>>>"Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
We don't always know how to listen.
Yes! This, for me, is exactly on the bonce. Fascinating to see the anecdote
about Caroline Kraabel (to whom, regardless of all other variables, we owe the
tribute of a properly-spelt name at least) interpreted by many, quickly, as
being about volume rather than attention-space:
though these would, at a prod, collapse into a <rights of territory vs. rights
of way> kinda thing.
Loudness per se isn't a gendered issue, of course not, any more than is using
boldface in text or wearing a hat at the zoo. (Stay away from those elephants
though.)
But the relations of mark and response surely are a-buzz with gender. Boys are
still compelled to make a mark - *their* mark, theirs, theirs d'you hear?
Girls are more encouraged in these times (and in this culture set) to make a
mark too - but the *right* mark, apt, consensual, everybody's.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this within the frame of improvised
music. But here's what grabs me:
See a group like Chris Burn's Ensemble, something like eight men and one
woman, but the processes of listening and evaluation in time (and listening
*to* and evaluation *of* time) have a material as well as formal importance
for them. Two consequences: the work is mostly pretty quiet; and I wonder if
it partly seems to me so thrilling and subversive because the music describes
as it goes on not only its own environment but also its own gender.
Supplementary to which, if I may: interested in the idea that what still gets
called 'extended technique' (i.e. blowing your own violin) is then a kind of
analogue of the transgendered space: fucking with the idea of *my voice*, how
I properly express myself: believing that I can divulge myself more
personally, appositely, in digression.
The poetic run-along is obvious, not least in an idea that ought to be key for
us on this list, and which is where we came in: that *listening* is as
gendered as utterance.
But
>>>The other problem is using "gender" to mean a set of 2 states, male and
female - or rather thinking there are just 2 states
Yes! to this too.
The list can lapse sometimes into a kind of lockerroom doldrums, beery,
factional, insistent. In which I think it reflects the way that male poets
have chosen to organise themselves since the fifties. I don't think it's a
betrayal of anybody or anything to say that, prior to CCCP, one of the men
connected with the conference called me and urged me, as an aside, to 'kick
the Americans'. Even as a joke, which it's not and anyway partly wasn't, this
is pretty coarse stuff.
I suppose it's something to do with 'professionalism'.
:cx
------------------------------------------------
Chris Goode
Director, _signal to noise_
24 Newport Road
London E10 6PJ
U.K.
+44 181 556 4492
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"Yes, my real name is Jordan. I just thought that Taylor would bring out the
color of my eyes." - Taylor Hanson
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