a thinking about bombing https://youtu.be/_F417HsPUO4 VIDEO, watch first Thinking about thinking about bombs is also a meditation on the sound of bombs the sound of war the distinction between reality and dream the incessants of it the constituting of it the constant pressure that results From it . There's nothing similar because it is always representation of both a threat and a wrapping of that threat it's a representation of the sound of that threat to beginning a committed ending and possible punctuation of that sound related to the thread and at the same time is it in capsulation of it abracting of it. I tried to convey this in the current video. This was one of the most difficult to do. The central section has a guitar improvisation related directly to the notion of bombing, the notion of bombing civilians the notion of hearing the bomb is falling the notion of thanksgiving out when the bombs do fall. It's a very different kind of music it's a music which is in succession (?) representing the environment, it seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once - internalized I know I've had the - felt - that kind of fear at times. There are times when I've felt the unknown = in fact that my life wasn't dangerous and this is represented there's a kind of chattering of signifiers that occurs a kind of frisson that is a disintegration of the self in relationship to what it's hearing. The guitar music reflects that guitar is a good instrument for this because guitar is also social It's part of a society if fitting was society was social playing a guitar is playing a social community you know your hands are moving over street and power caves and bridges and tunnels that will someday disappear. The beginning of the ending better showing and representing the dissolution of the self which in fact occurs when I'm making a piece like this things start to fall apart things start to make sense and repeat themselves and then disappear cowering a sense of the of the inconceivable Of disgust of dismay of anxiety. It's a holding on to what canopy held on to. If you read this you should watch the video because the video is representative in better ways than I can talk what this is all about. The bandage's human the Sudoku katu (?) are cartoon like bombs, bombs that fall throughout the smashing of different modes of representation against one another All of this present. When I improvised the music for the central section of this piece I was well aware that something was disintegrating on that level as well through repetitions slammed into each other and created small histories one sound or another that would hold itself in place until something displaced it and until that was displaced by the original sound . This was the way it was when I walked into rubble in different situations when I walked in situations that were inherently dangerous. There's not enough of this or there's too much of this the body can't tell but it like with everything else it's within and without the body simultaneously an infant learns to speak not by imitating the adult's vocal chord configurations but by being within the totality of the sphere of communication No matter how fragile or confusing it might seem at the time might be seen at the time period. This is precisely the great fear I've had - a war of annihilation of genocide so many times in my life it's something that is within the body and without the body but it's something that is the body itself just as the body takes on voice without understanding the physics of vocalization it's all there it's the habitat it's the internalized habitat which is part and parcel of the meat of the body itself it's the depths and the meat of the body Period. This piece of music qua music resides there within that uncomfortable world world that extends itself in every direction without objects or forces it's a world that's just there and that permeates as I mentioned the body and so the body is not one with the world but is there and not they are just as the world is there or not there. I worked and I worked on the thinking of this piece and the signifiers in it are common signifiers that I've used before en the guitar was something that I've used in numerous pieces. But in this case the guitar is played against itself half representational half within the interiority of a musical sphere that's made increasingly uncomfortable, discomforting. The video images reflect this unintangler disentangler in ways that bring the content of everything to the surface. I see this here one as a kind of thickening of semiotics - something odd as well - if you like or semiotic domain that's incoherent within and without slightly more coherent within slightly fragile at the borders with nothing particular beyond nothing particular - you have to pay any attention to beyond. I'll leave it out there. It should be fairly clear than that the representation of bombing* just like the representation of murder or the representation of theft of the violations that occur in any country under attack against its civilian population these things are on one hand unspeakable and then together have to be spoken over and over again. I can't do that period I'm inviolate. None of us are. But what I can do is try to think through the very sound of a war on this level, the very sound of the bomb the very sound of dying and what might result internally to one's own consciousness to the meat of thinking and the meat of making decisions and the meat of characterizing and the meat of speaking and the meat of memory which is always the most fragile of all. And as a fiction of course this is obscene, as is any war film that is not a testimonial. And this is nothing more than music in the sense of an anti-anthem, wordless, inchoate, inert. *imagined bombing runs _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
[NetBehaviour] a thinking about bombing
Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour Sat, 10 Dec 2022 07:08:47 -0800