Phil Lesh 1940 – 2024
group portrait, the Sonya Walker Sextet
The Playlist:
— one rhapsodizes
— firmament
— troika
— the mice are men
— wail
— dear keith
— i swear that I care a lot, it’s just that i’m scared a lot
— howl
— pomade it
— spirit, be free
Stamped from the Beginning – Kendi
Continuing to pry my eyes open to the wide ignorance of growing up a privileged white male: a darkness that perhaps could have been dispelled by the obvious evidence appearing, bright, over the years. The tar-paper huts where the elementary school bus stopped, picking up many of the Black students at our rural Maryland school 35 miles outside of Washington, D.C.—south of the Mason-Dixon Line; at ten y.o., riding past “Resurrection City” on the Mall in D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; completely unaware of the geography of roads not taken in that long-ago rural countryside as they passed through the African-American settlements outside of the “regular” towns; blindness mixed with a slowly maturing wonder at and deep respect for African-American creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity. I surely didn’t understand the full import of the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” from his Innervisions album even after doing a report on it in 11th grade English class; nor the complexities involved in a course I took, “The Economics of Poverty,” while taking a year away from engineering school back in 1979. Maybe it was Lightnin’ Hopkins who really cracked open my soul. So many points where knowledge and feeling would have fired a deeper awareness of the ongoing and severely compromised conditions of social justice in the United States. There was not enough curiosity available within privilege.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Second trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Bold Type Books, LLC, 2023.
Tracing the historical roots of ‘racist thought’ in Amurika up to contemporary times, this is a challenging read. The extraordinary level of detail and huge number of players across 400 years makes it sometimes difficult to hold onto all the facts. But the main ‘plot,’ racism, is the important point to be dissembled.
Thanks, George, for recommending this one, and thanks, Rick for earlier recommending:
Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Random House, 2023.
and I would also include
Hannah-Jones, Nikole and New York Times Company, eds. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. First edition. New York, NY: One World, 2021.
and
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston, MA: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845..
There are (many) Others whose histories I need yet to understand.
To Phyliss Wheatley
(First African Poetess)
(First African Poetess)
No! Not like the lark, didst thou circle and sing,
High in the heavens on morn’s merry wing,
But hid in the depths of the forest’s dense shade,
There where the homes of the lowly were made,
Thou nested! Though fettered, thou frail child of night,
Thy melody trilled forth with naive delight;
And all through the throes of the night dark and long,
Earth’s favored ones harkened thy ravishing song,
So plaintive and wild, touched with Africa’s lilt;
Of wrong small complaint, sweet forgiveness of guilt-
Oh, a lyric of love and a paean of praise,
Didst thou at thy vespers, Dark Nightingale, raise;
So sweet was the hymn rippling out of the dark,
It rivalled the clear morning song of the lark.
Clifford, Carrie Williams. The Widening Light. Boston, MA: Walter Reid Company, 1922.
review of whirlwind
Where to start? Since departing east to Golden, checking in with Julia, Torin, Sonya, Anneke, and Mark; then to DIA, to KEF, to Reykjavík, to Himri, around about a record number of places in a very short time in the Icelandic countryside with Simon, Bill, Zander, and crew; back to Reykjavík, and, thanks to Jón Teitur and Irma, some very interesting and fun dips into their busy lives; then back to Denver and Golden briefly; and, finally, back home to drought-stressed, desiccated, brown Cedaredge; back to the ten thousand undone tasks that need doing before bailing on this place and expatriating. Not even three weeks elapsed, a coffee-fueled jetlag blur of soaking and swimming, hugging and talking, eating and hiking, listening and looking, catching-up and chilling out in terminal brightness. Dialogues with strangers, old friends, new connections, in Icelandic, in English, in music, in images, in texts, in food, and in heart and soul. Photos and audio clips forthcoming. In the mean time:
Phill Niblock 1933 – 2024
Sorry for this text, it’s garbled, but I can’t make it less so in the moment. Check out some of the links below for more considered words and documentation of Phill’s presence and creative expressions. I’m dismayed at the number of obits that are appearing here … sheesh …
The other day I was reviewing older sound recordings on the website, one of which is a remix of sounds recorded at one of Phill Niblock’s annual Solstice events at his and Katherine’s loft in New York. Back in 2007 I was in the NYC area and was able to make it to one of these legendary happenings. A number of ShareNY friends had reminded me of them, and my modus operandi generally is when in town, check stuff out. And if Phill Niblock is doing something, well, there’s no excuse!
So, it was sad to hear of Phill’s passing. The hundreds, thousands of performances that he made, participated in, or facilitated for other artists—most often within the aegis of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation over the years—had a profound impact on all who experienced them. The annual Winter Solstice events at their loft were especially intense both in the immersive visual-sonic sense, but also in the powerful element of basic human encounter: always a slew of interesting folks attending!
As is noted in other obits, being and doing were things that Phill did with a profuse and personable energy. I was lucky to cross paths repeatedly with he and Katherine on their numerous transAtlantic forays and in NYC related to some ShareNY events.
Phill’s experimental visual and sonic work implemented a solid-and-shimmering tableau of full-on psychic immersion in live performance. The Solstice happening was merely one of the hundreds that Niblock brought into this universe from another, parallel universe, where time, sound, and Light have both more subtle and more tangible presence and energy.
An openness for exploring the profundity of the temporal was something that Bruce Elder and Stan Brakhage exposed me to back in the 80s, so Phill’s monumental 16mm opus, The Movement Of People Working, was immediately, electrically, attractive. It forms a compelling exploration of what human presence and be-ing actually is, not merely how it manifests: this element of lived immediacy imprints itself, over time on the receiver. And, combined with the sonic expressions forms a holistic, immersive experience. (Morton Feldman‘s influence.) Transcendent!
We shared the idea of duration in performance work: perhaps related to our separate instances of experiencing the work of Feldman. Phill often bringing duration to a beautiful extreme that inevitably sparked internal change within the witness/participant (there is no audience in this regard, there is only the Void!).
Condolences dear Katherine, and for our shared loss.
Visit Phill’s website for a deeper plunge. This obit by Lawrence English is especially illuminating. And the NYT obit gives a wide view on Phill’s life.
Further insight into the Solstice Events with some documentation at Roulette; along with a 12-hour video.
Anneke’s swing band
Eddie Lopez 1956 – 2023
¿Qué decir? I only knew Eddie Lopez by voice, as a DJ on KXLU‘s weekend program Alma Del Barrio.
Listened to him starting in 1982 when I moved to Santa Monica, just six years after he joined Alma, a program that spawned my abiding love of salsa—its energy, its incredible musicians, and the culture that brought it to be. Gracias Eddie por todo … bailar en!!
graduation ceremony
quick comment
sotto voce to brainstorms on the question of people’s music-listening habits: I reflected obliquely on this question in my dissertation, examining the concept of radio as a cultural ‘amplifier’ operated centrally (more or less) with the effect of inculcating cultural sameness and diminishing cultural idiosyncrasy — the technology aiding in the ‘formation’ of a collective social fabric. I find that, broadly speaking, there is a continuum along the axis of people who seek difference and those who avoid difference. I also have friends who are still listening to a narrow selection of music that they first were immersed in in high school. And others who are still hunting for new and interesting (to them) things to listen to. It’s a curious phenomena, but I believe related to those two basic factors — the imposition of the effects of a (variably)-centralized technology on a social system, and, again, individual capacities to accept or reject (or just be comfortable with) difference. (And, yes, Ari, it’s not about ‘better’ or ‘worse’, imho, just difference or sameness.)
(And, the over-riding question of capitalist profits on cultural production buried in the middle of the pile of “stars” that we are routinely presented with through those amplification machines) …
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. 1931 – 2021
An influence: experimental composer, sound artist, free and open thinker. (On Ubuweb; on Discogs). The first generation of 20th Century sonic artists are falling. Last August, it was R. Murray Schafer, before that in 2016 it was Pauline Oliveros.
Having students sit for 45 minutes to hear the entirety of “I am sitting on a room …” — last imposed that on my “Ways of Listening” students at UTS in Sydney. They absorbed it without complaint, unlike my Amurikan students who balked and whined <sigh>.
“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.”
Joan’s Celebration of Life
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry 1936 – 2021
Damn. Sounds persist, radiating from Mr. Perry’s embodied presence, and recreated from that presence. And now, like everyone, everything, eventually: he’s left the building, he’s gone away.
The studio must be like a living thing. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine by sending it through the controls and the knobs. — Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
Sonya and Michel play
Sonya (piano, vocals) and Michel (drums) play to the empty interior of the No Name Bar, broadcasting over speakers to a handful of talkative customers sitting outside …
dance party
field work
religious singer
Centennial Cone trail
Cowboy Poets Festival, lobby
4th of July Lions Park
Golden Light Rail line
musician on 16th St. Mall
Cinco de Mayo in City Park
Jules singing
band at Jerry’s Solstice Party
Holly’s going-away party
Holly’s going-away party
Chili Festival band
token ‘African’ musicians
Alex’s combo playing
at the Media Archaeology Lab
girls performing
girls practicing
robotic bell stroll
robotic bell stroll
Cheryl Leonard performance
Alvin Curran performance
the inner Light
Without going out of my door, I can know all things on earth
without looking out of my window, I can know the ways of heaven.
The farther one travels the less one knows, the less one really knows.
Without going out of your door, You can know all things on earth
without looking out of your window, you can know the ways of heaven.
The farther one travels the less one knows, the less one really knows.
Arrive without traveling, See all without looking, Do all without doing.
Harrison, G., 1968. The Inner Light.
Watching the two-part George Harrison HBO bio-flick, it’s quite good; and what of those people, that man, among others. Life is so simple and so complex.