Hallock Hill
29 July 2010
Kyle Bobby Dunn, “Promenade,” A Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point, 2010)
A single note cast out against a canvas stretches and twists, sometimes over, sometimes under itself. Others weave, or are woven, into these stretches of sound, and careen round the landscape. What are you feeling? It might be peace, which is momentary, or conflict, which is slight and usually only base and elemental. The landscape is without rhythm, in the same way that a river, or passing clouds, are without rhythm. Yet. They have design.
What comes to you might be said to come through you, and you can choose to focus on it, let it inhabit you, or not. It will still be there, like the waves breaking against the beach. They don’t need to be listened to. One might sense a certain intelligence of sound, or of sounds, an intuitive grasp of one for the other, a familiarity of one slightly contorted.
People don’t talk about beauty nearly enough. These twelve discrete beautiful objects will care for you, if you let them. And if you don’t, they will still be beautiful. But let them care for you.
You will struggle to categorize these sounds, ask yourself what you are hearing, remember a distant day when you had some peace in your life and you were able to think, unfettered. Is that a trombone? A guitar? Is that organic or synthesized? As these questions disappear, and I hope they do, you’ll have an opportunity. Opportunity to find different states of being. Some might be coincident with one’s temperament. Some might chop at it, and the joint might be irreparable.
These work by incremental building and rebuilding. Recycling. Revisioning. The whole shows a multiple of moods and emotions, crafted by a caring ear that clearly points towards the variety of experience. The waves on the shore. Snowflakes. Fingerprints. Tree roots.
The next time you pick up a familiar object, one you’ve had nearly all your life, find one thing you never noticed about it. All those things are there, whether you look for them or not.
_____________________________________
These pieces were recorded over several years in North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and Alberta, Canada. This album takes four pieces from last year’s Fervency, expands on them and adds material across 2 CDs. Soundscapes can be meticulously created. And these are.
Audio posted at 17:22 (Open permalink in new window)
28 July 2010
Clouds
Sometimes it is good to just watch the clouds.
Text posted at 11:15 (Open permalink in new window)
26 July 2010
I am well aware not only of the importance of children — whom we naturally cherish and who we also embody our hopes for the future — but also of the importance of what we provide for them in the way of art; and I realize that we are competing with a lot of other cultural influences, some of which beguile them in false directions.
Art, including juvenile literature, has the power to make any spot on earth the living center of the universe, and unlike science, which often gives us the illusion of understanding things we really do not understand, it helps us to know life in a way that still keeps before us the mystery of things. It enhances the sense of wonder. And wonder is respect for life. Art also stimulates the adventurousness and the playfulness that keep us moving in a lively way and that lead us to useful discovery.
„William Steig’s Caldecott Award Acceptance Speech, 1970, for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.
Via our friends at The Wooden Wagon, and found in full at Letters of Note.
Quote posted at 16:15 (Open permalink in new window)
23 July 2010
Arto Monaco and the Land of Makebelieve
And last but most importantly, Monaco’s ‘Saga of Cactus Flats’. The poster refuses to provide embed code….. so jump to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyygvy7aMro
Text posted at 09:15 (Open permalink in new window)
22 July 2010
Paul Blackburn, interviewed on 25 May 1971 by L.S. Dembo in Contemporary Literature v. XIII n. 2. Read in full.
Quote posted at 15:00 (Open permalink in new window)
