Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music

[jeff gburek <tsazmaniac@xxxxxxxxx>]

Begging to differ in an indifferent world.

All sounds occur in a context. More specifically, all
sounds occur in the primordial context of ?hearing?.
So sounds are, like linguistic signs, always tending
toward contextualization(s) and therefore tending
toward meaning(s). None of this occurs in isolation. I
recall from live Derrida "set" hearing him say (in
English, and I quote from memory) ?This idea that the
sign is detachable from the signifier, this is
insignificance itself?. In the context of that lecture
on the undecidability of the phonic element of
language over and above the graphic element, the irony
of what this sounded like to me has continued to
reverberate across the years. I think it is a big
mistake to decide that sound has no meaning. I think
it is more true to say there is always the potential
to become meaningful. (It is not important to decide
first that sound is meaningless in order to then
re-interpret it as signal, etc.) The only reason one
should give up is if one?s physical or mental pain
suffered in this existence becomes too much to bear
(Deleuze?). There is great despair if one cannot get
one?s message across. And there is a despair that
there is no message to get across. But is this unique
to sound? I think not. 

?A true relationship of trust is when you believe in
the other party like it is a human being, even if it
may be a machine. This kind of trust also improves the
endurance of the machine. Believing in something
strongly enough will eventually envelop the whole
world into the situation.? 
?Tetuzi Akiyama, Route 13 to the Gates of Hell

So we ought to be careful about not only what we
believe but about what we say we believe. There is a
form of experience, a shape to the truth, that resists
being tames by opinion, public or otherwise. The work
needs to attain this notation within itself. This is
what William Blake said: ?Everything possible to be
believed is an image of truth.? We will never or only
rarely (and accidentally?) encounter the outside of
capitalism while sitting in front of our computers.
But maybe capitalism is empty enough to be filled with
an intention more profound than the superficiality of
products, no matter what their relative merits in the
established hierarchies of value. To be singular is to
light a fire under context. Who will pass the matches,
please?

One's politics is not often readable in what one talks
about so much as in what one refuses to talk about.

-Jeff Gburek


--- Bill Ashline <ashline@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 6/22/05, mopani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mopani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Not sure about that Bill. I've just heard a simple
> piece called Cacerolada
> > at the Sonic Arts Network Conference in
> Scarborough, UK that made a very
> > powerful political statement on several levels
> without lyrics or voice
> > samples. 
> 
> Interesting, mopani, and thanks for that tip.  But
> it doesn't change
> my point.  If you hear that group of sounds devoid
> of the message
> inherent in it, they're only sounds.  The politics
> comes later. 
> Paraphrasing Lyotard:  a cave dweller inscribes a
> figure on the wall
> inside a cave.  Is it art?  Is it language?  It is
> neither.  The
> distinction will come later.
> 
> 
> 
> On 6/22/05, Aaron Ximm <ghede@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Of course, in cases like this it's the context
> that makes the recording
> > meaningful -- not the sounds themselves... my
> first reaction is that the
> > contextualizing information here serves the same
> roll as the lyrics in a
> > protest song.
> 
> Exactly, Aaron.
> 
> 
> -- 
> What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I
> answer: a day that
> reveals to him, more than all other days in the
> year, the gross
> injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant
> victim. To him, your
> celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an
> unholy license; your
> national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of
> rejoicing are
> empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants,
> brass fronted
> impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality,
> hollow mockery; your
> prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings,
> with all your
> religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere
> bombast, fraud,
> deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to
> cover up crimes
> which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is
> not a nation on    
>   the earth guilty of practices more shocking and
> bloody than are the
> people of the United States, at this very
> hour.--Frederick Douglass
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:
> microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For additional commands, e-mail:
> microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> website: http://www.microsound.org
> 
> 



		
____________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Sports 
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football 
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org