Et beatitudinem et otium temporaque in sole anni habuimus astra autem quae tangere potuimus modo pisces cum astri forma in litore erant

Mar 8, 2009

A partial list of pieces of music, which will reliably cause me to feel antsy, agitated, or discomfited if I listen to them all the way through:

  • Anthony Moore - Reed, Whistle and Sticks
  • Tony Conrad & Faust - From the Side of Man and Womankind (live version from Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive)
  • Orthrelm - OV (also somewhat exhilarating)
  • Robert Ashley - In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women

They all have in common length (the first is the shortest at 36 minutes and change, though this is helpfully divided up into 99 tracks) and, but for the first, a high degree of repetition. The Allmusic entry for Reed, Whistle and Sticks compares it to Terry Riley, though the reason escapes me; if there is a phase pattern I've never been able to discern it and I believe I read somewhere—perhaps on the now-vanished Forced Exposure description for the album—that Moore edited things together specifically to avoid recurring patterns. The Ashley sort of has that feature, in that the static elements of the sentences blur together somewhat leaving only the seemingly random list of names punctuated by thoroughly bleached words.

Evidently there is more structure than is apparent when you listen to Ashley's monotone inhuman drone; he mentions some here. The best part on that page, though, is from Keith Waldrop's account of a conversation with Wolgamot. First, know that there is an earlier book with the same text as In Sara, Mencken …, called In Sara Haardt Were Men and Women:

He had written two books, he told us, and was working on a third. "My first book was a complete failure." He had had the edition destroyed. "The second began to gallop." And then he murmured, "But wait till you see the next."

He had been working for thirty-odd years on his third book. I asked, hesitantly, if the third would have . . . for text . . . ? "Oh," he said, "same text, same text." But a brand new title page.

Very titanically staggering.