“Some time later, I met John Cage again, when he was signing autographs, and I asked him, “If you don’t exist, why are you signing your name?” He turned, not missing one beat, and whispered in my ear what might just be the most resonant one-liner this side of “shit on a stick”: “You have to play the game.” At that moment, the young art student decided that, like Cage, he wanted to be happy too: “I felt, this is the first genuinely happy person I have ever seen. Truly. Not just ‘happy’ but radiant, and helpful, and creative, and fun-loving; profound, but also just simply upright. I wanted all of that for myself, for my world.””
From Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson
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There are two principal parts of each personality: the conscious mind and the unconscious, and these are split and dispersed, in most of us, in countless ways and directions. The function of music, like that of any other healthy occupation, is to help to bring those separate parts back together again. Music does this by providing a moment when, awareness of time and space being lost, the multiplicity of elements which make up an individual become integrated and he is one.
- Kay Larson (Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists)
Shane Parish knows a few things about changes. Born Shane Perlowin, he grew up in the sticky flatlands of Florida and settled in the higher, dryer environs of Asheville, NC. He formed the Ahleuchatistas, a high-energy electric instrumental outfit that took its name from a Mexican revolutionary movement and a Charlie Parker tune, in 2002, and has been its sole consistent member (currently drummer Ryan Oslance is the other half of the band). In Asheville, Shane earns his crust as a guitar teacher and has made his cultural impact as the curator and coordinator of improvised music at a succession of venues. He’s demonstrated his responsiveness on recordings with Jacob Wick, Tatsuya Nakatani, Frank Rosaly, and Tashi Dorji, but also articulated a personal improvisational language that aspires to the formal coherence of folk songs and classical compositions on solo recordings like Odei and his Tzadik debut, Undertaker Please Drive Slow (reviewed on Dusted here). Along the way he’s acquired a different surname, a family, and a dress-up gig entertaining tourists at Asheville’s Biltmore Estate.
Remembering Mr. Rogers (1994/1997), Charlie Rose
"We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society.The most important thing is that we're able to be one to one. At the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with at the moment. That's what's important.” I personally regard Fred Rogers perhaps the way many people do the Dalai Lama. A giant of a man who has made the world safer for millions of children and adults. And not a bad composer in his own right!! When Charlie Rose asks him, “Who has made a difference in your life?” Mister Rogers answers: “Oh, a lot of people. But, a lot of people who have allowed me to have some silence. And I don't think we give that gift very much anymore. I am very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise, rather than silence.”
Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson
Having spent a large part of my college days reading and writing about John Cage for my BA in philosophy, I was super stoked when this biography was published in 2013. It features my favorite writing about Cage’s life and the global community of artists that he inspired. It delves deep into the Zen philosophy that informed his life and work, and draws lines connecting the various artists with whom he came into contact.
The Complete Folkways Recordings, 1958 by Joseph Spence
Bahamian guitarist, Joseph Spence, mumbles and growls improvisatory variations on the themes of his repertoire throughout each performance. While his playing is hard-driving, he doesn’t ride the pulse to death with a bass note on every quarter note. I once read that his style is “rolling” like the ocean he was surrounded by, as opposed to the American players whose feel mimicked the driving straight lines of the railroad trains. The music is constantly morphing and breaking into jagged angles, full of his own idiosyncratic ornaments that get recycled into subtly shifting permutations, while never losing the implied pulse. These songs could go on all day long and that would be a great day of head bobbing, indeed.
What Happened Miss Simone? by Liz Garbus
The 2015 documentary about Nina Simone is an intense emotional roller coaster about one of the greatest musical geniuses to grace our planet with her presence. Her life was a struggle marked by trauma and abuse. Her militant politics were uncompromising, as she responded to the daily violence and injustice perpetrated against black people by our racist society. Her pain found expression in the all-consuming, overwhelming intensity of her performances. As a virtuoso pianist, she seamlessly fuses Bach with the blues and jazz to produce the most kaleidoscopic and dazzling improvised fantasies imaginable.
King of the Klezmer Clarinet by Naftule Brandwein
A traditional Klezmer song performance cycles through a handful of themes a few times and then the song is over. Any fresh perspective brought to these tunes must happen with subtle changes in articulation, ornamentation, tone, and dynamics. Naftule Brandwein plays with such whimsy and abandon within the confines of this restricted form. The way he toys with the composed melodies keeps them alive and interesting for each cycle through. I have often thought about how his glissandi and trills can be realized on guitar. A great role model for avoiding stagnation within a context of repetition.
Tallahassee, The Movie, parts 1 - 4 by Courtney Chappell
In this piece of cinéma vérité the director takes us with her as she returns to her childhood hometown, ostensibly to work on an art project with a childhood friend. It explores themes of failure, trauma, nihilism and friendship against the backdrop of a mundane college town in Florida.
Solo in Rio 1959 by Luiz Bonfa
One of my favorite solo guitar outings, full of syncopated rhythms, incredible contrasts in tone, lyrical use of chromatic harmony. You get the sense there is nothing this guy can’t do. The guitar as drum. The guitar as orchestra, in the Segovia sense. He paints a rich and colorful picture of life going by with his instrument, as in the inventive tone poem, “A Brazilian in New York”, where he live scores his spoken narrative about walking through the city. “Murder” is an angular and varied improvisation that sounds incredibly modern, as if parts of it could have been played by Mary Halvorson or Thomas Bonvalet.
His Great Songs by Atahualpa Yupanqui
The legendary Argentinian folk singer and guitarist’s playing is dark, lyrical and virtuosic, and he has the voice of an angel. In his hands, the instrument becomes a sparkling stream of water flowing. He blends classical technique with flamenco and folkloric traditions, performing breathtaking instrumentals and providing intricate accompaniment to his velvety vocalizations.
Doris by Cindy Crabb
A prolific handmade zine chronicling the adventures of a lifer punk rock political activist, dealing with issues around abortion, sexual abuse, masculinity, feminism, anarchism, and mental health. Often, the stories are accompanied by Crabb’s stylized cartoon drawings. For me, her short stories have a kinship with the realism and inner life revelations of Carson McCullers.
Thelonious Himself by Thelonious Monk
There is nothing quite like Monk alone. Brad Mehldau explained it well, even if a bit overly academically, in his liner notes to his own 2006 album, House on Hill. The internal logic of a piece is inherent in Monk’s improvisations, which flow naturally out of the theme. When anyone else plays a Monk tune, they superimpose their own jazz education, background and inclinations into the improvising. While this is unavoidable, and not a bad thing altogether, hearing the singular artist alone is a total immersion into his peculiar genius.
Canticles of Ecstasy by Hildegard von Bingen performed by Sequentia
This music was the soundtrack to the birth of my daughter. Haunting holy vocal music from the 12th century and some of the finest drone-based music ever composed. Transcendent.
Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston
Documentary about the New York gay ballroom scene in the late 1980’s. A candid and deep study in counterculture, persona, and fame. Dorian Corey, a drag queen whose insights are featured prominently throughout the film leaves us with these words, “You left a mark on the world if you just get through it… you don’t have to bend the whole world. I think it’s better to just enjoy it, pay your dues, and enjoy it. If you shoot a arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you.”
Disinterestedness, on the contrary, ‘is unbiased by personal interest or advantage; not influenced by selfish motives,’ according to the Random House Dictionary (1971). Disinterestedness is the natural outcome of meditation on the self and recognition of its lack of substance — then what can trouble you? freeing one’s mind from the grip of the self leads to spiritual ease — being at home in your own skin, free of self-attachment, cured of likes and dislikes, afloat in rasa. It’s how you open your ears to the music of the world.
“we are all artists expressing our true nature fully through…” "...we are all artists expressing our true nature fully through the ongoing, minute-by-minute activity of composing our lives out of the flux..." Kay Larson, art critic, author
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“What is a lesbian art? How would you recognize it? I’m not sure, but recent events have at least given a chance to confront the possibilities and to think about what an art based on sexual politics might look like.”
Kay Larson, “Lesbian Art: The Colonized Self,” The Village Voice (March 8, 1978)
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.
