noble proletarian burritos, tacos, & more…

• 1. To my fellow artists, my fellow troubadours: leave me alone! Be quiet, and be on your way. I’ll accompany you from a distance; I’ll befriend the things you leave behind.

  2. I have no use for “artificial intelligence.” The human mind is an organ with abstruse stops and a spiral staircase of manuals whose fluid-filled pipes and tubes shudder the cathedral of the body. Without profound understanding of his instrument’s mechanism, the player can make only silent music; his fingers perform in vain for a church stiffened, as though by rigor mortis.

  3. In the beginning was the Word… Then, Gesamtkunstwerk (made flesh, dwelling among us). A culmination of the senses… but in the end, a word.

  4. I was on the train one day, heading to the first rehearsal of a string quartet I’d recently composed. I clutched the score close to my chest, protecting what I believed to be a virgin melody, miraculously salvaged from those twelve tired notes thought to be thoroughly plumbed by history. About halfway through the journey, three passengers absentmindedly whistled little melodies to themselves while playing on their phones, each completely unaware of the other. I couldn’t recognize any of the tunes by themselves, but together they sounded oddly familiar. The sound of the decelerating train helped me realize: those whistlers reproduced the opening bars of the first movement, my Passacaglia–the two violins and viola. The train itself provided the ostinato; a harsh, descending sul ponticello in the tenor clef, steel against steel… Here, in the throes of mass transit, my string quartet was unceremoniously premiered.

  5. Though I was certainly surprised by the above situation, I didn’t despair. Chance is a timeless muse; now I can say I’ve returned the favor.

  6. The best and worst forms are those which favor repetition. Repetition is the method by which the spiritual turns mundane. Repetition transforms novelty into nausea. This mundanity, this inescapable malaise, becomes the mantra which frames life. Then, from the negative space the repetition leaves, we will notice a phantasmagoria composed of new things spiraling up and blooming around it, like vines on a garden trellis. These “new” forms, too, eventually and inevitably repeat themselves, providing a framework for still more subtle developments. I call it the best because it is, like a Mandelbrot fractal, a source of near-infinite aesthetic value; I call it the worst because those without patience and a keen eye mistake the form for a thoughtless splatter.

  7. The Passacaglia and hip-hop are the most accessible versions of a repetitive form; the exemplars of each are the Passacaille of Dutilleux’s First Symphony and “F.I.C.O.” by Clipse. Unfortunately, it is quite rare to find one who appreciates both.