note on blog

Going for a re-vamp of the site. This poor blog has fallen into decline, and started that long, slow decline 2 years ago. I don't know if i can promise any kind of renaissance, but at least I can try and re-organize my links to make more sense.

I hate postmodern lingo and rhetoric.

hate it.

I'm currently taking a senior seminar course on European Fascism, which is fascinating, but i have stumbled upon, much to my chagrin, one of the most inane, pointless displays of verbose gibberish imaginable. Allow me to demonstrate:

According to our ‘reflective metanarritive’ of modernism’s dialectical relationship with modernity, the ardent craving for a new spirituality and new temporality that drives what Emilio Gentile calls Italianism expresses primordial longings for a new nomos, a new canopy of temporalized sacrality generated by a contemporary reality experiences as anomic, as decadent.

Has the author just lost it? Is there a point there at all, or just rhetorical meanderings? I believe I understand that what he intended to say: "That the fascist conception of modernism, as technologically, industrially advanced, or totalitarian, stood in conflict with the modern thought of French-revolution humanist types. "But the expression "modernism's dialectical relationship with modernity" is borderline meaningless in itself. Simply put, the author's language is pompous, self-satisfied and stupid.

I dont understand the point of writing so much and saying so little. I suppose the so called post-modern distrust of the"metanarritives" that can pop up in history might motivate them to create nebulous clouds of lingo, with vague, confused meanings. Yet the author can't sustain it for that long, eventually he has to make a fucking point:

....[ the perception of fascism as] political modernism bent on overthrowing a liberal system identified with the 'Old Italy', whose utter inadequacy to address the forces of modernization irrevocably sealed its fate.

Now, wait, so I just read a massive run-on for no fucking reason? hm. Guess so. And it left me so much the wiser. I now understand that there are some in academia who write down to the reader so as to stroke their own egos. I have little patience with this bullshit, especially when i have other, much clearer, and more thoughtful, well-written texts that I can choose from.

Rediscovery

My first real love in music was the music of Debussy. Throughout my early teens it became a goal of mine to own and listen to every note, every scribble that man ever put on paper. I listened to dozens of obscure works and unpopular pieces, some unpublished works that i could find recordings of.... and yet my thirst for finding unheard works never ended. I still bemoan the fact that he didn't write more. Its safe to say that Ive heard the entire bedth of his musical language. I know all kinds of pieces... from the Six épigraphes antiques of 1915 to the Printemps of 1888. and everything obscure in between.

Originally I preferred his earlier, lush and pretty pieces like the Arabesques to his more abstract, fragmented and dissonant later work. This changed. I soon found his earlier compositions to be too "fluffy", too "belle epoque" for me, and I began to favor his later, more angular pieces like En Blanc et Noir. Recently I found the Images pour Orchestre ( including Iberia) on glorious Imeem, re-affirming my old love of these works. Its from his Images pour orchestra that I found out what a cor anglais is. I heard the solo lines of that instrumentin the Gigues And Rondres des Printemps - and It mystified me. I still remember listening to it over and over again to figure out what instrument it was. I searched all over to try and figure it out.Anyway, those floating melodic fragments still make me melt.

how can you not love this? So many sublimely beautiful moments in this opening of Iberia:

Images, II. Ibéria: 1. Par les rues et par les chemins - Sir Simon Rattle

And that slow, languid Gigues, with its haunting cor anglais.

Images: I. Gigues - Sir Simon Rattle


///love

Etude Idea

With new technology on hand i can now make this a greater vanity site than it already is-

I recently got a camera and a means to record myself on my keyboard. Heres an etude idea that i'm playing around with, posted on my youtube account. I think its technically challenging enough to be a real etude.

GO OBAMA

Well, i really doubt there are any republicans or undecideds reading this blog, but for historical reference i'd thought i'd just throw it out there. So there you go- future- i'm a supporter of Barack Obama, i hope he wins, i really do. More than that- i hope that the US will improve its relations abroad, and I hope that it inspires people, i hope that this will move people, shake things and ignite a sense of social progress towards a more humanistic, more egalitarian, more rational civilization.

All hopes.

I feel sometimes that this country is dominated by people who live with half their mind in the dark ages. Gay? horror! muslims? Evil! foriegners? dangerous!

there will always be idiots, thats a given, and there will always be bigots, there will always be racists, xenophobes, homophobes, morons of all stripes and shapes, but i can only hope they dwindle in numbers with the passing of time. Society never changes quickly. People will hold onto their stupid ideas till they're in their graves. Human technology may advance, but the general human wisdom of society will never improve much.

Palin Song

Move over Steve Reich. What an interesting speaking-melody this song has. All jittery and jumbled, fragmented and jazzy.


Anyway, this is fucking brilliant.

Again

Its Fall, again. The third since i started this blog. School again, this time I'm happy to report that I'm taking Spanish. I'm enthusiastic about it, there are lots of similarities with french and i can't help but francify what i'm studing. I've been writing "L'Hombre qui hablar..." things like that. Anyway, I can understand a lot of it already. Hopefully i'll reach a decent level of spoken spanish before my life's out.

In music news, well, theres no real music news. I work occasionally on the third movement of Suburban Scene, i know it could be done in a few days if i actually put energy into it. I just don't have it. I lack a personal drive to finish it up quickly. Maybe things cook better when they're cooked slow? Maybe not. The first and second movements both took me all of two weeks to write, and they enjoyable to write, which is something kinda rare. I work on things piecemeal anyway, a half hour here and there, day to day it piles it up into some 5 minutes of music. Kinda satisfying.

Troy- thank you so much for your conversions of the midi files. I have dozens of these of my dozens of pieces, I'm not going to shove them all your way, don't worry. But I really do need to thank you. They sound beautiful. I'll (re?) post them soon. :)