Audio | Video
sound played
delayed & reverberated
begun, spun
from the womb, our first ear
to the tomb our final crescendo
~with liner notes~
sampling is abstract history
history is sampling made abstract
& revision is life remixed
to the percussive ebbs of sound waves
music is:
more praxis than practice
more active than passive
more the work of the blacksmith
less:
the work of the mathematic
although rhythm is meticulously enacted
off/time
on/time
all-the-time
the motion is the rupture
conductor, conductor
the line is the rhyme
instructor, within structure
interconnected by time
improvised with the kinetics
of the tidalectics
sound hybridized
scat-tered splat-tered on data vibes
words
the needle in the groove
(the sample on the left) (the a cappella on the right)
the tactile metaphor moves
the body, the machine in flight
technoculture, counterculture, subculture, cyberculture, my culture, your culture
swingin’ colonial institutions back into primal sound animals
Derrida couldn’t improvise with Ornette Coleman
(he was booed)
& Marsalis couldn’t improvise with Miles
cause Miles thought Marsalis was rude
& come on,
Marsalis could never groove with Miles’s
blue mood
we need to relearn listening
before our logic was anthropologic & anthropocentric
we were arthropods banging together a rock & a log
dancing around the fire
so let’s move between
the in-between
as cybernetic organisms whose improvisations are microscopic
beyond the range of the telescopic lens,
& let the conscious bend
& once again listen in:
’till ears are made dizzy from Gillespie infused epilepsy
& behold Gould humming manifold notes in tongue
listen,’till Adorno’s work on jazz culture reads like homemade porno
feel the music in being:
like Thelonious gyrating the rhythm with his body
like Jacqueline du Pré turning Elgar into the cello’s telepathy
like Robert Johnson picking his strings so masterfully
like Ornette Coleman shaping our soul man
like Sid Vicious redefining rock & roll
like Skaay using words to make a blue raven fly
like Beethoven breaking the m/old with his final (oh)d
like Hendrix turning the guitar into an appendage
like Mingus picking the bass with such nimble fingers
like Elvis and his pelvis making teenagers cum
back for more
with Grand Wizard Theodor
making ya’ll hit the dance floor in a flash
like Grand Master Flash with the innovative scratch
(re)inscribing sound
from the banging of a body
to the banging of a drum
from the womb where your mother’s beating heart was the first tune
you listened to
to you,
the maker of sound
however profound, or unsound, it’s still your voice
enacted & abstracted
it’s the abstract truth
as we improvise
our daily lives
trying to harmonize
while we collide with disruptive tides
PAUL WATKINS 