An Erotics of Art: A Specific Attempt at Failure

Abstract

Every act of criticism is an act of violence. In this paper, this axiom is most obvious in the Erotics, which are un-edited free-written responses.

Is it possible to conceive of a form of musical criticism that reflects the very subject(s) it attempts to mobilise? To embrace the fluid ontologies of music while limiting the ossifying nature of linguistic criticism? The Erotics of Art was a project I ran in 2016 to try and create such an art form. Myself and a select few artists, writers and musicians were asked to create “responses” to musical works of their choice. These responses had to be created in real-time, as they listened. These are my submissions. Because of my grounding, the majority of each response is text based (I am loathe to say linguistic…) but occasionally text fails me. I stretch it to what I saw as its intelligible limit at the time, and used images and free-drawing too.

The resulting pieces are a searing autoethnographic matrix of my situation at the time, as provoked by these musics. The inspiration came from both Susan Sontag, from whom I clearly ape the name of the series, and an old Downbeat Magazine section called “Blindfold Test”. Examples are easily found. They may seem discursive but rest assured: I am talking about the music itself and nothing else.

We begin with the piece that sparked the project, and continue alphabetically from there.

Marion Brown: Afternoon of a Georgia Faun

**An erotics of art **

Marion Brown, Anthony Braxton, Bennie Maupin, Jeanne Lee, Gayle Palmore, Chick Corea, Jack Gregg, Andrew Cyrille - ‘Afternoon of a Georgia Faun’ – August 10, 1970, ECM 1004

Taps dripping. I get why Brown called them rain drops or water blocks or whatever he called them. Atmosphere.

Water. Water water everywhere and ne’er a drop to drink. Shh. Hush. Dance of a mayfly.

There’s nothing I can find anywhere about Steven James. He some kind of doctor, he’s an academic… He’s anything but a poet. But his in the reviews and views and I can hear him now WHERE’S MY GUN whistling isn’t happy. Memory maybe but its intense. Memory isn’t happy.

There was a giant wooden gate where I went to school – my first school – I thought I was an adult when I was given that blue satchel – my classmates and I used to talk about vaulting it, the gate, making an escape. Mr Mulerba the janitor or whatever you call them – not a groundskeeper, there was no ground to keep – he said we couldn’t, said he would be the one who got in trouble. So we didn’t. We liked him. He used to get his ladder out to retrieve our footballs when they went over the fence the other side of the playground. A Trojan giant fence, three times our height.

I went back recently and it barely came up to my waist.

Maybe Floyd listened to this.

James again – ‘sweat’

Bells bend. I don’t know how or what to say but it’s here somewhere, in my head. A call now. Long. Black and white, so far. City symphony. Tilt shift people looking like toys. Ruttman. Lang.

Buchner. Klaus Klinski Woyzeck struggling to his feet in the forest. ‘Always a symbol of confusion, sexual deviancy, mystery, the unknown’ – Miss Moorehead. She would hate this. She hated Glass, loved Wagner, would hate this.

But its so there.

Long calls. Falling calls. The vertigo shot.

Slow fall – slow echo.

Why am I connecting everything to film?

I can’t separate this from knowing its Chick, but god it is there. What’s it all about Alfie?

But like Berkoff. East. Kafka’s bug flitting, but more like Nabokov’s lepidoptery.

Voice with Chick. Calling. Ritual? Smells like yoghurt.

H e a t h h h h e e e e e e a a a a a a a a t t t t t

‘the sun makes madness of our men’

‘oh dear but look what the heat/ does to your dreams/ shimmering far away … PREPARE!/IT IS COMING! … and here we are again/ hung in the morning sun to dry’ (Steve James)

/

There was a red balloon, I remember, probably one of those Virgin ones – big basket underneath, touristy shit. I hadn’t seen my dad for a few days, didn’t know anything was wrong until Alice picked me up from the station after school. I’d forgotten to pick up my student discount card from the office and so couldn’t get my season ticket. There were police at home, and all the grandparents. Dad had said some ‘really, really nasty things’, or something like that. He was hiding debt. Fallen totally into the neo-liberal trap of loan dependence and masculine silence. I only realised later that I’d seen it happen – the penny drop (fucking tasteless, that James) – his eyes squint in fearful understanding that he’d been avoiding phone calls for too long. Because I forgot my season ticket school pass he had to get me a ticket at the station, and his card didn’t work. Three or four times. I don’t remember. I didn’t know it would be important. He paid on his expenses card, his work card and drove off. Saying even less than the nothing he’d usually say.

We used to get so many calls from MBNA or something asking for him. I was convinced our number was some public domain thing, picked up by phishers. Once he got a free scratch card with the newspaper and spent two hours on the phone with them to ask about what he won. This was a bloody smart man, falling for what he always said was a con. Except he wasn’t falling for it. He was desperate. You can say that now, obviously. The strands come together when you know the root of the problem. There’s my left bias again. Because of course he wasn’t the problem, the system was. Still think that. Flag waving. Heart on sleeve – further than it can already go?

But after Alice picked me up later it all happened and I only remember bits. He jokes about then now, but never talks about what he said to mum. Apparently he threatened to kill himself. He figured it would be easier for us if he wasn’t there anymore. That’s how low he went. That’s how twisted his fear of weakness made him. My family even now doesn’t want to discuss details or the bad or anything of depth. Stoic silence. I’m the only non-scientist in the house. I don’t work in absolutes. Not so good at the rationalisation.

He vanished for a bit. I was told where he went to figure out his last day, but I forgot. That bit wasn’t important. It was offensive that that would ever even happen. A fucking joke. A fucking cruel joke. Rhetoric is a natural thing. The important bit was he was coming home. Mum found him eventually and picked him up. She said she sat with him on the ground somewhere and they just spoke. The thing is you can tell they bloody love each other.

But he came home and I met him on the driveway. I hope the hug told him what we never say – pride, trust, love, forgiveness, whatever – none of that and all of that shit.

There’s was a red balloon over the woods opposite the house when he came back. That’s what I remember.

The sort of shit that everyone has but no one acknowledges that often. I didn’t really understand where my head was at until I discovered Stag’s Leap, Sharon Olds’ dissection of divorce.

The furthest distance I’ve travelled

I’ve been between those people

There was a deer in that woods – tiny woods, too – that came out and we could see it when we ate tea sometimes.

Skein

Digging through the past I think I lived

I thought of when I brought a pedal home

and saw passion in my father

for the first time

unpicking every bolt

combing every spring;

it goes back and forth.

Hits a drum when I tell it to.

Just connecting thoughts. Free – writing to a soundtrack of Georgia according to a young Marion Brown, retroactively applied.

James: ‘covered with the snakes of our past/ is this tomorrow?/ or today?’

I’ve never been to Georgia, but I get the heat. So much heat. Dry. Intense heat. Spike Lee – do the right thing. Samuel L. in a radio station: ‘It is hot!’ Doors loose on their joints. Dust – it’s always dust isn’t it, when it’s hot? The sand was the ground where I grew up. It’s the middle of the day yet the moon is full and the sky was the sky was the sky was a colour I had not seen

Albert Ayler: Untitled Blues

An erotics of art

Albert Ayler, Call Cobbs, Bill Folwell, Bernard Purdie – untitled blues – circa. August 1968 – from Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70) disc 6, track 6, 6 minutes long.

Good evening ladies and gentleman.

So wonderful to see so many of your lovely faces here tonight – familiar and new – welcome all.

Well now pineapple lozenge taken down from the roof of the old sawmill while covered in a fetching combination of blue suede and darkened leather – possibly from the very cow that fed the marching nuns just a f ew hours before.

As he fell 6’3" police sergeant Phillippa Berry look mightily convincing in her wild cabalistic symbols and newly long hair. There was an earlier incident in which she had attempted to thaw a chicken in the tumble drier and had woken the neighbours with a frightful din after realising that it was actually her sleeping cat making such a noise as the barrel rotated, and not the cadaver of a chicken – stubbornly refusing to eat Sourpuss’ crunchy treats.

Me sir? No sir? You sir? Yes sir? No sir? Be the law on my side?

Nothing jejune here, ladies and gentlemen, By means of a diversion, ladies and gentlemen, I assure. You are as welcome as ever in our quaint little club. It appears that as I continue to give this oration the air in my diving suit is failing me, so if anyone could prize it off my head – being sure to be careful of the wine glass so delicately placed at the rim – that would be marvellous. And now Mr Purdie.

I was surprised to see his name alongside Ayler’s. Purdie’s the hitmaker. The shuffle. King – absolute king – of the pocket. But then you can’t wild out and say what you really want without someone translating it. Or, rather, without someone letting the come-in-error friends have something to hold on to.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bernard Purdie. Isn’t he lovely? Bit cramped there at the back of our small stage there Purd? Yes well, ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming and

Bass. Mellow. Time for a breath.

I must remind you all that after his third puppy passed away, our manager is seeming to spend more and more time with his animatronic second wife. ‘you should get out more, Mable, you’ll wind up looking like a car, hah hah’.

Tracks finished. Again, I’m not sure about how I handled this. Veering towards direct invocations of Vivian Stanshall and allusions to Dali. Ayler wasn’t surreal. Far from it. He wasn’t absurd far from it. I guess my point is this: Ayler should have played for Derrida – you can only really play by following the rules? BULLSHIT.

Purdie, Cobbs and Folwell are speaking eruditely and clearly in a familiar language. They’re speaking Blues. Ayler’s speaking BLUES. Ayler’s raving in an entirely different – but he’s tone, his assonance, his gesture, his sound: we all know exactly what he means, having never heard the language before. Maybe that’s a bit far: I can guess at what his meaning does to me.

Ah the lessons of structuralism.

John Coltrane: Selflessness

An erotics of art

John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Donald Rafael Garrett, Frank Butler, Elvin Jones, Juno Lewis – ‘Selflessness’ – 1965, Kulu sé Mama (Impulse A-9106)

Full disclosure: I’m pretty hungover and sitting in a Morrison’s café waiting for some kind of breakfast to arrive while my car hopefully gets its MOT passed. Ie. lots of shit on my mind that aren’t – won’t be exactly useful for tackling Coltrane. And I don’t really know this album – but I wanted to tackle something later than Ascension… He had much more to say after that, you know? Bit of meandering to start. and sound like Pharoah just wants to get going. He champing. Revving up. And, shit, the gates are open. Trane leaves the station. How’s that for mixed metaphors? Trane’s only one person here though. Sure, he’s jumping around the melody but it’s a full on conversation with the Pharoah. I don’t know how much their agreeing. But fuck it sounds good. Someone’s interjecting with some bongos or congas or something. Elvin is being Elvin. The chaos is wonderful. Semi-quavers stac. against long overblown screeches. God this is wonderful. Stop describing James. Just write what’s happening. The thing growls, it’s guttural, fierce. Screaming, shouting, howling – all those journalese bollocks clichés. There’s so much being said at once that it’s hard to follow just one. Imagine a meeting of some the smartest minds in the world, all given the floor to talk about one subject. Each one brings a different angle, grown out of a different context, a different life. But each and every word uttered is the clearest, most concise and frank expression of the idea that you have ever heard. You try and get everything but can only get fragments. That’s it. Fragments. That makes sense. Not their’s – they’ve spent lifetimes working out what they need to say and how to say it: any flaw in this exchange s all mine. I’m a neophyte in their temple – trying to understand the rituals, the process, the years of work in a second. There’s only so much I’ll be able to take in. I’m not nodding – I’m grimacing. In a good way though.

I don’ like all this religiosity in the imagery though. Tough shit. Keep writing. Or not, food’s here

Attempting to jump back in. Man, I am going about this all the wrong ways – how I been taught anyway. Stop start stop start. McCoy’s running some killer lines and clusters and someone is walloping some percussion of some kind but it sounds great I should do it justice. McCoy’s lines sound Mongolian. Fucking weird segwey. Those runs up and down, big, clunky sounds. The only time I’ve ridden a horse was in Mongolia. What a fuckng nuts place. Got there through Russia and within five minutes of being in the country I’d directly witnessed six car crashes and a bus driving into a telegraph pole and causing some kind of electrical fire. why do I think of horses in Mongolia? Of yurts and dumplings and throat singing? Open planes – somewhere between Sahara and tundra? I can’t shrug in words. The natural? The expansiveness, more likely. The horse at one point tried to kick me off and that was one of the calmest moments of my life – it was like a natural motion was happening around me and I happened to be caught in it. The quiet in the middle of a tornado. Nah, that’s overblown to high hell. But its happened a few times – like when that horse bucked – I was given the calmest, oldest horse, too (what’s that say about humanity’s views on the natural world? calmest? Tamest? Most reformed? Especially out there – a hundred miles from U.B.) – it’s like watching yourself on reply from a new angle – bird’s eye view, third person, roaming camera, whatever. Not a flow state, cause you’re totally passive, but also the most active you could ever be, but it’s more like an active passivity. What the hell does that mean? That’s what this sounds like. The shakers, the bells, the drums, Elvin – McCoy – immersive anarchy. Pharoah and Trane back. I love what they do with the sax. Makes it so urgent, so much fire. If I unplugged my headphones I’d be happy to bet everyone else in this café would precisely hate what this sounds like. let’s find out.

.

.

.

Got to about 20 seconds of everyone really blazing before someone out here muttered something about it. Lots of looks before that though. I pathologise very readily.

But I’m waiting for a car to be fixed – a car I own – how fucking ridiculous is that? There’s an extent to which I feel like there’s so many levels of this music that I cant appreciate because I’m white, male, middle-class brought up… And me sitting in a café loving the sound of what everyone around just demonstrated was not to their tastes. There’s a spiral of self-pity and angst right there. What bullshit. This shit’s about being alive. Period. Art isn’t hereditary. That might be it: everyone thinks it’s in some way still improper. Using the sax wrong. Playing the drums without the technique. Playing the kit without a safe pulse. Maybe that’s it. My fetish for the disagreeable. No not that, that makes me sound lik a fucking deviant lunatic. Just to make people think.Not quite that either, just: no one can tell anyone else how they feel, how they should act, all that crap. Some killer mike: something like: learn shit outside of school, because school pretty much only prepares you to be a factory worker. And zac de la rocha – the thing that’s closing quicker than the caskets be the factories There it is: there’s such a politics here. Defiance. Willing madness – ‘hegemonic’ madness as self-expression. no one they got so much shit. If every thinks you’re crazy you gotta be doing something right if you know yourself. Fuck. Barely an epiphany or anything, but this noise makes me feel shit – makes me think about shit. There’s an assumed willingness to partake. Braxton’s entertainment versus impact or some other neologisms. Don’t be passive. Never be passive. This is a Community saying exactly that. In each their own way, but so together. They strive forward towards something – probably something never could reach. The difference is me is a spiritual one. I’ll go to killer mike (render) again: pope is a fraud a god is a lie a queen is the same damn thing better pray to your fake god that she die I’ll tell you this if god really exists it resides inside anybody tellin you different just selling you religion tryin to keep your ass in line

There’s an anger. But goddammit it’s relatable. Ferocity. Think I’ve said that a few times now. That’s what I get. The essence of this what? nonet? octet? Octet. And the title – a strive towards Selflessness. It may not sound it, but I think their being as Selfless as it comes: in a way sacrificing commercial (ie. getting by(!)) to make a fucking point about neo-liberal capitalism and how competition ruins everything. Loaded terms there. Any chance I get my Marx and Kropotkin love comes out full bloody force. This is an advertisement (hooray for irony) for Selflessness – a provocation, no a promulgation, a cry for it. In hip-hop people say artists get killed for speaking truth. Same with a king and a balcony. Mike render again: you really made it or just became a prisoner of privildege/ you willing to share the information you be given?/ like who really run this?/ like who run the man who say he run this?/ like who run the man who say he run this say he run this?/ like who really fund this?/ like who fund the man who say he fund this?/ like who in the world gon’ tell Donal’ Sterl’ who to put on the you can’t come list?/ now don’t be silly, who the fuck gon’ bully be if I got a billi’/ if I got a billi’ and a bitch record I’m like who cares?!/ where I wouldn’t be is on tv, stuttering, t-t-t-talking scared/ so what I want I know is when he’s alone/ at home by the side of the phone/ who’s the voice the other side that makes him shake and rattle his bones/ could it be the man behind the man behnd the man behind the throne?

I must know all these lyrics for reason.

And like that – in chaos as it ends. No fanfare, just the end of a sentence. Punctuation by Elvin.

Two more things I learnt in Mongolia: leider geil – the best phrase I’ve ever known (unfortunately horny – literally) And the confirmation of an aphorism from a Scotsman who plays jazz, has two TS Eliot prizes and thinks of Chomsky as a moderate (ie. what a guy) – anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only confirmed a prejudice.

As the dieticians are so keen to tell you these days: keep away from sugar. Call this what you want but it sure as hell ain’t saccharine So I’ll close up with this: havnt read what’s above, nor will I – that’s the point – but I come out feeling disappointed. feeling like I havnt followed my own rules – arbitrary as they are. but I’ve been swearing a lot and that should tell you something. I don’t know who ‘you’ is but that’s not really important.

Derek Bailey: Solo

An erotics of art

Derek Bailey – solo – London, 1985, published June 14 2010

Starts is space. ‘Space is the place’.

Harmonics and detune. Stop james, break out of this habit, that’s what you’re trying to do.

let ring

Chaplin – Modern Times – man as cog, man as machine, man as producer and product all for powerMAN [Wadada]. Chunky, mechanical. Is it too much to read into this a protest that Chaplin made? WE are not machines, with machine hearts and machine minds, we are men – I can’t remember the quote This sounds like modernism looks. Smells like oil. psychotropically. it is mechanical chaos at the hands of man. the manipulation of the machine by the man the production line of music – a product that cannot be a product – an expression of self-dominance no self-controll no self-mastery, >yeah that;s better

chug chug chug chug chug – the exact train Danny Boyle’s franKenstein = mutli-role – duality of MAN ) ^ Prometheus of machine £

like a train of the draining of a bottle the emptying of a vein – each pulse a # little more a lttle + mre

laaaaaanndddsliiiiiidddeee - *sedimentary rocks tip itno othrs chn rctn fll rcks nt mr rcks nt mr & gtr answrs tslf lw 2 hgh

a Fata Morgana

a Brocken spectre

Don Cherry: Utopia and Visions

An erotics of art

Don Cherry, Tommy Goldman, Tommy Koverhult, Maffy Falay, H’suan, Hans Isgren, Naná Vasconcelos, Helen Eggert, Moki Cherry, Chris Bothen, Tage Siven, Okay Temiz, Bengt Berger – ‘Utopia and Visions’- August 14 1972, Organic Music Society (Caprice)

I’m planted with Murasaki Shikibu. Is that ridiculous? I guess it doesn’t matter. But that’s where I land. In the court of a book written a thousand years ago of a culture I could never really grasp. Sounds like a music of the soil. It’s earthy. The ostinato transcends ostinato – it’s repetition about something else. Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees. None of this Romantic lyric tradition ‘voice of the people’ crap though. There’s no affectation here. I think Brown said something about flutes flirting or calling out themselves on something (Marion, by the way). many voices one voice Ostinato still goes on – heartbeat; Gaia; fades and grows fades and grows It’s so human. Still June 14, by the way. Still trying too hard. Loosen up james. Follow the calls of the utopia vision. I hear the cries and see Sons of Kemet – choreographed commentary for one of their videos. Drums. Earth. Dust. False control. The village is evoked – brought in – so is the trumpet Hear the hymnal cry invocation seamlessly shared and…

Joëlle Léandre et Lauren Newton: Frac Franche Comté

An erotics of art

Joëlle Léandre et Lauren Newton – Frac Franche Comté – published March 3 2016

Bangwalkingwalkingnotwalkingfallingstumblingthewalkofbroken legs INTENSITYBURSTSCATSKATDUMTICTICTICUMDMDM WALKINGNOTMUSICSLIDEBASSSLAP P H Y S I C A L

music as the visceral the point is made through assault

thereisnojourneyheretheydonotrelatetoyourpastjamestheyrelatetonowtheytalkonlyofpossibilityoffutureofnowthepastisatoolnostalgiaistostallthewalkthewanderingintomeaningadefianceIAMHERE ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça. ça?ça.

						ça.

Comments: Merci d’exister, Joëlle… !Lauren et vous m’avez porté hors les frontières d’un temps retenu entre deux souffles… je vous remercie pour la belle dédicace … je vous aime … infiniment … (Priscille Froidevaux)

infiniment…

Matana Roberts: Untitled No.1

An erotics of Art

Matana Roberts – ‘Untitled No.1’ – May 19 2015, RPR1036

Here is growth.

Here

Here is growth.

He Her Here

growth .

				no

gworth here

Ohm Mmmmm

I am become liquid

						;

So here now is growth

Warm growth People say music is warm a lot This is what they mean So little Reaches its full

If it is warm it is a home. No, a fire. Slow. On a beach. Warming large, flat stones. Sparks jump up but it is silent bar the wind and the bars of lazy ocean.

Shane Carruth would edit this. Soft focus. Blurry vision. Dirty shots. Malick maybe. You know what I mean? Lots of nature superimposed over silence or over nostalgia. Fire and stale nostalgia.

				;
								;

Flitflitflitflit.

Here is growth.

					Matana – I feel I can call you Matana already – this is your Nefertiti – but not in relation to you, to me. All I can claim is relation to me. I place myself within your mouth as you blow life into it. Cliché bullshit.

Open up. stop saying what it is say what it does. what it does.

lament.

here is growth.

Breath

						breathe


















	Why is my face wet and my mouth tasting salt? Beauty is truth truth beauty – or whatever other bollocks you want to call it. I’m not trying to nail Fanny Brown.

It’s called ‘Untitled No.1’ and it’s improvised but the music here is not a one-off experience. It is a multitude of experiences. For the music to get here – let alone Matana – countless numbers were abducted, enslaved, beaten, raped and killed in the making of this record. Microviolence continues. What am I saying; macroviolence continues. Too often we are too keen to separate the work from where it came from. Matana knows the history. Look at Coin Coin. What was she said? Something like, ‘understand: without the bidding in of all those people, I wouldn#t be here enjoying my life’. Creative Defiance. Here is a haunting aural reminder that jazz, improvisation, creative music, whatever they call it now, is the product of horror. Gilbert Matthews ranting in a bar: ‘you’ve colonised me but done fuck all’. Erudition.

Fuck me, that echo.

all this space is exactly the lack I’m trying to bypass – but this sound produces lack in me that produces meaning that I cannot articulate

this isn’t working Ill try something else [attach]

?

								yes?

Kane. Sarah.

Nohopenohopenohopenohopenohopenohopenohope. Dramatise this. Not ballet. NOT ballet. or is it backwards? Matana is the dramatist. I hear a play and hear

hereisgrowth

hereisgrowthhereisgrowthheisgrowthheisgrowth

HERE I HER I

		ANTHEM
					CLAIM

don’t shoot

MY NAME DON’T SHOOT MY NAME IS I AM

					I AM YOU

DON’T MY NAME IS machine

Ambrose Akinmusire.

Her e is growth

we are complicit in Matana’s breathing we are complicit in Matana pulse breath heart skin

31:25 – She’s the ONE! She’s the ONE! She’s the ONE! She’s the ONE!

Comments: l o v e (Dannyell Koozk)

Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz

An erotics of art

**The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet (Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, Eric Dolphy, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry) – Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation – December 21 1960, Atlantic SD 1364 **

Advancement and retreat. Advancement is not an attack, but an opening. Retreat is not a surrendering to the enemy. Not an admission of loss. Advancement is engagement. Passion. Retreat is dignified disengagement. Gentle withdrawal. To retreat is not to flee. You cannot always control oneself or the situation from the battlefield. One cannot always control oneself or the situation away from the battlefield. Advancement and retreat. There is no duty in either. There is forfeit in both. There are times when you can only retreat. When staying on the field will only dirty your boots and your mind. You cannot save it by remaining in it. You cannot fix it. There are times when you can only advance. When you are pulled to action. You cannot understand it. When the oratory of those before you surge through your mouth. Advancement and retreat. Space and density. Words and words. Sense and non-sense. Retreat and advancement. When you return again people may be astonished that still exist. Even you may be. Revolution is not a force triumphing and overcoming another. It is constant. Revolution harmonises. Rendering together that which we have kept apart.
People need not know what you are doing. (P.s.: Hexagons #33, #49, #24. The I Ching and the many thinkers before me, to whom I am indebted.) Taking a leaf from Leanna Shapton’s book (should that not be taking a brush from her palette? Or something…) I’ve decided, after each new erotic to offer a ‘tablescape’ of where I’m writing. In and of themselves, they will offer no great insight, but will give an incidental map of where I’m at when I write/draw/respond to what I’m hearing. Shapton started documenting them upon realising that she navigated her work and week based on her desk topography.

Richard Davis: Dealin’

An erotics of art

Richard Davis, Freddie Waits, David Spinozza, Paul Griffin, Clifford Jordan, Hannibal Marvin Peterson – ‘Dealin’’ September 14 1973 Dealin’ Muse Records (MR 5027)

Black Fire! New Spirits! Radical and Revolutionary Jazz – that’s the album I first found this on. Quite a few of the next tunes actually. It’s june 14 There’s a clear jumping form. Good jumping. Dance jumping. Advertised as spiritual to me. Dancing music. My mind’s occupied by Orlanda. Pulse. The communion of the dance. Orlando Orlando Orlando. Fucking hell. I’m remember hearing about the Bataclan live and crying. Orlando? Fuck is all I got. That and silence. Fuck.

But this spiritual places me in Pulse on any other night. The communion of the dance. The power of it. Like in The Matrix 2 – one of the least subtle films of all time. Celebrations of humanity and free will. We will shake these walls and show them WE ARE NOT AFRAID. – Morpheus (or something like it). There’s anger here for sure. Listen to the bells. The horns don’t stop. There’s a point that’s being made – a vital point that needs to get across. Form collapses into the point. Fucking Orlando.

But what is the point being made? Solos are out and it sounds so

I don’t know, important somehow. The transience of the whole game. Unison cries. We must dance? Is that the thing?

Fuck

Why does there need to be a thing? My headspace is all caught up with it. Celebrate the celebrations. Fucking Orlando. Richard Davis didn’t know anything about this. How could he? But the dance and the shouts and the anger and the fear. It’s all here somehow. It’s all here in my head. And I wish upon each wick.

Edward Sotomayor Jr. – 34 Stanley Almodovar III – 23 Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo – 20 Juan Ramon Geurrero – 22 Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera – 36 Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz – 22 Luis S. Vielma – 22 Kimberly Morris – 37 Eddie Jamoldrov Justice – 30 Darryl Roman Burt II – 29 Deonka Deidra Drayton – 32 Alejandro Barrios Martinez – 21 Anthony Luis Laureano Disla – 25 Jean Carlos Mendez Perez – 35 Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez – 50 Amanda Alvear – 25 Martin Benitez Torres – 33 Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon – 37 Mercedez Marisol Flores – 26 Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado – 35 Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez – 25 Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez – 31 Oscra A Aracena-Montero – 26 Enrique L Rios, Jr – 25 Miguel Angel Honorato – 30 Javier Jorge-Reyes – 40 Joel Rayon Paniagua – 32 Jason Benjamin Josaphat – 19 Cory James Connell – 21 Juan P Rivera Velazquez – 37 Luis Daniel Conde – 39 Shane Evan Tomlinson – 33 Juan Chevez-Martinez – 25 Jerald Arthur Wright – 31 Leroy Valentin Fernandez – 25 Tevin Eugene Crosby – 25 Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega – 24 Jean C Nives Rodriguez – 27 Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala – 33 Brenda Lee Marquez McCool – 49 Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan – 24 Christopher Andrew Leinonen – 32 Angel L Candelario-Padro – 28 Frank Hernandez – 27 Paul Terrell Henry – 41 Antonio Davon Brown – 29 Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz – 24 Akyra Monet Murray – 18 Geraldo A Ortiz-Jimenez – 25

Dealin stopped a while ago. white noise hum now harmonising with the tinnitus – the seamless scream. But I needed to do that. I don’t know why. But I know these are people I will never get the chance to know – I can at least type their names right. The least I can do not to get numb to all this shit. Who gives a fuck if I never would have met them anyway?

Don: Today we friends and strangers meet Because our friend is now complete. He has left time. Perhaps we feel that we are the ghosts, and he the real so fixed and constant does he seem. So starlike. May the human dream arise again to find him woken at its heart. Though to be spoken once is as miraculous as a thousand times. What utters us, blind nature, told the trees and birds and bright stars; yet of all the words we knew, his name was the most dear. We give thanks he was spoken here.

Wadada Leo Smith: September 11, 2001

An erotics of art

Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet – ‘September 11th, 2001: A Memorial’ - Café Oto, London, 23 November 2013

Opening shot – a bit Scorcese, zooming out and in and the same time – some eyes. Doesn’t matter whose they are. They’re walking through NY. I’ve never been, but to me it’s NY. Huge empty roads, three lanes each way, towering blocks either side. Walking slowly through the middle of these streets. They seem familiar but look foreign. No one else. There is no else. Then it’s like one of those hollywood things you know where everything’s slow motion except the focal point. so this person walking through empty city – I see a man probably because I am one. suit. tie around neck. explosions going every where , still in slo-mo – so slow we can see the shock waves. everything keeps exploding. violence. slowed to the point of examination. man walking slowly, smiling in loss. scraps of metal and charred rock flow past his head. slowly. he ducks to avoid them. never looking at anything other than the camera. anything other us. the burning metal and smell of repercussions weighs us down. glass. smash. break. crack. the explosions form a backing dance to our man slowly walking through the city. film glitches. memories of this man. jolt between the slow walk and the sunny afternoon and static and crying and pain and pain and pain and shock and laugh and pain and slow walking through an empty city. he turns people are falling he cannot do but smile slowly. languid. everything still so slow. the opposite of life flashing before our eyes. he stops. takes off his suit. its laboured. his clothes join the rubble. he is sexless. blackness. suit on floor. blackness. man. blacknessfire. throwing everything. too much detail. lynch coming. too much detail. too much. hands over mouths. empty eyes filled with salt water. streetsinking below water. nothing. only nothing. explosions flow still. silent cry. berberian sound. only a face. no sound. dwell on this too many movies controlling my thoughts maybe I’m not as independent as I think too many idesa that culture says are worthy making up me. there it is. defining note of our generation that can only be expressed in antithesis. the quartet plus jesse gilbert – ground zero flashing redorange building once there. I knew it was over. not in the way of a sudden shatter but in the way when you drop a vase and no crack just its dead dull thud tells you there isn’t much time left it’s already over. its cold too cold for snow but there is snow grey snow through curtains I rmember the sun rising but youre not here now to tell me ive gone wrong to hold me to let me go people run around our naked man finding christ in the burnted ground new coloured ground with heavy incense tulips loosen and drop in a vase willing them to sleep they are touched and moved that s all touched by menwomenchild shout over rubble flashing blue red white so many wheels so many wheels chaoschaoschaos listen listen you can hear the smell of perdition it wasn’t meant to be like this I remember her on her bed she did not know me by then I was a fiction I was the ghost id not wanted to watch it not like pumping out at all more like an emptying a bottleneck a little more each pulse light and very cold at the end so much red and the skin so white delirium some are jerked back to the world most are not how long have I been leaving? each breath is a flame that gives in to fire;

and grief is the price we pay for love,

and the death of love the fee of all desire

‘it is not’ Sam Beckett

Tyrone Washington: Universal Spiritual Revolt

An erotics of art

Tyrone Washington, Hubert Eaves III, Billy Nichols, René McLean, Idris Muhammad – ‘Universal Spiritual Revolt’ – released 1974 sometime but bluenote.com say : ‘Recording period between 1966-1967’ – from Do Right (Blue Note)

BLAM – starts fierce and all hard BOP baby. Not much is know about Washington. bluenote.com: Bio n/a 0 likes. 0 tweets. 0 shares. And already Tyrone is fucking tearing shit up. THis is amazing. Dudes got SHIT TO SAY. Holy crap. Here’s some unverifiable fun from an Amazon review of Natural Essence: ‘Tyrone R. Washington is my brother and he did drift away from music to pursue his religion. Woody Shaw grew up in our home and through his suggestions got my brother to leave Howard University School of Music and join the Horace Silver bans during the early 1960s. My brother moved into New York City’s State of New York Conservatory of Music Building on West Street. And, as you maybe aware, played with a number of the great artist before completely abandoning music for preaching the gospel. Tyrone changed his name to Bialar Mohammed. He lives in Newark, New Jersey and while we respect his decision to leave music and practice his faith, he left a lot of great music on the table. To God be the glory. This is one of his great works of art. Bob Washington’ – botch ctrl+c ctrl+v job, but cool right? Doesn’t help – but maybe shows you there’s the fire. But SHIT – this track is blazing!!! Bells. Horns. Cymbals fucking everywhere. This is a sensory onslaught. It’s like something bursting through my sinuses! SHIT. I’m sat here laughing at my computer. Laughing at my speakers. Laughing at the picture of Washington on my screen – that is so fucking ‘Trane but more chill!! Damn. This shit is HOT. I have never sincerely used that term before now. DAMN. This is early ‘70s and shaking me around about what shit can happen here. Even the horn’s not enough!!! – shouting singing whistling everything!! The point just needs to be made! Bloody hell. The bass as well! Just hitting up behind Tyrone and Idris. All of them KNOW that something’s HAPPENING here. They just letting it happen. hahahahahahaahahahahahaa

FREEEDDDOOOOM FRREEEEEDDDOOOOOM FRREEEEEEDDOOOOOOMM

freedom throughout the universe freeeeedom throughout the UNIverse freedom through-out the UN-I-VERSE FREEEEEEEEDDDDDOOOOOOOM THROUGH OUT THE UN I VERSE

there is so little subtley here and I fucking love it. It’s polemic and didactic and preachy but I agree with it so I love it. There is so much URGENCY here. I am capitalising to account for how little I can actually say abouy my headspace when hearing this all the head movements and leg trying to dance under my desk I’m a rocking horse right now Then with a calm assurance back to the head. The academic point book ending the passionate plea. Shit. hahaha. woo. (ok, ok – 1 drink. But still.) (june 15)

Yusef Lateef: See See Rider

An erotics of art

Yusef Lateef, Ernie Farrow, Mike Nock, James Black, Richard Williams – ‘See See Rider’ – June 29 1964 – Live at Pep’s Impulse! A(S)69

Lot of stuff I’m doing from the ‘60s, I’mma try and hunt some out from the ‘90s, early ‘00s. Also more women. So far this has not been a biational project. But then I’ve gone for big names so far and history wasn’t biational either… It’s also only just occurred to me to date these erotics. So we’re at May, no, shit, June 03 2016. I won’t attempt to retroactively date the others, they can sit on their own. But they were before this. So I guess your dates for those are between March 21 ’93 – June 02 ’16…

Solenoid. No idea. Solenopsis. Diacope. I’m hearing anaphora, epizeuxis, epistrophe… Text isn’t working. This’ll be on something else.

Shit, that wail. Antanaclasis. But the word and meaning shift as its spoken. Gets some applause. It’s a wailing. But it also seems like censorship. A warning against it. Autoflagellation.
Sounds lovely. But doesn’t take me anyway. Except into the crowd at Pep’s, wandering around the bar. No idea what Pep’s was/is like, but to me its cosy, dark and people know your name. And there I sit, watching these guys play – enjoy the company of people I’ll never meet.

This is the most traditional of all the stuff I’m attempted with the erotics so far. I’m only just starting to feeling like I can go into each piece without feeling the need to impress or prove a point or whatever. By the end, I always feel like that but getting into it is much harder. Hence, not so much to say for this one. Tune finished a minute ago, but I’ve been thinking. Need to channel to the lessons of Grotowski. I need to stop acting. I’m meant to be riding in these vehicles of perception, and I worry too much about the result, even though I’m never going to read it again. Collective unconscious. Languages beyond language.