The violence of necessity

Sometimes inspiration doesn't come easily. Setting out in the direction of doing something new will usually lead down a murky, difficult path that will often frustrate travelers long before the next beautiful vista is found. This can be a viable excuse to never stray from the beaten path, but it's not always such an easy choice to just stay on the straight and narrow.

I, and many of my compatriots, have a desire to do something new pretty often. Whether owing to some struggle to be unique or due to the knowledge that you might find the answers to yourself in unknown places or even because of the thrill and rush that is felt when creating a new micro-niche in some lesser known genre that makes 14 people in the world smile broader (or creating a new, more 'relevant' genre altogether that brightens the steps of every cultural soldier out there (Springsteen Lives!)) we feel a need to do something that is new. This need manifests itself in a visceral way that is hard to ignore when hearing music, seeing sculpture, reading an essay, walking a dog, or whatever random impetus might spur us on into fanciful flights of far-fetched

Unfortunately just feeling like something new must be done doesn't actually get anything done. It's the next step that seems to require the most motivation. The actual getting down to it and doing it needs more than just a visceral feeling. It often needs some kind of concrete goal, whether self-imposed or externally placed. I think this is why grad school is popular... but i don't know.

I have been playing jazz and/or improvised music for a long time. Whenever I have that visceral manifestation of need to do the new I usually have some kind of outlet coming up soon. And when I get into a room with other musicians (of any ilk) and sit at a drumset I know that I have an immediate chance to try something new at every turn. I also have an immediate feedback mechanism in every other musician as well as bystander who happens to be listening. I get a reaction to the things I do. If 'it' doesn't work it could be because it wasn't the right moment for 'it', or maybe I didn't have the ability to pull 'it' off, or maybe some people just didn't get 'it'. But in any case I have that common outlet of trying something new to look forward to most weeks.

Unfortunately, though, this may have made me lazy. I may (and accepting the possibility means it's probably true) have gotten to the point where I can only try something new (and succeed) in those situations where I am improvising. I don't know if this is necessarily a terrible thing, but I'm gonna try and challenge myself.

I have a solo set coming up in a month that has been occupying my conscious thought for a while now. When I agreed to do it I had no idea what I would do, but knew that I wanted to do something new. Obviously it would have to be new, since I don't have a big bag of solo percussion repertoire up and ready to go. Even playing drumset is not something I often do solo, and I don't even know if I want to play drumset on that show.

I've been amazed at how much my thoughts have been occupied by "what am I going to do?" lately. But thankfully, the thoughts have not been negative, hopeless, lazy thoughts. In fact, I have been seeing everything in a new light of possibility. It's more often "I could do that" or "that would be cool" and that makes me feel better. Not because I think I'm an amazing artist, but because I know that I have ideas that I think are worth presenting. Self-doubt hasn't interfered much except to remind me every now and then- when a particularly outlandish idea comes while walking in the park- that I can't do everything and that whatever I do do needs to be done well (I think so, anyway). Realistic goals are more attainable, even in the realm of experimental music.

So, by having a show I am inspired. And not just to get to work on something new, but also to reevaluate my art and by extension myself as an artist. Maybe I go too far with the humanist individualism, but the intensity of my introspection warants it. I hope to have more opportunities like this, but rather than just 'hope' and 'feel' for it I'll continue to create necessities for my inventions.

More Remix

From the NYTIMES:

"While most other street or graffiti artists concentrate on adding their own imagery, illegally, to parts of the subway system, Poster Boy, a kind of anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage, has made his outlaw presence known all over the city by cutting and pasting the images that are already there in the form of ads.

But his stealth campaign, which has entertained thousands of normally glassy-eyed commuters and infuriated the police and the companies whose costly ads he has chopped up and scrambled, will probably get a lot harder now. At an art event in SoHo on Saturday, a group of plainclothes New York City police officers finally caught up to and unmasked, at least metaphorically, the man they say is Poster Boy."

Let us each recognize out Poster Boy within and come up with ways to maximize impact and minimize risk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/arts/design/04post.html?ref=arts

REMIX CULTURE

While taking a class with Todd Blair at the CCA we discussed art as the revealing of a phenomenon, that is making the unknown known. At the time I firt thought of the works of Alvin Lucier exploiting sonic phenomena, John Cage and small sounds, Marcel Duchamp and optical illisions (not mention ontological questioning of art), and James Turrell with his perception altering light pieces.

However now I see that definition more broadly. Isn't this what the impressionist did with the sea and landscapes? The alteration of perspective necessitates the generation of a new relationship with the subject. The new relationship opens the opportunity to know something one didn't know before.

Our contemporary landscape is one of information. 

This is a well tread path, but at every turn we face another piece of media: a print ad, television punditry, music, movies, newspapers. We all know this. In fact our immersion is so great that our media become cultural objects and our idenities, if not built, are at least immensley influenced by what we hear, see, and experience.  By and large we outwardly establish identity through media choices: the music we listen to, television we watch, news media (print, television, and online) that we consume.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in which he discussed the process of creating art as the process of organizing some part of the wealth of information we are constantly bombarded with. (Many of his works involve reading passages from newspapers and traffic reports.)

I'm fascinated with this idea of art making as cultural remix. Reworking cultural products (music, movies, news, etc) to show something fundamentally human, and often doing it with a sense of humor. Here are a couple of my recent favorites.

The first is microsoft's Songsmith generating a bluegrass accompaniment for Billy Idol's White Wedding. Songsmith is a new program released by microsoft to generate auto accompaniment to someone's singing. Do a google search. While a lot of people decry it for being lazy music making, I honestly can only think of its misuse and how beuatiful that is (Runnin' With the Songsmith is another favorite.)

The second, I came across from a posting by my buddy Kenneth Yates, aka Caustic Castle, on facebook. In garfieldminusgarfield, Garfield is erased from comic strips and Jon is left solo. Man. Intense.

I'd also like to invite anyone reading this to contribute some of their own remixes or others. Or any thought.

For more on Remix Culture, check out one of my favorite culture and tech theorists Lev Manovich.

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