June 21st

There you have it, the longest day. It is what it is.
It should be nice & warm but I feel cold.

Synchronicities

I wrestled with a blog post a few weeks ago and then let it rest a bit. Today I found the incentive to pick it up again. Here's what I wrote before:

Last week was a pretty turbulent one, as in pretty AND turbulent. I attended two concerts in a row in the same city, and the contrasts were quite remarkable. Jónsi in Paradiso (the ‘Pop Temple’, mostly for indie music) vs. Rufus Wainwright in Carré (massive, rather high-brow, think opera and plays). One general admission standing, one seated in plush. Different audiences, age wise and otherwise.

Different also from the opera I attended in London last April. Very, very different from the concert in London that was cancelled (and is still eagerly expected in September), the idiosyncratic Whale Watching Tour. I feel like a chameleon.

I am always very apprehensive of ‘recommendations’ – if you like this, you might like this as well, or – people who bought this, also bought this. It’s even worse when friends do it. I hate to disappoint them because apparently music comes in clusters for them and you just have to choose which one fits you.

Music doesn’t fit me, I fit into music and somehow I fit into lots of different music. I guess the common denominator for me is not genre based. Then what is it based upon? I will try to tackle this issue from different sides.

Firstly, music is not just notes to me. Just like the books I care to read are not just words and the art I like to watch is not just paint on a canvas. I can (and do) find music in my books and words in the paintings I love. The thing I’m looking for is not media specific, if that makes any sense.

Secondly, I don’t care for things that are pleasing to the eye only, or to the ear only. Or things that touch the mind / soul / body only, for that matter. How can anything be perceived as ‘beautiful’ if only one sense, one part of your being is involved? Think about it. It seems such an obvious thing to say but it sums up my life. And it’s not easy if you feel that way, trust me.

Above all, I seek intensity in life. What a strange paradox, somebody hypersensitive craving sensory overloads. But with the above in mind, imagine what it feels like for me when all senses are involved, when my whole being is touched by something or someone. It happens and most of those instances turn out to be intertwined in some way, convincing me it’s not just a personal thing. Francis Bacon talking about his paintings and Ben Frost talking about his music are almost interchangeable. Ben using metaphors from visual art with the same impact. Rufus reaching over the ages by setting Shakespeare’s timeless sonnets to music. Nico Muhly contributing to both Jónsi’s and Rufus’ last albums, touring with the Whale Watching Tour, while being a classical composer. Intertwined on many levels.

I agree, that does make me seem blasé a lot of the time because I perceive many things as superficial that others marvel about. They seem to be able to find joy in fleeting fancies, which is all right of course – just not for me.

And then John Adams, on his highly recommendable blog 'Hell Mouth', writes as follows:

The critic and aesthetic philosopher Walter Pater, who lived at roughly the same time Flaubert flourished (around the middle of the 19th century), talked a lot about the “sensuous material” in a work of art, i.e. the pure sources of stimulus before they’ve been processed in the viewer’s or reader’s or listener’s mind by intellection. This “sensuous material” is for Pater the most important element in a work of art.

The aesthetic experience for him is a kind of three-fold process that begins with the sense organs receiving an impression (a sound, a visual image, a tactile or even olfactory stimulus). Then the intellectual process kicks in, analyzing the stimulus and processing the data, comparing it with previously stored experience. This is the cognitive state. Finally a third, synthesizing activity that Pater calls “imaginative reason” goes into action. “Imagination” in the sense that Pater uses it is a higher, more sophisticated process than either mere perception or “mere” intellectual reasoning, being a sort of fusing of both the sensory experience and its intellectual, analytically derived interpretation.

If this process is successfully carried out a kind of sublime meta-experience takes place, producing a situation in which the “sensuous material” is experienced as pure form. If I understand him correctly, this then would be the essence of the aesthetic encounter.

Lovely. More to follow on similarities in art. Wait for quotes by Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, coupled with quotes by Ben Frost. Remarkable stuff, I promise!

Happy sad

I still have this "happy/sad" feeling (Tim Buckley always comes to mind) from when I got back from five days in London.

Happy, because we had a swell time, my daughter and I - dividing our attention between shopping, culture and good food. Sad, because the concert I was soooo looking forward to for months on end, had been cancelled. Remember that ash cloud?

While we were there, I got several text messages from my son, informing me about The Whale Watching Tour. With great apprehension, I postponed reading every message until I felt up to it (after a very nice meal for instance).

So it was during these peaceful moments that I learned about the start of the greatly anticipated tour in Berlin being cancelled because more than half of the musicians & crew weren't able to fly in. Next day, Ghent was also cancelled but there was still a positive feeling about London. Until Monday morning.

As I said, I love to combine culture with shopping. I love to have a 'goal' set when planning a trip abroad, something to really look forward to, besides the usual treats a foreign city has to offer. With this 'goal' gone, the rest of the trip was different. I felt sad.

On top of that, I felt jealous once I got home and discovered that the tour had finally taken off. I wonder if I will be able to get front row tickets for the rescheduled concert in September... apart from the hassle of getting days off from work again - and the money involved.

I really, really needed that break - and now I feel more exhausted than before.
The things we do for the music we love.

Facebook & the library

(...)it has become clear that Google is recovery, just like the great library it was built to be. You don’t walk in a library and get handed books by librarian. You go to a section and find what you are looking for.

A comment on a great blog post that stuck in my mind. The social web is all about discovery, not recovery. The media were all over the 'battle' between Facebook and Google when for the first time ever, Facebook had more hits than Google. But the distinction that is so well put in those few words above, shows that these giants are not up against each other as they represent different things. You go to the (Google) library, define your search word (section) and find what you are looking for.

Now go to your Facebook homepage (assuming you have a friend list that mirrors your everyday life/work/interests) and discover. During the time you were away, friends have handed you all kinds of information: links to websites, videos, pictures. But they've also handed you emotions and experiences, whether you asked for them or not.

And there's more! They've let you know they liked the video you put up earlier and have given you an update on a link you posted. This makes you feel good. Makes you feel like a librarian just handed you a book, knowing you'd be interested. It's all about caring.

Libraries have been struggling long and hard to resist Google but most of them have incorporated it into their everyday work now. It's all about recovery, right? Question is whether we want the 'caring' part of information distribution too.

For me, Facebook has become an aggregation device of sorts. I know it makes me neglect my Netvibes pages just because it is more personal, more interactive, more real time. It serves as a big inhale of what's going on right now among the people and issues I care for. I think the best thing it has taught me is that most of the time information doesn't have to be exhaustive to be satisfying. When it does, I will still have Google (the library).

Now read that great blog post: How Internet Content Distribution & Discovery Are Changing

TMC Requiem: Ben Frost - Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water

Inspiration comes in the the most peculiar ways. I was listening to Iceland-via-Australia artist and producer Ben Frost, who is playing the highly anticipated Big Ears Festival next weekend in Knoxville, and I ran across a comment from a young woman named Sybilla Poortman on Last.fm for the track "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water" from his 2006 album Theory of Machines. She said of the song, "I want this played at my funeral, awesome stuff." That gave me an idea. Try out a new feature about songs you would want played at your funeral. I had Sybilla try out for the first cut to see if this peculiar inspiration could actually work as an interesting topic of conversation and I think she did a magnificent job. I present you with the first edition of TMC Requiem for Ben Frost's "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water".

Danny Perkins wrote this as an introduction to my post as a guest contributor on his music site 'The Milk Carton'. Here's what I penned down:

It’s all about intensity, whether I listen to Verdi or Muhly, Joni or Jónsi, Swans or Joy Division. I’d like to thank Danny for giving me the opportunity to write on music once again, as it’s been years since I penned my last review for an underground music mag called Fake. I had the privilege to interview musicians like Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, AMM & Felix Kubin – all of them still among the best in their field.

I’ve seen Ben Frost perform live twice and was quite literally blown away by the sheer intensity and power of his music. It invades all senses simultaneously and is not for the faint-hearted. Sounds that will resonate inside your ears, your mind, your body. Taking nothing for granted, Frost is always engaged (as well as engaging), questioning and pushing boundaries.

This kind of music is sometimes referred to as noise and that’s fine with me. Noise to me means hearing music in everyday sounds and enhancing it. Appreciating it is a gift of the senses, like being able to distinguish new, meaningful forms in things that have been broken, torn apart, or crammed together. It’s discovering new meanings in ideas that have been rejected or misunderstood.

Why would these sounds be fitting for a funeral, my funeral? There are two sides to that question. Of course you would pick music that meant a lot to you for your own funeral (if you get the chance to pick it). But on the other hand, you wouldn’t be around to enjoy it, would you? So choosing that particular music is a message to the ones you leave behind as well. And the last thing you want is to send them away screaming in terror because of the auditory onslaught you condemned them to suffer.

‘Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water’ grants us the best of both worlds. It combines a ‘noise ethic’ with a wonderful ear for gorgeous sounds. It’s everything the title implies: “I would choke & drown when I try to forget you”. The elements and nature in all its raw and unsurpassed beauty are very important in Frost’s oeuvre, as is the notion of breathing, in nature and through the elements. Breathing air means life, breathing water means death. Breathing fire means creation. Ashes are beginning as well as end. The cycles of nature should run their course so that we will never forget.

The piece enfolds like a procession march, unrelentingly building up through sustained rich drones that solemnly ascend in slow motion (an acquaintance of mine who teaches music at UCLA recalled Stravinsky’s Orpheus upon hearing it). There’s chiming electronics at first, with a heartbeat drum pulsating throughout. Then the heartbeat fades and gives way to grief as acoustic strings take over, surrendering to a majestic, thankful kind of grace that urges us to remember - and move on.

Posted first on The Milk Carton

Ending one thing to master another

I have abandoned my 'old' blog, which was in Dutch and primarily about my work at the library. I am now looking forward to using this new blog to its full potential, not just for my master course.

Ideally, there will be a mix of information/education related things (think media literacy, digital & mobile learning) and cultural issues (music, literature, art, language) with perhaps a family story thrown in for good measure. And I always love to mix issues that at first don't seem connected. Be surprised as I surprise myself!

Must admit that I thought about changing the name as 'Mastering Things' was clearly chosen because of my master course. But then again, this is the story of my life: I strive to master the things I like doing. So 'Mastering Things' it is.

Will you bear with me?

Red

My personal review of Sam Amidon's brand new album 'I See The Sign'

In times like these, when I ponder abandoning the Catholic Church, I need someone or something to remind me that true spirituality is to be found within ourselves. A church that tells people what to do and where to abstain from, meanwhile covering up their own mistakes and wrong-doings, cannot be my church.

Sam Amidon deals in spirituality. From the blood-pumping heart beat of ‘How Come That Blood’ onwards, his new album is like a catalogue of human emotions. Some reviewers wrote about this album as a collection of children’s songs. No way. This is as mature as it gets, hell – it could do with a parental advisory warning.

Despite the fact that “we are one, the war is over, there’s an angel in the sky and love is still alive”, there’s a veil of blood all over his music. People drown their sisters out of jealousy; kill their brothers over a hazelnut tree; shoot their lovers’ suitors and kill their wives because they feel ill treated. People are vain, credulous, ignorant, and selfish and still believe all will be well in the end. Will it?

Yet the songs are so beautifully performed, with meaning not merely conveyed in the lyrics themselves, but also in their delivery. For example, in the heart wrenching ‘Rain and Snow’, the first time Sam sings “this way, and I’m not gonna be treated this way”, it sounds raw, displaying constrained anger and deception. When the same line returns after the deed is done, it sounds soft, wondering and almost remorseful.

Judgement Day, that’s what this album is about in my opinion. Everyone will have to account for their deeds, if not below, then above. And it’s a struggle to get to that day, to get home. Some hope to cover up their deeds, others offer justification or seek understanding. Most show remorse, all are afraid.

And right there in the middle is 'Kedron', unfolding like a lost gospel. A gorgeous hinge around which the album’s songs revolve. Don’t be afraid, it says. “Oh, look how patiently he hangs - Jesus our Lord is crucified”. What could be worse than that? This is not a song; it is a prayer for redemption.

“Thou Man of grief, remember me.
Thou never canst Thyself forget.
Thy last expiring agony.
Thy fainting pangs and bloody sweat.”

The songs’ order is crucial. A reviewer mentioned that the album should have finished with ‘Relief’ (an amazing R Kelly cover). Yeah, you wish it would. But things rarely end in relief, although there may be some of it along the way to keep your spirits up. The end is Red, blood red. All the major themes on the album come together, musically as well as lyric wise. 'Red' is the one song that Sam wrote himself; the others are traditional songs. The lost sheep have been found and gathered. The last mountain is to be conquered to get home. Ben Frosts guitar pounds relentlessly, like a heart beat counting down – but with climbing notes. And then that sweet but haunting Kedron theme kicks in from Nico Muhly’s harmonium, leaving you with goose bumps all over.

Is this The Sign Sam wants us to see?
Don’t know if I’ll stick with that church. But I will stick with Sam Amidon, that’s for sure.

Out now on the Bedroom Community label.
Search the internet if you want to read reviews that deal with the music, the instruments used, the musicians performing. This is just a very personal view.