Hi all,
Below are responses I made to Barry's query to me re the snap I posted
last week and his follow-up. I mistakenly replied to him alone and not
to the list as a whole - a product of the slightly overwhelmed space
I'm operating in at the mo'. So I have appended mine and his responses
below, starting from the most recent.
I have just literally arrived in Sydney for a few days, as in just
walked in the door, so may add more later in the day when I get my sea
legs.
Cheers all,
Jill
________________
Hi Jill,
Thanks for the detailed response, but surprised you didn't post it to
Poetryetc as well. ...
That "l" completely derailed me, even to the point of never
considering that you were modulating the possibilities of "repeat and
change" from line 1 thru line 8.
For a time I thought you might be working with Reich's comments on how
he revised OCTET into EIGHT LINES:
"In addition to the original scoring for Octet (string quartet, two
pianos, and two clarinets doubling both bass clarinet and flute as
well as piccolo), Reich added another string quartet. Eight Lines is
exactly the same piece as Octet, but adds additional players to make
the performance easier. As Reich describes it, the additional two
violins solve "the difficulty of playing rather awkward double stops
in tune," and the additional viola and cello "allow the rapid eighth-
note patterns to be broken up between ... two players" to prevent
fatigue. In 1985 New York City Ballet balletmaster Jerome Robbins made
an eponymous dance to this music."
My most recent working with musical ideas resulted from attending a 3-
part presentation about the composer Lou Harrison, with whom Steve
Reich must have had contact when he was living in Northern California.
Enjoyed the video I saw of you reading & introducing at a poetry
confluence in New Zealand.
Barry
--- On Mon, 4/18/11, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: snap - eight lines
> To: "Barry Alpert" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Monday, April 18, 2011, 12:53 AM
> Hi Barry,
>
> Thanks for the question - and all the links. I had some trouble with
> the flicker so could not sit through the whole video, but got the
> drift. My vision isn't what it used to be. Your words say well, so
> far as I could see/hear.
>
> Possibly I was a bit misleading in my previous email. I began with
> the words 'repeat and change', as is apparent, and changed them
> whilst adding an element (the consonant 'l'). It was a momentary
> 'snap' of an idea - I had been doing a
> bit of reading around music, including Reich, but the phrase is a
> misremembering of something that was written about Brian Eno's work
> (I think). My listening / hearing of Eight Lines, a version of which
> was playing while I was reading, did
> not feed directly into that writing, ie I wasn't trying to translate
> sounds, but it was me doing some play with the idea of what 'repeat
> and change' could mean as a generative process. A kind of naive
> play, as play it was - I mucked about rather than set up a process
> and let it run.
>
> I have been finding it difficult, if almost impossible, to write
> lately - lots of factors - so I am happy for anything that spurs me
> on. Ideas around composing music, though not the same as thinking
> about composing poems, often help me, but in an associative way more
> than a direct way. I'm also newly involved in a professional/
> institutional association with composers/musicians so music-and-
> words was on my mind.
>
> Cheers,
> Jill
__________________________
Jill Jones
[log in to unmask]
website: www.jilljones.com.au
blog: rubystreet.blogspot.com
On 18/04/2011, at 2:03 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
> Hi Jill,
>
> Initially I thought this poem was written out of drafts and
> fragments you were sorting thru, salvaging bits and trying to place
> them in some sort of relation to other bits. That had been your
> last compositional practice evidenced here.
>
> But now that you mention Steve Reich's EIGHT LINES, which never came
> to mind at least partly because I remember it as OCTET, I can see
> how your lines 5-8 rework the letters available in the first four
> lines ("repeat and change"). I've occasionally translated psycho-
> acoustic sound into words, but listening to EIGHT LINES on youtube I
> can't hear the words which make up your lines 1-4. So perhaps you
> can tell us more about this particular process of composition.
>
> For Poetryetc list members here's a link to a complete performance
> (in 2 parts) of EIGHT LINES:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie3sVmiVuUQ&NR=1
>
> For a fairly recent example of my translation of psycho-acoustic
> sound and visual image into words:
>
> http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=3001
>
> And its source, with a warning in front that this flicker film by
> Paul Sharits with sound and body by David Franks could set off an
> epileptic fit or at least drive you to turn it off. Still a very
> powerful experience for me when I watched it for perhaps the sixth
> time, ideally situated front row center at the National Gallery of
> Art in Washington DC, and wrote the above text, without remembering
> for sure what Franks was saying over and over again.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKXOdjydIR0
>
>
> Barry
>
>
> On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 23:53:56 +0000, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]
> > wrote:
>
>> Hi Barry,
>>
>> That's interesting about your email's version of what I sent. I'm
>> operating from
>> a webmail system at the moment and it does not show up.
>>
>> I should ask what you did imagine before I go into details, but I
>> will say that
>> the title 'Eight Lines' is also the title of a piece by Steve
>> Reich, that I was
>> listening to at the time. And the phrase 'repeat and change' was
>> the source of
>> the text generation.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jill
>>
>>
>> P.S. By the way, all my poetryetc friends, I have been much
>> preoccupied with
>> multitudinous 'stuff' over the last couple of months and, though I
>> see
>> discussions, snaps and other material sweep through my in-box, I
>> have not been
>> able to enter into the stream. This snap is the first 'anything' -
>> minimal as it
>> is - I have written, apart from admin or student-based necessities,
>> for ages.
>> (Now I have a lecture on Ashbery to prepare.) Even emails have been
>> all
>> business-related. I hope for a freeing up soon, so I can join in
>> the exchange again.
>>
>>
>> ________________________
>> Jill Jones
>>
>> www.jilljones.com.au
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri Apr 8 6:30 , Barry Alpert <[log in to unmask]> sent:
>>
>>> I enjoyed rereading your poem. Altered syntactical relations came
>>> to mind. I
>> believe I can imagine your process of composition.
>>>
>>> Though your two instructional lines in appear when one clicks on
>>> your first
>> post of this within the archive, but not when one merely positions
>> the cursor
>> over the link.
>>>
>>> Barry
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 04:11:38 +0000, [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> two lines missing from under poem when I sent this
>>>>
>>>> repeat
>>>> and change
>>>>
>>>> which I enclosed with , each. But my webmail probably interpreted
>>>> it as some
>>>> kind of code and deleted.
>>>>
>>>> J
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________
>>>> Jill Jones
>>>>
>>>> www.jilljones.com.au
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]>
>>>> To: ''Poetryetc : poetry and poetics'' [log in to unmask]>
>>>> Sent: Thu Apr 7 14:08
>>>> Subject: Fwd: snap - eight lines
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> reap angel
>>>>
>>>> dance eat
>>>>
>>>> hang and
>>>>
>>>> chang p-chang
>>>>
>>>> rap a pan
>>>>
>>>> gel gel, gel
>>>>
>>>> re danger, get
>>>>
>>>> rapt, ha
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________
>>>> Jill Jones
>>>>
>>>> www.jilljones.com.au
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