Quit Yr Job Day

By th way, in case you haven't heard:

Every day is Quit Yr Job Day!

& I happened to celebrate it last Thursday by doing just that!

Yay!

diadwtm

"Democracy" means
rule by th loudest,
rule by th sneakiest,
rule by th best organized.

Those who call our present system unjust
& continue to talk about "democracy"
might consider that th birthplace of "democracy"
was a war-happy patriarchal slave-economy.
It worked for them & it works for us.

I don't know if it's possible to separate "democracy"
from oppression by th "majority"
& influence by th propagandists,
who succeed in getting masses of people
to vote against their own interests every time.
If it is possible, it is only possible if we call it out -
name it - & design against it:

"This is happening - our system makes this happen.
If we want a different thing to happen,
we need to design a different system."

Democracy is a dirty word to me.

upcoming: oddmusic covergence dec '09

You’re invited to attend, as performer or audience

ODDMUSIC CONVERGENCE DECEMBER ‘09

“metablues, microtones, contraptions, utopia”

on Monday, December 14, at 7:30 p.m.

in the main space of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.

$5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds.





a concert featuring responses to invitations:

0. ODDMUSIC - What is Oddmusic? Show us.
1. METABLUES - Write a “blues” song which points, instead of at old problems framed in th old language, new problems which demand a new language.
2. MICROTONES - Write a piece in an odd tuning (one which is non-redundant with conventional wisdom).
3. CONTRAPTIONS – Write a piece for an odd instrument (or a not-so-odd instrument played in an odd way).
4. UTOPIA – Write a piece which speaks of alternatives not yet possible in the current system. For example, a false statement bulletin.

Some performances are already in the works which play with these invitations. We invite you to add more! This Convergence will have something of an Open Mic element to it; if you have a piece, or can put together a piece, which attempts to respond to these invitations, please bring it and share it! Surprise us with your own metablues, microtones, contraptions, or utopias.

If you want assistance making a piece happen, get in touch!

Next Sunday, December 13, the day before the Convergence, we’re holding Office Hours as usual in th Oddmusic Oddstrumentarium (room 21A of the IMC). We’ll be working on pieces then, and welcome your participation in that. Bring an interest, and we’ll work on something together!

Music is ours to odd. Odd is ours to music.

Much love, Andrew

pivot

I call something a "Pivot" when:

A & C alone contradict one another.
B contradicts neither A nor C.
A composed sequence A-B-C resolves th contradiction
since th composed sequence is neither A nor B nor C, but instead
a context in which th three can live
(a different logical type): X.

How to practice pivots?

2 Brünish somethings

2 related somethings written by Herbert Brün that I want to keep around.

First, from th program notes of his String Quartet No. 3:

If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components, will be misunderstood, instead, as one in which the components give meaning to their context.

In order to retard this development, this visitation of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too commonly is mistaken for understanding of music.

Th second, from My Words And Where I Want Them, #247:

Composition generates whole systems so that there be a context which can endow trivial 'items' and meaningless 'materials' with a sense and a meaning never before associated with either items or materials.

Be it linguistic art, where the sentence injects meaningful intent into mere lexicographic vocables, thus turning these into words-

be it visual art, where the configuration injects meaningful intent into mere perceptible data, thus turning these into spaces, shapes, movements and colorpatterns-

be it audible art, where the structuring of time and distance injects meaningful intent into mere acoustical phenomena, thus turning these into musical events-

sooner or later both the profiteering interpreters and the consuming audience will perversely deny the composers' competence and, instead, declare the sentence to be meant by its words, the painting to be meant by its components, and the music to be meant by its sounds.

In order to retard this unfortunate and inevitable decay (too many humans are indistinguishable from laws of nature) for as long as possible, I have contrived to inhibit such gesture forming tendencies in most of my compositions by using many a non sequitur as a structural leap over new gaps avoiding old bridges.

The intent is motivated by my non-malicious desire to keep not only my music as alienated as possible from 'business as usual' and to have not only my composition say something to the interpreter and the listener for the longer time than it may take them to just repeat their habitual commonplaces to themselves.

The survival of composition depends on the composer's art: anticommunication.

economic think(ing out loud)

Different people paying th same number of dollars does not mean different people paying th same value.

My $20 is, to me, a different value than your $20 is to you.

What would a proportional currency look like? Instead of "everyone has to pay th same dollars" it might go, "everyone has to pay th same proportion". Then, 20 proportional units ("poops," say) for me & 20 poops for you are, to each of us, th same value (more or less), but a different number of dollars.

In effect, each person would have her own currency which would convert to dollars at a different rate.

This assumes we develop a "fair" way of determining th "value" of $20 for each person.

What about th "value" of stuff for th seller? If I charge 20 poops for a candy bar, then some folks would spend more dollars than others on th candy bar (because of th different dollars to poops rates). If I'm selling a candy bar & I want more dollars, I'd try to attract th folks whose poops are worth more dollars.

But why would someone want more dollars? If I find a way to make more dollars, my poops are worth less.

If we had poops (& we cared about fair distribution of power), we wouldn't need dollars at all. Poops could cancel out th power of dollars entirely.

Maybe a proportional currency could exist alongside standard currency, added to th current economy for ease of sliding-scale-type transactions. If it were made easy for people to charge proportional prices instead of standard prices, I wonder if they would do it.

Another can of worms: organizations that function as people. Companies, corporations, non-profits, unions, committees, political parties. Do they get poop rates? Can a small business spend fewer dollars than a large business, but th same number of poops? Where do I stand next to X-mart, when we're competing to buy a thing?

Maybe dollars & poops are in contradiction. Yes, I think they are, & for th contradiction to get resolved, we need a different system.

a/c minn

Carly & I made it to Minneapolis. No puppet show after all -- we're here on vacation (till Tuesday).

We stayed th last two nights with a new friend from couchsurfer.com named Rachel. She was lots of good to us, & now we're staying with Brian from the Twin Cities Independent Media Center. We spent hours today trying to get our mitts on bikes, & we finally found a place that'll rent used bikes cheap (three of my favorite words!). We biked th beautiful park district bike paths around three teeny lakes tonight, & Carly has drifted off to sleep for an evening nap. I like this place & wanted to type some words about it (stockpiling warmth, she said when she woke up).

Recently, one question at SDaS experimental composition seminar has been, "how to seek your fruitful conflicts," &, meeting new people, I'm finally finding fruitful conflicts! I'm learning about questions & dynamics.

Brian says he's making dinner & Carly says she's baking vegan cookies. I have made no culinary promises, & might partake of something resembling a nap myself.

Love from a new state,
AndR

puppet something to come

Carly, Jacob & I are putting together a something:

Oddmusic U-C* presents: 25% MORE, a music-o-puppet extravaganza, coming to a Minneapolis near you November 7-9, 2009.

25% MORE takes a sideways ponder at the tyranny of work, the tyranny of measurement systems, and the tyranny of doing something different.

We'll offer an evening of workshops and songs, with a main entrée of original puppets & music by Carly Nix, Jacob Barton & Andrew Heathwaite.

“Whaddaya mean, workshops?” Imagine 20-minute crash courses in:

GHOST-WHALIN' -or- How to play the musical saw
UDDERBOTSMITH -or- How to tootle with a slide bottle
METABLUES -or- How to think in 22-tone guitar
REP. CARDS -or- How to art yourself out of bad grooves
AUDIENCING -or- How to give multiple attentions
DESIRING WITH TEETH -or- How to make unfortunately false statements

* Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign “is” a project to connect experimental composition, performance art, nonstandard tuning practices & instrument-building with non-sectarian radical social change. We insist upon “music” as a type of “odd,” desirable when it avoids the same old society telling itself what it already knows.

hello from/to September

I just noticed I haven't blogged here since June. I've kept myself busy.

Big cloudy mess (list) of what's-been-goin'-on: got a great new lover (3 months together now) ; been involved w/ School for Designing a Society Language Lab & more to come ; getting my work schedule etc. figured out for th rest of th year ; playin' 22-tone acoustic guitar & anticipating new songwriting explosions ; almost caught up on rent ; great new people moving into La Casa ; grand(e) opening for Oddmusic, & now a period of what's next ; putting my desires in order & watching them dissolve & transform each other ; helpin' some pumpkins get sun ; eating adzuki beans ; ...

FWEET

I don't know who reads this blog exactly, but if someone who does happens to have a passionate interest in Finnegans Wake, as I sometimes do, then I'd like to alert you to a website of some value.

FWEET, which stands for Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury has a very powerful & friendly search engine for probing th Wake. It contains over 79,000 "elucidations" about each line of th Wake, & you can search th text of th elucidations & th text of th book. For instance, a search for th word "buggy" (a word that came to mind just now) gives us one line from th Wake itself & two elucidations containing "buggy".

In th FW text, it gives us just that one line, from page 85, "buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb," & if I want to see th lines before & after it, I can click on th page number (085) & get this page.

When I do my bibliomantic divinations using Finnegans Wake, I like to nab a smallish & interesting phrase, so I'll expand that just a bit to:

open to buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb or quaker's quacknostrum under his auxter and his alpenstuck in his redhand

So today it seems we have an image of a thoroughfare & a person walking w/ a quacknostrum (quack remedy) under his arm (auxter, from oxter, armpit) & a walking stick (alpenstuck, from alpenstick) in his redhand. To whom in my life (since it's a divination for me after all) does this refer? Me? A friend? Someone to watch out for somewhere in th world? Th FW gives us a clue where to find him: somewhere open to buggy and bike. I suppose I could take that literally, altho maybe it means something else... like a blog! Ha, maybe it refers to FWEET, a website that seems very elucidating, but actually carries quacknostrum under its auxter. Hmm.

All in all, in spite of any strange divinations that may come up, I do recommend FWEET for joyful Finnegansplay.

a Bouyant Bloomsday 2009

Hi friends, & again, Happy Bloomsday. As you may recall, 105 years ago to th day, took place th events of James Joyce's Ulysses, altho some miles away in Dublin, & not here in Urbana, Illinois. (& of course, in another Dublin than th one that exists today, since time & space remain inseparable in practice indeed.)

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)

I don't have big plans myself; some folks're gathering in Champaign later on, says Facebook, so I'll probably join. It seems I forgot all about it last year, so simply taking a moment to poke thru Ulysses, which has sat on my shelf unread for a few years, counts for something. I quietly recited some of Finnegans Wake to myself last night, & may do that again today. But for th most part, no big plans.

However, for "old time's sake" & to renew a worthy fascination, I'll do a quick bibliomantic divination using th good FW. Ahem. Page 126:

Who do you no tonigh, lazy and gentleman?

birthday party

Happy Birthday!

I type to you now from th Orpheum Children's Science Museum, where I work th front desk these days. On my right, I hear th sounds of birthday party nomming - a cupcake cake! I gave these folks a short animal show, where they got to meet three of our critters: Windy, an ornate box turtle; Patricia, one of our bearded dragons; & Corny, th corn snake. Everybody got along swimmingly - no one eaten, no one brought to tears, no minor deaths.

Later tonight, I'll do a workshop on magic. I have about five easy tricks to show off & teach. I did a sloppy li'l preview for my house last night, & I feel good about that.

In between that & this, maybe a nap?

ThunderMe

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen--
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice--
So many different people
In the same device.

~53rd Calypso of Bokonon

Storm tonight, a big one, which, says Ronna, came all th way from Texas to greet us. Big thunder. Big lightning. Big me, in it.

I ran in it, jumped in it, danced in it, but mostly stood in it, w/ my arms raised. I wanted to feel every drop, hear every nuance of th constant rumbles in my ears, sense every blade of grass (getting taller!) that went between my toes. I wanted to blur th line between Me & It.

We talked about th end of th world (climate change!), & I thought, well of course th world is ending. Also beginning, both of those, in every moment. But things will never be th same again. How could they possibly?

We live in a most massive non-trivial machine. We are it. If lightning strikes me, it's not an It & a Me, separate things. It's one divine It, this very same device. Me becomes (Me) becomes () becomes...

2s & 47s

Moving lots of files from place to place. Th computer says: "Copying 2,222 items to HBParkhouse," & as I notice this & think about twos, I see th computerclock, which reads 2:22 pm. Now, of course, they say "2,197" & "2:27".

A few days ago I saw a pair of 47s, an interstate & a time. I took special note of th interstate, then noticed a carclock reading something:47.

Ah, & now that I open my book, I see that I've stopped on page 44, twice 22. Th 22nd word on page 22: "book". 22nd sentence on page 22: "That's all I wanted to say". 22nd paragraph in th book: "I can walk across the bridge hundreds of times without stepping on that board, but Margaret always steps on it."

Cali & back

Jacob & I enjoyed a magical 11 days in California ((but aren't all 11 days magical?)), returning yesterday morn on a red-eye flight. We connected with old & new friends to very quickly & thoroughly assemble a Moondog Madrigal Puppet Show, which we performed last Friday at th Community Music Center in th Mission district of San Francisco.

Louis "Moondog" Hardin wrote over 100 quirky rounds that he called madrigals, & 22 of these became music in this three-act puppet opera written by our friends Marji & Dan, who played a young student artist named Kneena (who speaks in haiku), & a mysterious Vandal, respectively. Jacob played a pitiful Professor, & our friends Robin & Peter an Angel & an Earthworm. Th rest of us (Nathan, Lembit, Paul, & yr hairy narrator) took turns playing th Student Body, a puppet representing a conglomerate of clueless college students (who speak (sort of) in pantoums) & parody an ancient Greek chorus. All of us played instruments & sang tasty Moondog rounds.

We got a good-sized audience full of friendly people, who seemed to like it quite a bit. We hope to take a next step & do more performances somewhere.

I enjoyed hilly California, altho I don't know how much of sense of it I got. I didn't do a whole lot outside of rehearsals for this show (which we had plenty of), but I did get around a bit: to Chinatown for a tea tasting; to an artist space in th Mission to chat w/ a new friend Tyson & play w/ some piano innards; to some acoustically marvelous tunnels on a mountain across th Golden Gate Bridge (which overlooked a very Herzogian fog); to a street corner at 1 am to play madrigals for five or so people; to a private birthday party at a club, also to play madrigals; to th Maker's Faire, where we pulled up some grass & serenaded some passersby; to Berkley, where our friends Andrea & Qilo live, for an Indian dinner & a potluck which hosted a conversation about Cybernetics & Somatics; to th basement of an office building getting renovated, where we spent in sleeping bags for a few nights; to City Lights, a leftist bookstore; to a forest-suburb of Santa Cruz, where eight of us lived & rehearsed for a few days, house-sitting, cooking great food, palling around; to lots of nice little coffee shops; to th airport, naturally, which pointed us home.

So we got in yesterday, & I promptly napped. I find Urbana simply marvelous to come home to. I love traveling, & I love making this place my home. (You simply must visit!) Yesterday ended, much to my surprise w/ a very late night, shared w/ someone special. I woke up late today, walked to th libary w/ my friend Ronna, started reading a new book which I so far enjoy, & picked some garlic scapes.

bits of project

Disorderly:

Tonight, Jacob & I (intend to) host a pre-opening for a space we've started renting at th IMC. Th space might host many things - at least:

• a (microtonal) musical instrument library (Instrumentarium!)
  
• a "composer's living room"
  
• an Oddmusic Ensemble
  
• an Oddmusic Collective
  
• composition workshops
  
• listening parties
  
• recording sessions
  
• composition lessons
  
• insert idea here

So we've invited folks over for a 'pre-opening' to expand our pool & seduce new oddmusicians (whatever that might mean). Workshop for potential workshop.

& very soon we travel to San Francisco to do a puppet show with An Exciting Event.

Last week, La Casa hosted House Concert VII (seventh in 'recent memory' - fourth that I've participated in). I did: an old Nodal Nim song ('5 songs of fish'); a reading of a chapter in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons; &, w/ Jacob, a presentation inviting folks to tonight's pre-opening.

Alsonewthing: I have a new job at th Orpheum Children's Science Museum, working at th front desk, answering phones, feeding turtles, sweeping up blue sand, etc.

I made a modular calendar yesterday.

poem

(((something:)))

I do NOT feel
only
compassion for you.

I canNOT feel
less than
this complicated ache.

And,
I do NOT apologize
for
my body's language.

tell yr crush!

Hey! Today, May 7 = International Tell Your Crush Day! So do it!

I just so happen to have an international crush (or 3), who needs to know how I feel about her. (I'll get around to it after work; I've promised myself.) Probably, I've got at least a minor crush on (at least) one reader of this blog, so just in case "you know who you are," let me tell ya:

I've got a CRUSH on YOU!

Those of you just hearing about this, never fear. Go boldly - never too late. Observe th holiday - profess yr undying love. (Never mind th ridiculousness of th "undying" part. Crushers don't notice these things.) Reveal that beautiful yearning, friend!

forced brevity

I've had a cold, & now it has stolen my voice. I can speak, but it sounds dreadful. I've decided to take it as a (forced) exercise in brevity. How can I say what I need to using th very fewest words? An interesting dilemma.

Yuckvoice from cold means brevity game. How speak fewly? Neat.

Some I-can't-do-withouts

Imagining lovers. What qualities/behaviors could I not do without? A preliminary brainstorm.

• (appreciation of) absurdist humor
  
• (stated) desire to cultivate compassion for all beings
  
• identification as any (not necessarily all) of th following: feminist, anarchist, social change artist, strong agnostic, metaclown
  
• love of affection, including (but not merely) sexual affection
  
• sensitive nipples
  
• stated preference for variety & spontaneity
  
• rejection of (traditional language around) sin, gender norms, capitalism, money, faith, pop culture, sacredness
  
• ok w/ (some) biting
  
• ok w/ (some) oral sex
  
• (comfort being) orgasmic
  
• at least vegetarian, & preferably vegan
  
• interest in metaconversation & legitimate questions
  
• hairiness & general comfort w/ "being a mammal"

Not an exhaustive list, but good to see & share. Given this specificity, it's no wonder I don't have a lover in my life. But, fuck, I deserve someone this good.