartmentbits.

Beth hosted another composition intensive, at which I made new friends, wrote up some bits about antijamming, reacquainted myself w/ th Blue Demon (my mandolin), & participated in smokey pancakemaking.

Went out hunting for something joblike, but have yet to find anything.

Read books. Cooked food. Ate food.

Inspired in part by a visit to th Prairie Zen Center in Champaign I started a daily sunrise meditation practice which I've continued for a week or so to th present day. Newfriend Caroline (who invited me initially to th Prairie Zen Center) joined me for th first few sessions, & since then, Jacob & my new housemate Ronna have also occasionally joined.

Attended one session of a "contemplative meditation" group hosted by newfriends Snow Leopard & Ty.

Started a dual journal w/ Jacob.

Reacquainted myself w/ my Cümbüş & taught some daysongs to Jacob, who then learned an accompanying part on tubulon (stainless steel tubes he has cut to play in 17edo). Played again w/ neutral scales.

Attended & helped at Oddmusic Convergence, hosted by Jacob, augmented by UnTwelve, at th Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, whereat people of all sorts assembled instruments from parts strewn about, showed them off, played them w/ others, etc. Jacob performed Messiaen on udderbot w/ Snow Leopard. Jacob & I debuted tubes-Cümbüş musicks.

Started a daily(ish) morning schmooze w/ goodfriend Drew, at which we've discussed desire, determinism, doubletalk, description, radical constructivism, reality, & other topics beginning w/ "d" & "r".

Attended one evening, so far, of a poetry class taught by Michael Halloway, hosted at Michael Brün's house down th street from us. Showed Book of Days project, which I rather miss.

Played a bit of Go.

Survived w/ good humor th bitter cold (so far).

present (well, ok, more recent past)

Find myself needing a shower.

Feel pretty nice, & attribute it to getting good sleep, having a nice walk w/ Sophie in th sun, & finally getting around to writing for my blog.

Hear Jacob in th other room playing distorted hymns & singing along, as part of a compositional practice.

Run to catch th phone... don't quite make it...

Look forward to...

future (as predicted, wished for, expected, by me)

Will go to contemplative meditation w/ Snow Leopard & Ty at 5:30.

Will, hopefully soon, make steps toward a radio show w/ Jacob called, perhaps, "Talk Wrong Radio".

Intend to take a shower as soon as I post this.

Excited about new member of JARBAND, our friend Anna, who has agreed to our proposal to learn Jacob's tubes so he can play udderbot & trombone. Our new four-piece plans to do all 17edo music, including old Nim/Andrew songs, old Jacob songs, & new cybernetically-themed songs by all.

Will have a job sooner or later, & so a routine & rent money. Fingers crossed.

New interest in I Ching makes me wonder where a project involving that could take me.

Have plans to compose a song w/ Anna that "plays w/ policy".

Enjoy Buddhist & constructivist readings & plan to continue them into th future.

Would like to suggest a Go tournament w/ four or so local playerfriends.

Want to clean my room a bit later.

Mostly, I don't know what to expect of th future. I have no long-term plans at all. I rather like it that way, actually.

Now that I've mostly caught things up on this here blog, I'd like to share more up-to-date ideas & use it for organizing bits of this & that & that & this.

MUSICK

This is a digital reproduction of a quite analog booklet I began distributing in Chicago on May 12, 2007 called MUSICK. Th original consists of sixteen tiny black & white pages with lots of words & few pictures. This version contains some scans of th original & some spruced-up stuff. I've added a few pictures, colors & comments. Th latter you will recognize because it will look like this paragraph: purple & italic.

00002

Salutations!

I am Andrew Heathwaite, a.k.a. Nodal Nim, & I welcome you to page two of my manifesto, MUSICK! I've got a few ludicrous thoughts to share with you today: some nonsense, twaddle, paradoxes & chaos that I hope you'll find inspiring. In fact, my ultimate goal with this free booklet is th formation of some sort of MUSICKAL COLLECTIVE (i.e. BAND).

Why th funny spelling, music with a k? It's based on th word MAGICK, thus spelt to distinguish it from stage magic - "magicians" pulling rabbits out of hats & playing tricks on people through deceit & sleight of hand. MAGICK is not th same as magic. Phil Hine, in his illuminating booklet Oven-Ready Chaos, tells us:

"Magick is surprisingly simple. What can it offer?

1. A means to disentangle yourself from the attitudes and restrictions you were brought up with and which define the limits of what you may become.
   
2. Ways to examine your life to look for, understand, and modify behaviour, emotional and thought patterns which hinder learning and growth.
   
3. Increase of confidence and personal charisma.
   
4. A widening of your perception of just what is possible, once you set your heart and mind on it.
   
5. To develop personal abilities, skills and perceptions - the more we see the world, the more we appreciate that it is alive.
   
6. To have fun. Magick should be enjoyed.
   
7. To bring about change - in accordance with will."

00003

MUSICK is an attempt to apply th principles of magick to music.

It is based on th ideas that:

1. You, I, everyone everywhere is a Robot.
   
2. We, as Robots, are programmed by our imprints, our experiences, & th things we decide we "know".
   
3. All that we do, we do through our programming.
   
4. Most of th time, we do not write our programming; it is written for us.
   
5. Metaprogramming is programming yourself - causing conscious changes in your own nervous system. It is th stuff of Shamanism, Magick, & MUSICK.

We, th collective, devote ourselves not to music, but to MUSICK! We challenge all musical programming for th continuous remanifestation of MUSICKAL metaprogramming intended to disorder & free everyone everywhere! We play to free ourselves, but also to free everyone everywhere. One unconscious listening experience (on th street, in a club, anywhere) begins a process of reimprinting / disordering of th mind & its programs through exposure to our highly charged musickal arcana. We play to illuminate!

Think all this is bullshit / metaphysical mumbo-jumbo / twaddle? Good! So do I!

Let's do it anyway!

00004

REALITY TUNNELS

Each individual's unique & very limited view of th WORLD is a reality tunnel. Peter Carroll, in his book Liber Null, suggests six fundamental reality tunnels that people have tended to adopt. He claims that one develops into th next, & that th whole set is cyclical.

1. Paganism
   
2. Monotheism
   
3. Atheism
   
4. Nihilism (Low Atheism)
   
5. Chaoism
   
6. Superstition (Low Chaoism)

"Try each of them for a week, a month, or a year. This exercise may save one an unnecessary incarnation or two."

00006

AGNOSTICISM

Some wisdom from Robert Anton Wilson

"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any more need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as 'the Copenhagen Interpretation,' because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called 'model agnosticism' and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, 'The map is not the territory.' Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental Philosophy, restated it more vividly as 'The menu is not the meal.'

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, 'My current model' - or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel - 'contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.' In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude."

00008

DISCORDIANISM

is a paradoxical post-modern pseudo-religion devoted to ERIS, th Greek Goddess of Chaos, Discord, & Strife. It mixes humor with truth in remarkable ways.

From Discordianism's holy book, Principia Discordia, here are some illuminating Discordian catmas (opposite of dogmas):

"Convictions cause convicts."

"It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs."

" 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."

"Nonsense as Salvation: The human race will begin solving its problems of the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously."

"Every Man, Woman & Child is a Discordian Pope."

Here's another good one: "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads."






00011

Some thoughts on GAMES. . . .

In everything we do, we are playing GAMES.
Everything is a GAME.

If everything is a GAME, everything is absurd.
If everything is a GAME, everything is arbitrary.
If everything is a GAME, ultimately, nothing is true & everything is permitted.

But most of th time, we don't play games of our own creation.
Someone else makes th rules.
We follow them.
Or if we rebel & break them, we do so according to an alternative set of rules which we also did not create.

Our musickal collective will not play by anyone else's rules. We will create our own & keep them constantly in flux, paradoxical, impossible to follow. In so doing, we will avoid dogmatism & taking ourselves too seriously.

We will disorder th rules through chaotic meta-rules.

Th goal of th game is to transcend th game.

Page 00013 in th original booklet consists of one POPE & one MESSIAH card with th message, "Cut these out to claim YOUR BIRtHRigHt." Rather than copy them here, I will link you to th place where I got them myself: poee.co.uk, an excellent Discordian resource.

Page 00014 is th back page of th POEE cards & contains just a bunch of black & th page number.


00015

Are you utterly confused by all this?

If so, we have more in common than you may think.

So there's th low-down. I'm looking for people. People who live in Chicago, preferably. People who want to play every style of music on every instrument they can find. (Also no styles of music on no instruments.) People who want to play on th streets & begin illuminating th world immediately. People who want to devote themselves to chaos & metaprogramming. This is not about making money or looking cool. It's about MUSICK. It's about being:

agnostic * chaotic * absurd * transcendent * viral

So contact me, Andrew Aaron Heathwaite, at
gtrpkt AT yahoo DOT com * 315-657-6839 * myspace.com/nodalnim

jamtech with Tim&Tony

Yesterday (DISCORD 11 - Discordians for Jesus Day / Love Your Neighbor Day) I did travel to th land of Park Forest, a southern suburb to play improvised tunes of wild happenings with two gentlemen who responded to th craigslist ad I posted recently: Tim & Toe Knee. Fun we did have in makings of musicks, & perhaps futures will coincide in some ways.

my ad on craigslist

I am a Chicagoan in seek of fellow ABSURDIST SONGWRITERS interested in:

CO-WRITING AVANT-GARDE POP MONSTROCITIES
thru such techniques as:

. . . randomly generating song elements from dice, playing cards, divination, etc.
. . . setting others' words to music - writing words to others' music (& vice versa).
. . . cutting up lyrics & song elements to recombine them in surprising ways.
. . . intuitive / "automatic" techniques of composition.
. . . constrained poetry (eg. palindromes, writing without the letter "e", etc.).
. . . writing songs/poems using surrealist techniques such as writing two lines & concealing the first, then giving the other person the page & having him/her do the same thing.
. . . converting non-musical phenomena into sound.

CREATING EAR-BENDING EXPERIMENTAL RECORDINGS
thru such techniques as:

. . . collecting sounds to use in unique ways.
. . . cutting up sounds randomly & reassembling them.
. . . separately recording different tracks to go with the same backing track & playing them together.
. . . improvising multi-layered pop songs from the ground up.

PERFORMING LIVE SHOWS
on the street, at open mics, at clubs
which feature (for example):

. . . group improvisation outside of "stylistic" limitations.
. . . live chance recombination of prepared material.
. . . live performance of musical "games".
. . . creating & performing on multiple instruments, including assemblages from "non-musical" paraphernalia, i.e. junk.
. . . mythical storytelling elements.
. . . dramatic (operatic!) elements such as costumes, characters & plots.
. . . performing absurdist rituals that involve the audience & players in unpredictable ways.

::

I'm not talking about a jam band or a free jazz combo. I'm talking about a vehicle of super-musical chaos worship.

I'm ready to try anything, & I'm looking for other people who are, too - People who revel in PARADOX - People who say nothing is true & everything is permitted - People who, in the area of making noise, are simultaneously RIDICULOUSLY SERIOUS & SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS.

If some of what I've described excites you, then let's get together & see what we can do.

::

Contact: Andrew
315 657 6839
gtrpkt AT yahoo DOT com
http://www.myspace.com/nodalnim

electricks

I'm not sure th doings I will in musicks in soon times do. An offer exists for me to play a show if I do something electronic. However, my electronics remain stunted by computer limitations, I do think.

Other thoughts sit. I'd like to sing musicks to other people's words, as is th sometimes-doing. All friendlies, everywhere, send me your words for th singing, if you wanna! It sits in mind to do these things.