Where (we) Live - Taking Notes

Although only just under an hour long, So's newest project Where (we) Live is dense, enigmatic, and chaotic.  Some elements - such as the music - are straightforward, at least in the sense that they resemble work that we've been doing for years.  

But a few other elements are very new to us.  We purposefully set it up that way,  bringing people whom we admire into the room without steering them too strongly towards a specific purpose.  Each of our core collaborators was given the power to influence the outcome of the project.  


Here are the elements of the live show:

• So Percussion 
• Grey Mcmurray, guitar, live processing, and vocals
• Martin Schmidt's videos (controlled by So Percussion members)
• Nightly special guest artist/artisan:  we've had a blacksmith, a seamstress, a potter, several visual artists, a graphic novel author.  
• Emily Johnson:  the "note giver."  
• Ain Gordon, the director 

Two of the collaborators infused material directly into the show:  Grey McMurray's music and Martin Schmidt's videos are instantly attributable, and have their own strong profile.

Our director Ain Gordon has a role that is also traditionally defined, even though he is tasked with directing an un-traditional performance.  He stands apart from the show, helping us understand whether our creation is making any sense.  

Even the special guest, who is different every night, has a clear task: to make their work in co-existence with the other performers.  

But we have one final collaborator, whose role and tasks have proven more difficult to explain.    

Choreographer and performance artist Emily Johnson (who was honored with a Bessie Award for Oustanding Production this year) is our "note giver."  She sits quietly at a desk stage left, listening and watching.  When it strikes her, she writes notes down on little scraps of paper and hands them out to any of the other performers during the show.  We offered her complete latitude with regard to what instruction she might pass, and when.  

We also gave ourselves a rule:  to acknowledge and attempt whatever she asks.  The trust we place in her to perform this task is immense, because she now has the power to balance the dynamic and flow of the show, or possibly to completely derail it.  

These instructions can range anywhere from the very concrete ("walk to the back of the hall"), to the mysterious ("believe").  They are designed to create unexpected dynamics and relationships among the performers in real time, while also revealing new possibilities for the arch of the theatrical situation.  

As such, there's a kind of improvisation happening, although our musical performance is quite fixed and rehearsed.  Far from freeing us of the burden of tight preparation, this embedded x-factor actually requires us to labor even more heavily at knowing the material.  

Of course, anybody who works with improvisation or flexible elements in performance will tell you how very much preparation is actually necessary.  

So Emily has omniscience, and also agency.  She alone knows what instructions each performer has received (we are not privy to each other's notes).  

As if Ain didn't have enough to keep track of at this point, now he has somebody making unplanned decisions in real time affecting every aspect of the show!  

I asked Emily and Ain to talk about their roles in Where (we) Live.  Grey contributed his own short description of what it is like to have this "note giver" in our midst.  


Emily:

I think of action all the time. And stillness. I think about how action and stillness intersect with our thoughts, bodies, curiosities, values, needs, wants... In WwL I listen. I look at the house we are in. Empty space and full space. I see, hear, and feel Jason, Eric, Adam, Josh, Grey, and Ain and I think my role is a link in the space: between them; between now, what just happened, and what is coming; and between where they are and where the audience is. I try to make that space smaller somehow. Or maybe smaller is the wrong word. Maybe the word is thicker. I offer action or stillness or thought or a million other things as choice on little bits of paper and sometimes I demand something, too. I know where we are trying to get to but I always have to find a new way. I have to be ready for sound and space to jolt me into writing something down; I have to trust it immediately or wait a bit and see where it fits in. It's terrifying and it's the best thing. I try to: make us all (performers and audience) feel at home or for a moment lost, dig something up or reveal something we forgot. When I see one of them doing or attempting to do one of the directions I gave them I get a sense that many things are happening at once. There's the thinking about the action/stillness and there is the doing. We are doing what we know and at the same time making something we don't know yet. These moments jump through space and make me feel super alive and I hope they do that a bit for the audience, too.

Ain:

“Directing” this project is an accurate title and a nutty word for the task. I am there to uncover the work’s core intention and shape options to constantly re-reveal that core while constantly defending the performer’s ability to choose another “option.” So, we honed a mutually agreed upon “script” with a million options to step off that grid and clear imperative avenues for returning – at least, that’s all true when it works. I feel a kinship with Emily’s role because I am the offstage her or she is the onstage me. We are using different lenses and timelines to coax out the molten core – at least that is how I think of it.

Grey:

Whenever I'm alone for a stretch, I will inevitably confront the thought of how I'd like to be, or I'll ask myself how I'm doing being what I hope I am, or more specifically, what the time-spending-activities are that I wish I would do to be more like the perfect person I can imagine. In other words, I find myself detaching and looking at myself, so I can imagine I'm less alone. Of course, when I don't detach, I am less alone. When Emily hands a note to me during the performance, no matter how I think I'm doing, or how I'm doing trying not to think about how I'm doing, I devote full attention to her written instruction / request / demand / hope-for-a-better-performance note. If I bump into an unknown someone on the street, I get out of my head the same way. Some notes induce strange movements, others hopeful thoughts, but no matter the content, Emily's free compositional sensitivity always takes me away from myself when I might be fading-in, and places me back where I am. Her words-on-scraps are my healthy aloneness. I would do better if I got her notes everyday.

Here's what I mean...

This morning, I was privileged to talk at Northwestern University about John Cage.  The 30 minutes of the talk was just enough time to scratch the surface of what his work means to me and to my group.  The over-arching point of my talk was that to many, Cage is still an outlier, a kind of prophet in the wilderness who we all agree was singular and important.  But to us as percussionists, he is foundational. He actually created the artistic world that I now inhabit.  

While preparing for this talk, I experimented with writing a lecture in Cage's style, using chance operations to cut up material.  I hoped it might reveal connections and new ideas that I hadn't thought of.  It certainly did that.  

In the end, I thought it would be more interesting for the group at the conference to hear about how So Percussion uses Cage's music to stimulate creative programming and recording.  But I wanted to put the text down on e-paper, as I've been doing with other writings recently.  

During the effort to emulate Cage, my text became very personal.  For as much as I proselytize for him, I actually have a very complicated aesthetic relationship to his work.  I suppose I take him seriously enough to be troubled and provoked by some of his conclusions and directions.  

Those who dismiss(ed) Cage as a joker or clown are avoiding these issues entirely.  When you become intimately acquainted with his work, he is impossible to dismiss in this way.   

I may turn this text into some sort of performance piece, measured out in time and accompanied by tasks and percussion sounds.  But I'm going to leave it for awhile, and see if the unintended juxtapositions spark other ideas.  

Here's a video of my talk at NU:

Here’s what I mean…

If we take time and duration to mean structure as Cage thought,

Where do we place our emotions? 

I am not interested in Zen, although obviously I am interested in it. 

Duration contains both silence and sound,

Though silence does not exist here…

So duration actually contains the sounds

Intended or not intended

But the sounds “intended”

Are genus or species

And not the sounds themselves

For only the sounds themselves

Can be the sounds.

The intention of a sound

Is the intention of a generality.

And the question of emotion is trite,

As we all know. 

Placing emotion is manipulative

It is the bullwhip of corporations

Detachment is honest, trustworthy

But I have my emotions

And I like some of them

And I feel them when I play

John Cage’s music.

To speak of Cage’s originality

It is vast

But Art is social

And nobody creates in a vacuum

I found out that Marcel Duchamp made chance music

Decades before Cage.

It takes nothing away from him

Actually it enhances everything.

I plan to use chance in this talk

Because it is about Cage. 

But I will change it

If I don’t like the outcome. 

I am not yet at peace with the world

I do not accept everything as it is. 

I believe Art is freedom.

We percussionists had nothing to lose. 

We don’t tear down power structures

We brush them aside

And embrace freedom 

Melodies are sounds in sequence

I’m not tired of Schubert

Not at all

To speak of a melody

As pleasing or not

Is fine

But you can’t disqualify…

We hear sound on a line:

growing

shrinking

withholding

connecting

scattering

expanding

contracting

But if we say it is not “music”

We are caught defining music

For others

I simply think that chance may be better

At combining things

Than I am

And I tire of my own train of thought

Imagine if I subjected you to it as well! 

I desire urgently to communicate with you…

This discussion makes me uncomfortable.

Back to duration:

We feel experientially that we can measure it

Control it, quantize it

It is a hammer

Leveling the great arc

Beethoven died, after all

Trying so hard to make something different

It’s a worthy impulse

But why shouldn’t we be connected? 

Taste

The limits of our view

Sentimentality

All of a sudden our thoughts form

As objects

Weapons from the past

Cage penetrates the bubble.

To speak of theater…

I know nothing of theater

To speak of music

Is to speak of sound

And silence.

But to speak of silence

Is to be un-silent

And to be silent is merely

To move towards the sounds

You haven’t yet considered. 

Walk into a crowded room

Look intently at somebody else

Who doesn’t know you’re listening

As they speak. 

Their words come into radiant focus

In your mind.

So it is with the wall clock

The radiator hum

The birds

But to speak of Beethoven

As Cage did

Makes very little sense now

So I will speak of Cage. 

Back, tentatively 

Again to emotion

The theater is a box,

Just like the Silent Piece

What we call theater

I am totally unable to do

In terms of craft.     

As a box for examining life

I am enthralled. 

We all have different tools.

The urge to ritualize

And frame life

Is all that’s needed.

Catharsis is obviously temporary

And I suppose that’s the point

But I can’t abandon my emotions

Because life…

But arrival at stasis…

I’m going to keep using this word “freedom”

Because I hope I can make it taste different in my mouth

After the 2000’s 

We are not supposed to worship the man

We are not supposed to do anything

That’s the point. 

I’ve heard some music dismissed as “derivative.”

I know I’m supposed to understand what that means

But nobody ever tells me exactly what it’s derived from

Or why they dismiss the source

Which was itself inevitably a complex derivation

Of something else

Modernism was a cleansing

In many ways healthy

But locked and trapped in the past it resisted.   

It must not have been original. 

It seems to me that the only original act

was the creation itself.

Everything else is a derivation

I only run into trouble

When I try to be somebody else.

But as myself

I create theater in community

I suspend the tiresome

But necessary rules

I am still myself.

This brings me back to freedom

Not lonely freedom from the community

But freedom together

We can all change the rules. 

Stasis need not be boring

It can be commitment

A small powerful thought

Penetrated

If my thought is powerful

Why leave it quickly?

What contrast do you require? 

Are you listening,

Or are you apprehending? 

I don’t mind either

But apprehending from a book makes sense

Because, temporally speaking

It is malleable.

Give yourself license

To hear the world as it is

Now to speak of pitch

Or really frequency

How slow or fast things vibrate

I still believe that sounding these vibrations at the same time

Can be divine

Mozart

Schubert

Chopin

You will build better connections than I

Or at least, I’d like to allow for it. 

I haven’t composed a piece of music until 33 years of age

Because of this thought. 

The question is not “this” or “that.”

When things vibrate at the same time

We are alive.

Cage wanted us to see it larger

And more clearly.

Every noise has frequencies

Sometimes many simultaneously

Cage said something new

Because of who, where, when, why…

And because he was courageous. 

He turned our ears. 

This is supremely social. 

My talk is derived from Cage’s methods

It is highly unoriginal.

I can’t believe that he meant for us to set him aside

With extreme permission

And just continue on as we were.

We don’t need to swing the pendulum

This way and that.

But I don’t know what that implies

Because it was fun. 

My emotions

Are overwhelmed

But Cage lets it be. 

I don’t reject the past.

In fact, I embrace it so well that I’m left inert.

I suspect it’s the same for some of you. 

I’m not overcoming anything

Because Cage doesn’t require me to defeat him

If I use chance, I simply use chance. 

If you consider me unoriginal

I enthusiastically agree

But I want to make sound.

And I want to speak with you. 

The consequences are not what you think…

I can’t proclaim revolution against him

Even if I wanted to

Which I certainly don’t

I am unworthy of this style

Of this voice

Of this courage

But “the only rule is work.” 

He stands, in a sense

For everything.

To be honest, I can

Understand those who think (and thought)

That it’s a little bit ridiculous to stand for everything

Duration is an illusion, to be sure

But it’s concrete enough for us

And I have no time for mysticism

I recently read

“Once the point (of 4’33”) is grasped

Do I really need to sit and listen to it?”

But then the point is surely not grasped

Back to freedom

It is of course another paradox

It can only be experienced within strict limitations

Such as duration. 

The “Freedom” of endless decision points

Endless duration

Endless spinning out

Is a tyranny. 

Pitches are rhythms…

My emotions are touched by pitches

Which is to say rhythms

My emotions are attachments

I am attached to the world.

I’m not fighting against anything…

But it needed to be done. 

There is nothing wrong with the keyboard per se

The keyboard is just a pattern

Any pattern becomes oppressive

When it’s enforced.

And so it is with new patterns

Built to replace the old. 

I won’t tell you what John Cage stood for

Because of John Cage

A cactus or a branch is a newfound instrument each time

And you paid, and I’m dressed up. 

What I urgently want you to understand

Is that this is not a joke

But it can be funny. 

I don’t want you to “get it.”

I want you to try it on. 

You may find yourself a little lighter.