December 11ths (Ideal of Perfection)

12/11/1934

John Cage writes to Pauline Schindler (location unknown). He has met a number of black composers including William Grant Still. He’s emphatic that equality is important now.

12/11/1998, Saturday

Went to Mariko Mori exhibit at the MCA. She creates these cyborg women who are the only subjects in her work. Enjoyed the Gestalt experience, especially sounds drifting around the gallery emanating from various rooms, the endless Japanese pentatonic melody clashing with all the other sounds. Liked the photo of the cyborg woman in the airport and her comment, “Airports are good places to begin spiritual journeys.” Second part: installations by Jana Sterbak. Surprising uses of materials--flank steak to upholster a chair and a sponge cake for a cushion on a stool. Walked around the rest of the museum, much of which I’ve seen. I love the Franz Kline black and white paintings. Apparently, he would edit and rework his bold strokes to make them look spontaneous, even touching up the white spaces. This makes me feel better about doing this with music on the computer, editing out “expressive”, “human” elements in favor of the “perfect” art.

[12/11/2024: “Edit to ideal of perfection” should be added as a human universal. Even if we’ve achieved perfection in some of the things we do, it will be a rare occurrence. Most of the time we’ll always want to change something–even just for the sake of itself. The ambient sounds in the museum were very Cage-like...something he would have liked.]

12/11/1999

Interesting article in the Tribune about colors used in films. Before filming ever begins many tests are run to see how the colors will work against costumes, etc. I think this is how music should be done as well, where the stage is carefully set before the actual work even begins. In film, you have a visual narrative, in music and the sound narrative. (I want to do sound narratives that imply images).

[12/11/2024: What I’m doing with the Music For Photographs series. Working on visuals (or just thinking visually) while working on music actually makes the music better--and probably vice-versa].

12/11/2001

Went to Milwaukee to photograph the Milwaukee Art Museum designed by Spanish Architect Santiago Calatrava. It is an absolutely stunning piece of architecture that fits so perfectly on the shore of Lake Michigan. I wished that something like this would be built in Chicago, but then I thought it probably would look radical against the traditional forms there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12/11/2016

Musical Slang: 12-bar blues is a perfect example of slang in music. That chord progression has existed in some form for 400 years. In the 17th century, tonic-subdominant-dominant progressions were the apex of codified musical grammar. Another “slang” or metaphor of blues is that it is “open source”, meaning you have the code freely available, from which you can make variations, and remix it with other material. The process evolves new forms, up until it runs out of energy. Blues ran out of slang energy decades ago after the British invasion. After that, it was Prog (Classical fusion), and Jazz (Jazz fusion).

12/11/2021

Eno Carrots (From his diary) Flatulent dish: 20 cloves of roasted garlic turned into a paste, mixed with pureed carrots and pumpkin oil, served with artichokes and kohl-rabi.

12/11/2023

Season cold settling in. No snow cover yet:

Interesting, the surface of the moon looks gray and black, but there is very little carbon on the moon.     

On way back from grocery shopping, a church nearby was playing Christmas music on the church bells. “First Noel” (twice) in different keys, then other less identifiable pieces. It was quite nice but probably on the edge of annoying for lots of people. It was probably a modern chromatic bell system. The problem with that is that the seconds are muddy.