Category Archives: into the maelstrom

emanation, as if by a charm: Ami Yamasaki

Posted on November 19, 2019 by

Surprise is a dubious pleasure, cultivated in the search for musical forms that take the listener into realms of impossible/imaginary. Then suddenly, after decades of searching, the surprises diminish in quantity, often in quality, leaving an unavoidable sense of melancholy, … Continue reading →

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a voice, uncanny instrument

Posted on November 7, 2015 by

The Quiet Coach on a train is often a site of tension. So when three male off-shore workers, all of them drunk as wasps drowning in a whiskey vat, decided to occupy a table just by the sign that said … Continue reading →

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stick, spit, reed and tubing

Posted on August 17, 2015 by

  “Or maybe the music we are hearing tells us about the unconscious, coming from some place of archetypes or from the trauma of unspeakable secrets.” Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Timothy Morton.   There … Continue reading →

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Skin and Bone Listening

Posted on December 15, 2014 by

How to be, where to be, in a space, with sound, with other bodies? For me, in relation to what performance is becoming, this has been the biggest question of the past year. What does it mean to hear? What … Continue reading →

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that lead beneath brambles to the bodies and minds of others

Posted on September 7, 2014 by

The book jacket is designed by Vanessa Bell, sister to Virginia Woolf. Her drawing for the front of the jacket is of trees and grasses, many black pen lines pulling and curling in vortical movement, little differentiation made between figure … Continue reading →

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Automatic writing

Posted on March 9, 2014 by

Robert Ashley’s death last week gave me the odd feeling that I should have been listening to more of his music. Absurd really, to self-impose a kind of obligation to consume. The truth is I loved his work but never … Continue reading →

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A falling fourth or fifth

Posted on February 24, 2013 by

Bitterly cold this morning in Queens Wood but not too cold to hear the woman calling her dogs with a fluting falling call – ooh oooh – that reminded me of the similar calls my mother would sound out over … Continue reading →

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