working memos as fragments of gold...

"the noises must become music"

"be sure of having used to the full all is communicated by immobility and silence."

"your film - let people feel the soul and the heart there, but let it be made like a work of hands"

"no intellectual or cerebral mechanism. simply a mechanism."

"not to use two violins when one is enough"

"images like modulations in music"

"practice the precept: find without seeking"

"to translate the invisible wind by the water it sculpts in passing."

"make visible what, without you, might never have been seen"

" how to hide from oneself the fact that it all ends up on a rectangle of white fabric hung on a wall? (see your film as a surface to cover)"

ten from robert bresson's notes on the cinematographer

the poetry of letteral notation (with a bubble or dream)

an image of a shaker music score from 1852, using letteral notation, from daniel w. patterson's great little pamphlet: nine shaker spirituals, from 1964.

take me out to the ballgame...

finally... after several months of down time, and suffering through meaningless spring training games, today is the first game of the season for the los angeles dodgers. perhaps the most consistent roden family ritual is attending the first game of the season with my mom. over the last 20 years we've rarely missed opening day at dodger stadium (one of the few places left in los angeles that still feels as it did 35 years ago); and while it was relatively uncool to wear a dodger shirt to art school (particularly without irony), i can't imagine summer afternoons in my studio without the radio blasting vin scully's majestic voice calling the game. that voice is the true essence of the arrival of spring.

by some miracle, this RPPC eluded baseball collectors, and i snared it for nearly nothing. it is not only a really nice band photo (complete with the town sheriff!), but a great shot of some early ballplayers (probably amateurs). clearly there is a potential train wreck here, with either a baseball team made up of musicians, or perhaps worse; a musical band made up of ball players (which probably sounded like ornette coleman's shape of jazz to come 60 years before it came...).

anyways, today i will be singing "take me out to the ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch, as well as enjoying abusing my stomach with hot dogs, peanuts, ice cream, and one or two giant cokes...

but lest you think i've gone and turned airforms into a sports blog... tomorrow is the first day of april, which just happens to be national poetry month, and i've got a few gems in mind to post. unless the dodgers win the world series, this will most likely be my only baseball post of the season... (go blue!).

music in everything...

1920's promo photo, probably from a vaudeville act, signed jack holmes "music in everything".

the most realistic of all possible things...

"... now time can be an awful lot of bother with the ordinary pinch-penny counting that has to go on with it, but if one can think of the structure as a space of time in which anything can happen in any sequence of movement event, and any length of stillness can take place, then the counting is an aid towards freedom, rather than a discipline towards mechanization. a use of time structure also frees the music into space, making the connection between the dance and the music one of individual autonomy connected at structural points. the result is the dance is free to act as it chooses, as is the music. the music doesn't have to work itself to death to underline the dance, or the dance create havoc trying to be as flashy as the music.

for me, it seems enough that dancing is a spiritual exercise in physical form, and that what is seen, is what it is. and i do not believe it is possible to be "too simple". what the dancer does is the most realistic of all possible things, and to pretend a man standing on a hill could be doing everything except just standing is simply divorce - divorce from life, from the sun coming up and going down, from clouds in front of the sun, from the rain that comes from the clouds and sends you to the drugstore for a cup of coffee, from each thing that succeeds each thing. dancing is a visible action of life."

merce cunningham, space time and dance, in transformation 3, 1952

when farmers build instruments...

two RPPC's of alfred nelson, on the back of one is written:

alfred nelson from buffalo min. a plain farmer. plays 32 pc. or. took him 39 years to build it. july 6, 1941

when colors suggest sounds...

an image of a page from a 1967 japan architect magazine, featuring the interior color schemes for kyonori kikutake's pacific hotel. ikko tanaka, who devised the room colors writes about an attempt to use color in response to the cylindrical spiral basic forms of the hotel, and to create spaces "totally unlike the ones we daily experience".

tanaka describes the seven basic colors that make up the designs as "rainbow tones" and notes that, other than the wall colors, most of the colored elements can be moved from room to room to create new combinations - making the entire scheme of color combination somewhat modular.

the idea of modularity (shifting harmonic and dissonant relationships), as well as the use of the word "tones" to describe color, had me thinking about these images - these rooms - as potential scores for making sound. of course, the little color coded glockenspiels i used to generate the sound for siza's serpentine pavilion, and which i always have hanging around my studio, make perfect sense with tanaka's sense of color...

marfa and the road to it...

gymnapoems...

lament of the confined (jonah and latude)
they are seated in the shade.
they are thinking.
many centuries separate them.
jonah says: i am the sailors' latude.
latude says: i am the french jonah.
according to them it smells musty.
it seems as if they can see the good old sun.
they dream only of escape.

on a lantern
nightime.
it is not light yet: you still have time.
you may light the lantern if you wish.
illuminate the path before you.
place your hand in front of the light.
take your hand away and put it in your pocket.
wait. wait.
extinguish.

hygenic advice
before breathing, boil your air.

three short poems by erik satie, from the chapbook erik satie, dried embryos, translated by trevor winkfield, and published by ian robinson's aloes press in 1972.

my face looks like my music...

early RPPC from france, probably 1910. no idea what this instrument is, but it sure looks a lot like the musician's face...

the birds...

might they be playing bird songs?????

join the club...

1914 livingston il, zither club RPPC

water music...

before and after music ...

the infernal trio...

well it seems a bit of a while since i've posted some good ol' music RPPC's. here are three from that ever growing pile...

the japanese woman with the victrola and a gosh darned buddha listening nipponophone sleeve in her hand arrived while i was gone. the trombonist seemingly mesmerised by nature and in complete stillness has been here awhile. i have no idea when the slide guitar player began living here, but it's one of the better slide guitar cards i have.

no blabbering commentary... just enjoy the pics. (p.s. this post is dedicated to mr. millis... i was somewhat obsessed with this junk before i met him, but he certainly sent it all into overdrive... he'd probably kill me and steal the top photo if he lived closer...check out his band, mischief, and relative insanity here).

zithering...

"note: play at low volume for realism; the zither is not a loud instrument"

according to the liner notes, ruth welcome was the "acknowledged high priestess of her antique instrument" - the zither. she grew up in germany and basel before studying at julliard. these recordings are probably from the mid 1950's.

although there is a potential for irony here, this recording is haunting and quite beautiful. welcome's performance is intimate, delicate, and has a kind of informal quality that feels like you're at her house and she's simply playing music for you.

i've posted it as one long track to keep the feeling intact...a record spinning from the needle drop to the needle lift - with all the artifacts of a 10" red vinyl object's life lived through multiple listenings and handlings. it also sounds a bit like a little film.

click here to listen to ruth welcome playing her zither.

before the sixties...

a 1920 (yes, 1920!) RPPC of a guy in front of his cabin, playing his lap steel guitar. unfortunately nothing written on the back other than the AZO symbol that dates it. his cabin, with straw insulation on the outside and two rooms is one of the more complex architecturally that i've seen; but i really just wish i could hear the music...

before rauchenberg...

nice little RPPC of whistling rufus one man band from around 1915. i love the odd placement of the smaller negative within postcard size paper and the large hand scrawled text. reminds me a lot of some of rauchenberg's silkscreen works from the 70's... and of course you have to love the GIANT harmonica.

happy hillbilly easter day...

if you want the next best thing to some marshmellow peeps, click to listen to the dixon brothers singing easter day.

two curves...