An American is a complex of occasions...



Charles Olson reads 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]' (Mar 1966)

(Hat tip: Silliman's Blog)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Between Style and Invention

Horizontal, nursing a summer cold, I've plowed my way through Daniel Heartz's Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720-1780 .  It has a lot of contextual data (especially of the who-met-whom-and-when-and-where-they-met variety) and usefully covers repertoire and composers and locales that have been slighted by the standard classical musical history survey course (which tends to jump straight from Sebastian Bach to Haydn).  Useful, but jeez, it is anything but a pleasure to read, with too little analysis of the music itself and an organization by capital cities and then by composers which often requires the author to do some awkward jumping.  (Fortunately, we have Robert Gjerdingen's delightful Music in the Galant Style to make up for some of the theoretical deficits.) Moreover, it's in a graceless writing style that refuses to invite the reader into repertoire that is often, very much inviting, especially when one considers a cast of composers including Vival...
Read more

Sharing: Costs and Benefits

From The Wir e (Hat Tip: Jonathan Segel): poet and archivist ( UbuWeb ) Kenneth Goldsmith, following a series of minor epiphanies, supports file sharing (ironic and so- Zeitgeistlich money lines: The minute I get something, I just crave more. And so something has really changed – and I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed have become profoundly more intriguing than the cultural artifact itself ) and in response, musician Chris Cutler discusses the Collateral Damage . (Carry-away line: Where is honour? ) I am not much of a recorded music person, so I've not been much affected by this debate, but I have followed the discussion and have been disappointed by the reluctance to find a reasonable and ethical middle ground. If I say "Share and sample away!" then fine, permission granted, but if I say that I would prefer you not share or sample my work, in my my honest Bartleby-inspired tone, the you shouldn't share or sample my work. ...
Read more

Dead-Dropped Music?

Artist Aram Bartholl is embedding usb drives into walls, buildings and curbs for public but anonymous data up- and downloads. Not surprisingly, the comments focus in on the risks of acquiring viruses or having your equipment sabotaged, making this media equivalent of anonymous sex or sharing used needles; sad how modern public life gets stuck with such risks. In any case, it's certainly one way to try to get your music out there via sound files and sound-playing applications.
Read more