Sufjan Stevens - Muziekgebouw Eindhoven May 21st 2011

Sufjan Stevens is definitely in a league of his own. A colleague just asked me what kind of music it was and I honestly couldn’t tell her. His music before ‘The Age of Adz’ was kind of folky with a twist, and a bit too sweet for my taste most of the time.

The present is different. The shy boy has blossomed into a blazingly proud swan. Flapping his gigantic white wings, he owns the stage and commands his audience into rapturous delight. They’re dancing, albeit on the square half yard that the sold out venue condemns them to.

He dances too. The flickering UV lights create an eerie vision of a mechanical puppet from the neon colour blocks on his black clothes. He jumps up and down to the relentless beats left and right, two drummers working miracles with the complex material of the demanding songs. I stand in awe of all these fine musicians, trombones, keyboards and guitars too. Like a big band but edgier and smoother at the same time.

‘I want to be well’ gets my goose bumps on with its palpable intensity. Sufjan’s gaze is serious. It must be hard to bare your soul to people you barely see, let alone know. The crowd welcomes his honesty with appreciative attention and loud cheers afterwards. A gentle acoustic song about his sister (and anyone’s sister for that matter) makes for a bittersweet intermezzo. We catch a chatty side to the singer. But the best is yet to come.

You can hear a pin drop during the first tentative notes of ‘Impossible Soul’, Sufjan’s magnum epos that clocks in at 25:34 minutes on the album. We all couldn’t believe he would be able to pull this one off live but there it is. And it’s absolutely breathtaking! This is not a song, it’s a cosmos with all its melodic intricacies and stories of love and loss, and Sufjan even dons a cosmonaut costume that reminds me of Peter Gabriel in early Genesis (giving away my age there). More wings and wigs, more jumping fun, dancers taking front stage, a pink rabbit playing trombone. If this sounds like mayhem, think again – this show with all its fascinating projections on see through drapes is fabulously orchestrated and controlled. It’s the party you always wanted to attend but never got invited to.

And balloons! Hundreds of them, big ones and small ones coming down on the ecstatic crowd. Loved it! Whatever could succeed such a climax? We’re made to believe nothing will and the final (?) applause goes on for over ten minutes. Then Sufjan and his troupe, changed into their daily gear, take ‘Chicago’ (yes, the folky hit song from his 2005 album ‘Illinoise’) into one big sing-along encore.

So what kind of music is it? It has beautifully crafted songs with complex structures, layers of singing and not your average instruments. It borrows from rock, folk, funk as well as classical music. I’d suggest you just give it a listen.

Like or fave?

There’s this flourishing ‘like & fave’ culture in social media that intrigues me. Different media use it in different ways and a ‘like’ on one site seems more important than a ‘fave’ on another.

I was one of the first Flickr-users, way back in 2004 and as far as I recall, it was the first time I came across the possibility to fave a picture. Until this day it has been one of the most useful features of this site for me because it allows me to: a) show my respect for somebody’s work, and b) build a nice collection of favourite pictures from all over Flickr. A pretty organised collection at that as I can search and filter it in various ways. YouTube faves work in a similar way but YouTube offers an extra: you can ‘like’ a video by giving it a ‘thumbs up’.

Twitter also lets you ‘fave’ someone’s tweet to build a collection but for me it’s too fleeting a medium to use that collection the way I use it on Flickr. The tweets I’d like to save in any way usually involve links that I can bookmark – so why save the tweet?

Facebook has many ways to show your preferences. You can like anything: a status, a video or picture, a whole page, even a comment! Now this is where a true ‘like & fave’ culture is developing, with its own meticulous rules. You can like a video or picture in the same way you would on YouTube but you cannot fave them to build a collection. In that case you will have to ‘share’ the link on your own profile, which is of course the ultimate ‘like’ as the original poster will see that you liked it enough to want to share it on your own wall with your own contacts. That way it becomes a personal ‘fave’.

You can like a status to indicate that you’ve been there or that you agree. And liking a comment can mean anything from ‘I agree’ to ‘I wish I’d come up with that’ or just ‘I hear you’. Liking a page (or a group) is like subscribing to a YouTube user’s account or adding a contact on Flickr: you get to see their updates/videos/pictures on/in your wall/stream/email. It filters the information on your wall to suit your interests.

Facebook also has ‘incoming’ likes from other websites. I see increasingly more pages that use this feature where you can not only ‘share’ the page or website (which is often a tad too much honour) but also ‘like’ it so that it appears as a simple statement on Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, there’s the call for a ‘dislike’ button on Facebook. It’s obvious why Facebook doesn’t offer this – they want to keep things positive. If you don’t like it, just ignore it or don’t click on a link. Sometimes however, you wish to show your appreciation but because of the nature of the message it seems inappropriate to ‘like’ it. How to handle this without risking abuse of the button?

It happens every day on YouTube which does offer a ‘dislike’ button. This button (the ‘thumbs down’) isn’t used to indicate that you appreciate the posting while disliking the nature of the message. It’s largely used to vent frustration, like so many comments on YouTube videos. The ‘if you don’t like it, just ignore it’ doesn’t work quite the same here. I even suspect some people take pleasure in seeking out videos they can put abusive comments on. I know it forced me to publish my videos friends only.

All in all, it looks like all these Facebook features offer the most detailed ‘diary’ on your wall. It shows your status, your activities & likes, both on FB itself and incoming. With all the liking, sharing and filtering going on, you can easily imagine using it as your homepage to keep updated on all things you care about. It’s the Daily You, tailor made.

Best concerts of 2010 :)

1. Rufus Wainwright - Crossing Border, The Hague, November 18
Stunning. Great seats (second row, just left of centre) and an awesome view of the grand piano. The hands! The big surprise of seeing Stephen Oremus enter to accompany Rufus on a set of Judy songs. I could never have imagined that I would enjoy these so much. Stunning indeed :) Third time around this year but The Hague was the best. Meeting Rufus per chance again outside the venue. I love being able to thank him for the performance and I know he enjoys that. He truly loves his fans. Being recognized = bliss :)

The Walking Song. Emotions rippling through the theatre. The tears. Nuff said.

2. Sam Amidon - Cultuurcentrum Roepaen, Nijmegen, November 7
Imagine a nightclub setting in a former convent. Red drapes everywhere, small tables, red wine on the table. Front row. Sam singing 'Im Wunderschoenen Monat Mai', at least part of it. Alienating, mesmerizing. Saying hello to Sam passing by the ladies room. Getting a big smile and a 'Hi!'.

3. Jónsi - Paradiso , Amsterdam, June 3
Awesome show with amazing visuals. Great view from the balcony. Loved every moment! The album didn't make it to my list of 10 but was a great runner up!

4. Britten Sinfonia with Pekka Kuusisto & Mark Padmore - Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, January 27
A duet by Steve Reich, John Adams's Shaker Loops and a world premiere by Nico Muhly. Cafavy's poems set to music and sung heavenly by British tenor Mark Padmore. Goose bumps. So looking forward to see more world premieres by Nico next January!

5. The Whale Watching Tour - Barbican, London, September 27
Had front row tickets for the concert planned in April, went to London only to find the gig cancelled because of the ash cloud. Returned my tickets and got front row tickets again for September. Ah well, another trip to London... Glorious gig!

Best albums of 2010 :)

"Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer."
Sonnet 115 - William Shakespeare

Sometimes passion returns with a vengeance and that's what happened last year. Here's my list of 10 Albums of 2010, in alphabetical order - please click the titles to listen:

1. Antony & The Johnsons - Swanlights
I saw Antony last year and his concert made it to my list then. Must admit that I did like 'The Crying Light' a bit better than this album but Antony's albums are always of such high quality that they make it to my top ten!

2. Daníel Bjarnason - Processions
What a revelation to hear this album! Awesome music on the crossroads of experimental, noise & classical. This should have been on my list of 2009 because that's when a few lucky devils (including me) got the special pre-order edition... but it came out officially in 2010. Will be seeing Daníel at Cross-Linx festival in February and looking forward to that very, very much!

3. John Grant - The Queen Of Denmark
Discovery of the year for me. Very intense and self deprecating (with tongue in cheek), just the way I like it! Hope to see him live sometime.

4. Nico Muhly - I Drink The Air Before Me
This album blew me away, it's soooo powerful! Everyone should listen to this at least once. Saw Nico live 3 times last year and already have 2 concerts planned (with tickets in hand) for January 2011! Talk about crossroads... Nico is always exploring new horizons while working with some of the finest musicians in both the classical and pop/rock world. Catch one his many gigs if you can!

5. Owen Pallett - Heartland
Intellectual pop with an edge, always a pleasure to listen to. Will catch Owen at Cross-Linx festival as well! (hey, guess cross-linx music is my music)

6. Rufus Wainwright - All Days Are Nights, Songs For Lulu
Ah, what can I say? Back with a vengeance indeed. The album I've been waiting for: pure, naked Rufus (lol, I wish). Only for the initiated! Attended 3 of his solo shows and already have tickets for 3 more in July 2011...

7. Sam Amidon - I See The Sign
I did a blog review of this album a while ago. Sam at his best with haunting folk songs that will touch you to the bone. Was lucky to catch him live 3 times this year, once with The Whale Watching Tour and twice solo. Amazing experiences!

8. Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz
The Brooklyn Scene on spots 8 & 9. Sufjan surprises again with a very upbeat album. Again, melodies with a twist and layers of sound & meaning. Get dancing!

9. The National - High Violet
I just love the side projects of the band members, always in for some fun. Hope to see the Dessner Bros perform in some side projects (along with a full set of The National) at Cross-Linx festival next February...

10. Valgeir Sigurðsson - Draumalandið
Ah, Valgeir - one of the friendliest and most generous musician/composers I've met last year. Turned out an album called Dreamland but don't be fooled by the title! Powerful landscapes of sound that are sometimes soothing and sometimes menacing, like Iceland itself I guess. Saw him live twice this year (as a duo with Ben Frost and with The Whale Watching Tour) and both concerts were mindblowing :)

Best concerts tomorrow!

Whale Watching Tour - second time

Last Monday's concert was a second time in two ways. It was not only the second time I saw the Whale Watching Tour in full glory (the first time being in 2009, Eindhoven), but also the second time I travelled to London to catch them at the Barbican (the first time in April cancelled due to the Icelandic ash cloud).

Second time's always better, they say... we'll see.

What I liked better about this concert, was the fact that the four 'supporting musicians' -who were kept at the back of the stage in Eindhoven- got to take centre stage now in certain compositions. Una Sveinbjarnardóttir on violin was stunning in her glorious performing of 'Honest Music' by Nico Muhly. Her face reflected the different moods of the piece and I really got absorbed in those moods; absolutely beautiful.

And Nadia... I love Nadia Sirota and the things she does on her viola. When Nico Muhly asked her to step into the limelight for 'Keep in Touch', I held my breath for it's such a demanding song - not just to play, but also to listen to. The piano understream, the repetitively disrupting sounds made by Valgeir Sigurðsson tapping the microphone, together with Antony Hegarty's (taped) wailing vocals, provided a perfect background for the haunting sounds Nadia created. She's something else.

What I liked less was Helgi Hrafn Jónsson singing 'Baby Architect' and 'Kin' at the front of the stage. In Eindhoven, Helgi amazed us when he started to sing Nico's 'Mothertongue' composition from the back of the stage. Who'd have imagined that the unassuming trombonist could sing? Centre stage, and in these specific songs by Valgeir, Helgi is not well casted (IMO). His overly dramatic gesturing, his often artificial dynamics and abrupt changing from high to low singing, was a bit distressing to my ears. I would have loved to hear Sam Amidon sing 'Baby Architect' as he has done before.

Sam doesn't need any addings to his pleasant voice and easygoing stage presence. He's just there as if he was singing in his parents' living room.

It was very nice to see the chemistry between all these people on stage again. Nico brilliantly conducting with his eyebrows and pointed index finger, Ben Frost testing the hall's foundation with his deep drones (I can still feel them in my stomach). Ben & Valgeir exchanging glances & laptops. All four of them changing places at times. Borgar Magnason on double bass being the steadfast character on stage, providing rhythmic undertow and eerily channeling whales as well as wolves in Ben Frost's haunting noise pieces.

All in all an excellent evening that went past much too fast. Oh, did I mention the different start from Eindhoven? As an 'opening act', we got Marc Silver's bird film featuring half a million starlings, coupled with Ben Frost's music 'There are no others, there is only us'. Magnificent.

Some pictures to be found HERE.

Birthday weekend

Had a lovely birthday last Saturday! Per chance, I'd found out only a week ago there was to be a festival of sacred music in Maastricht (which is quite close to us), called Musica Sacra. The two things on Saturday that I wanted to attend were both free and quite extraordinary! The family was with me.



We saw Alain Louafi performing 'Inori' by Karlheinz Stockhausen in the morning. Inori is Japanese for prayer, evocation, adoration, and the performance consisted of ritual movements as laid down meticulously in the score by the composer. The Centre de Recherche et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie delivered the sounds, beautifully distributed over the immense factory hall of Ainsi. When we lived in Maastricht, we used to know this as Enci (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie), a cement factory that took away large chunks of the landscape of the Sint Pietersberg. It's great to see these old industrial buildings being reused as buzzing cultural centres.

I was very moved by Stockhausen's score and the performance of Louafi. My husband couldn't stand watching him because of the 'artificial movements' that kept repeating to certain recurring sounds. Well, ritual movements are inherently artificial and I found the repetition in both music and movements quite trance inducing. But then again, listening with eyes closed is nice too :)



After lunch we went for the heart of the city, the relatively new Entre Deux city mall. This is an enclosed, but open-aired mall - check the picture! Imagine the impact of the beggar's voice in 'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet', slowly pervading the space between the shops. This well known composition by Gavin Bryars was performed by ensemble Insomnio, sitting in the middle of the mall. A lonesome trombonist walking the higher shopping galleries, intermittently taking over from the beggar's voice. Powerful stuff. Nice to see some people watching and listening for a while, then just going on with their shopping - while others stood there silently and attentively for 45 minutes.

A lovely dinner with my beloved ones afterwards, what more could one wish for? Extended family on Sunday, as it should be... Great weekend all in all, thanks everyone!

Cagelist

The late Mr. John Cage celebrates this Sunday his ninety-eighth birthday. Last year or the year before, someone on the Internet — was it The Standing Room? — had the excellent idea of marking the occasion by creating a 4'33" playlist on iTunes.

I'll follow Alex Ross's example but couldn't find as many tracks as he did... Lots of Cagelists on Twitter, just use the hashtag #Cageday to find them. Fun! Please click the image below to get a better view of my list:



We went to see Else Olsen Storesund playing Cage on prepared piano yesterday which was awesome.

Form vs function - why (micro)blog?

A few interesting things I came across last week, pointing in the same direction. Someone complaining about nobody apparently missing his tweets that hadn't come through for quite some time. When nobody notices, why twitter at all?

Then someone else worrying about the nature of his own tweets, compared to the blogposts he used to write. While his former blog read as a diary -an external memory-, the chronology of tweets offered at best a fractured, incomprehensive and utterly useless list of seemingly random quotes (rephrasing and exaggerating a tad here...). Had he been wasting his time microblogging?

And then there's the 'outsourcing of memory through Google' that I wrote about in my last post. I've heard this before. When printing was invented, pessimists predicted that it would be the end of human kind as we knew it. People would become lazy and dumb because they would no longer have the need to remember or recall. Before long, they wouldn't memorise anything anymore and their brains would shrivel.


For a few years, I've used Flickr as an emotional diary. Pictures speak a lot of words, you know... I was into a few hobbies that were easy to catch in images and evoked reactions from likeminded people. We felt connected through these images, captions, tags, comments & faves.

Then I started using blogging alongside to Flickr, because some work-related stuff was more suitable for posts. Again, there was a community of people that shared information and opinions through comments, blogrolls & trackbacks.

I've stopped blogging the way I did when I started checking and doublechecking whether somebody else had already blogged about this new thing. Twitter has neatly filled this space. Anything new is on there within a minute of publication elsewhere in the world. It's kind of an express RSS-feed, a digital marquee. And I don't feel the need to be the first to announce the news anymore so I'm more a consumer than a producer on Twitter :). Moreover, tweets are disposable. If I want to keep a link someone tweeted, I keep it somewhere else - not by retweeting it. I never look back.

Like everybody else, I started using Facebook as well. Now here I am a true prosumer. Facebook has gradually become the emotional diary of choice for me, with things like Flickr, YouTube, blogposts, events & links coming together. And here I DO look back, my notes, links and embedded clips neatly stored chronologically. Everybody has their own 'blog' on Facebook and the 'home' setting acts like an RSS-reader of sorts.

I don't really care if I miss anything. Important issues will inevitably come to me sooner or later. My contacts are my filter on the world. Their interests and daily doings are reflected on my screen. We are connected in many ways. Even with the ones I know IRL, there's an extra connectiveness.

And then I felt the urge to start blogging again. I needed my own emotional diary again. If I don't blog for a week, nobody will notice and that doesn't bother me. I'm still visible elsewhere. This is MY space.

picture: British Library, London

Preciousness

"It's hard not to develop an aural antsiness when YouTube is there for the flighty browsing, iPods for the impatient shuffling. Meanwhile, Spotify and every other streaming service allows us to take for granted a song being there for our ears when we demand it. In short, our restless listening might mean we're in danger of becoming careless listeners, too.

(...) Perhaps we need just a bit more reverence when it comes to listening.

(...) Over the last few years, theatre in this country has realised the heightened awareness that odd venues and small-scale performance instill in audiences." (Hermione Hoby for The Observer)

Hoby thinks 'precious' is a word in need of rescuing, whether it's about music, theatre or any other art. In a time where everything that can be reproduced digitally seems to be there for the taking, anytime and anywhere, she might just be right.

In the same issue of The Observer, Geoff Dyer (writer) claims that 'Googling has drained some of the purpose from his life'. No less.

"Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the back of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called 'this twittering world', I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life."

But there's relief too, from Colin Blakemore (neurobiologist):

"It's curious that some of the most vociferous critics of the internet are the very sorts of people who are benefiting most from this wonderful, liberating, organic extension of the human mind. They are academics, scientists, scholars and writers, who fear that the extraordinary technology that they use every day is a danger to the unsophisticated.

They underestimate the capacity of the human brain to capitalise on new ways of storing and transmitting information. When I was at school I learned by heart great swathes of poetry and chunks of the Bible, not to mention page after page of scientific textbooks. What a waste of my neurons, all clogged up with knowledge that I can now obtain with the click of a mouse."

Related issues in my opinion. When everything is available at a mouseclick, you can either consume what's right before you until you drown in middle-of-the-road entertainment or use the advantage of unlimited choice (the far end of the long tail) and sophisticated filtering to find hidden gems. To uncover preciousness. Yes, this can be as time consuming as going through your bookcase to find a certain line of prose used to be.
Who's with me?

I Drink The Air Before Me

"I Drink the Air Before Me is an evening-length score for Stephen Petronio's dance piece bearing the same name. Inasmuch as it was celebrating Stephen's company's 25th anniversary, the piece wanted to be big, ecstatic, and celebratory. Our initial meeting, in which we discussed the structure of the work, yielded a sketch: a giant line, starting at the lower left hand side of a napkin, and ending in the upper right. Start small, get big!"

Awesome music, please do have a listen! Check out pre-ordering possibilities on Nico's Bedroom Community website.

If you liked this...

Yes, I know I wrote about my dislike of recommendations when it comes to my own personal taste (especially music but in reading as well). I do think that this has got to be part of the future for libraries, public and educational alike.

The world is a social place and online strategies do seem to work. There's something quite touching about seeing a book with a customer's review attached to it. A good bookstore (or library) should also leave the bad reviews on, if they're well articulated. This particular store offers only good reviews...

I know I would love to leave a tweet-length review on some cd's, if the opportunity is provided. Borders offers it throughout their stores in the shape of blank notes that wrap neatly around a book cover of your choice. Show & share your likes and dislikes! To read the reviews on the books, go to the original picture.

Now think again

"God's thumb"?

What was I thinking? That everyone would know what I was talking about?
Google doesn't know, apparently...

But how poetical does 'jugular notch' or 'suprasternal notch' sound to you?
I'm pretty sure I didn't invent this. Look at it: God the Sculptor put his thumb there for the finishing touch - to entice us.

On true art (2)

Here's another excerpt that underlines my point of view very eloquently:

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoyment per se - I like having a good time as much as anyone. However, in order for a work of art to be successful, it needs to pull as well as push - often, the goal is to anger, disturb, or even to deliberately bore or tax the audience, viewer, or listener in pursuit of some larger goal. The obvious response to this is the one we have heard throughout the history of modern art - "it's pretentious bullshit," "my kid could paint that," etc. And yes, that is often the case. However, even work that enlightens or entertains often needs to mystify, or to defer pleasure, in order to be successful. Of course what we say we want is the thrill, the laugh, the cheer, the beautiful sound or object, but most often those moments need to be surrounded by something else, or the experience is meaningless - art as a series of positive stimuli that zaps our animal brains in a pleasing way, but offers little else.
(by Jason Grote)

I thought I had suppressed those animal brains but looking at it this way, it seems I've been using them all along. The laugh, the beautiful sound, the shape of hands caressing the keys, God's thumb. Impressions. But then offering endlessly more.

Beauty in simplicity - Sonnet 20

I adore Rufus Wainwright and this Sonnet sums it all up for me. I've seen him playing it while wearing a pompous long black dress with feathers and sequins - a 15 feet long train trailing behind him. But this little video offers as much Rufus as you can get, he's all there and giving everything - every time. He's for real.

On true art

“It’s something which reverberates within your psyche, it disturbs the whole life cycle within a person. It affects the atmosphere in which you live. Most of what its called art, your eye just flows over. It may be charming or nice, but it doesn’t change you”. Francis Bacon

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