despair of the tending of intervals http://www.alansondheim.org/between.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/between.mp3 between the kyizi gong and the erhu, one dying out, the other emerging, the other dying out, the one emerging a form of sonic hysteria, matching erhu to gong, slightly below c among other notes tending towards the erhu, fingers in the right position for consonance of one or another sort the gong always dying, the erhu always going on, the gong always on its own, the erhu sounding simultaneously with the tending the breathing of the gong, travel or journey of the erhu, tuned in fifths, an old and somewhat battered but restored instrument almost a folk instrument or least one one not for export, brought back, the decorative top missing a piece but new bridge, new bow, new strings, new qianjin from what i can't recall, of course new rosin, new damper as well and the gong, burmese kyizi, about twelve pounds, 13.5", 19th century, using new mallets and rope/ribbon support, it twists and the very slight lack of sync on the video between the mallet contact and the resulting sound, taking 35 seconds to die out during which i take up the erhu bow and the proper position, and begin to attempt playing through maybe twenty seconds of kyizi before i return to the mallets with my right hand, my left hand holding the proper position, there's a kind of despair here a kind of despair of the interval, a brief moment to sound the divide, to construct, to hold, to improvise, to release as if there were little life left to all of us, just precisely this sort of interval, perhaps even of this length, after which everything disappears, from the image to the sound, from the imaginary to the real, from the discourse to fundamental lack and what i remember from one interval to another, from one release to the next, perhaps nothing in this absorbing room or this room where life exists in such intervals at best, as well as what comes forth and dies out, what sound or silence the hearing, the heard, the memory of the hearing, the bells in the distance in another town, now striking, chiming the hours the kyizi tending towards silence between bouts of sound slipping away among the bowing and the bells, now, here, now where you might find it impossible to exist, as all of this, all life, all sound, is slippage and denouement what is replaced, this diminishing of all the orders of the fecundity of the world, what we have grown accustomed to while the bells sound, the kyizi rings, rings forth, brings forth, the erhu hurrying to catch and maintain, to preserve within and without the impossibility of preserving, something new now coming forward, look, the instruments are put away they're carefully returned to the safety of rest and silence, waiting for other times where they might issue forth and the erhu might for example lovingly matching the wonderful sound of the kyizi and the kyizi in turn might sign towards and around the amazing tonalities of the erhu as if they occupied the same neighborhoods, the same lands, the same worlds, for ever and ever and ever sounding, one after another, one into another, one among another, one among them, without sadness or despair sounding the clarion, sound the symphonic alap of the raga playing all the seasons and hours of the world playing among us, playing for themselves, themselves played, and we are silent, do nothing, listening, listening, listening _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
