PHILIP GLASS MEMOIR

philip glass

Closing in on the end of Philip Glass's memoir, Words Without Music, only twenty pages to go, I don't want it to end. He's wrapping things up, approaching the moment he's writing from. He did a rare thing, wrote his way to a composer successful in the world of music and successful within himself, without teaching. He saw that he wanted to live and work in New York. An academic job could settle him in Phoenix or Seattle. He wanted the creative energy New York generates. He worked moving furniture and driving a cab through his twenties and thirties, jobs flexible enough he could take time off to do a gig in Germany or California. He is the first composer to use amplification. He liked the dynamic sound amplification gave rock, even put together a small group of musicians, a band, The Philip Glass Ensemble, a vehicle for his compositions. He plays an electric keyboard. While reading in the memoir, I've been listening to some of his music in my collection, hearing it with fresh ears. Before, I only knew I liked hearing his music, everything I've heard. Now I have a little bit of an idea of what his music is about, what he's doing and the spirit he's doing it in, esp the spirit. I hear more in his music than ever before. 

philip glass ensemble

Playing now, La Belle et la Bete, Beauty and the Beast, Glass's opera of French poet, Jean Cocteau's surrealist film. It's a soundtrack to the film Cocteau made in 1946, soon after the war in Paris. The Glass music is from 1994. The film with Glass soundtrack can be seen on YouTube, the full film. I've seen it before Glass and after Glass. It is a glorious, beautiful film, either way. I first saw it in an art film series in Charleston, 1968, thereabouts, before Glass. It was such an exhilarating film, the audience broke into spontaneous applause at the end. Saw it with Glass music a few years ago from netflix. The music doesn't change the film. It gives the film a new dimension, even fades into the background watching the film, at the same time gives the black and white film a contemporary edge. It was contemporary half a century before Glass's soundtrack, become ancient in film history, a timeless ancient tale of a prince and princess, made contemporary again by Philip Glass's musical vision. 

la belle et la bete

A man of many dimensions, Glass paid attention to music from all over the world. He found in Indian music a structure different from European, studying with Ravi Shankar, and found more in West Africa. Just now took an interlude and found on YouTube a tune of Glass with Gambian kora player, Foday Musa Suso. A kora is a big gourd body, a long hardwood neck with 21 strings he plays like a harp. It has subtleties the master knows.  Glass's musical education had been in European ideas of music, though he came to see music a fluid form he could play with in new ways never explored before. He was a yoga practitioner, vegetarian, meditated, went to Nepal to a Tibetan village, Darjeeling in India, high elevation in the Himalaya, looking for an advanced meditation teacher. He started collecting Tibetan art for his home, was drawn to Tibet like moth to light source. Learning of his connection with Tibetan spiritual teachings answered why I felt Tibetan music in his work. He made soundtrack for the Scorsese film, Kundun, a Tibetan story, which I think I'll run to the top of the netflix Q to see it again soon, while Glass and his music is fresh in my head. 

philip glass

I've enjoyed watching the fate of a remarkably brilliant human being unfold in his own observations and words. It can be said he was destined from birth to do what he has done single-mindedly, like somebody born knowing what he had to do. He wasn't long getting it and walked like climbing a staircase, one step at a time, learning with a quick, retentive mind. He plays his compositions from memory. His study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger I found perhaps most interesting of all the steps along his way. She is a teacher in Paris anyone who is serious about composition must study with. Like in bluegrass, young musicians got their bluegrass credentials picking with Bill Monroe. I'd wondered about Nadia Boulanger for decades. I remember when a biography of her was published. I wanted to read it, but it was a peripheral interest at the time and I was off on the trail of one or more of my more direct interests at the time. I've had this curiosity of what it was about her touch that was so valued by composers. She was like the most advanced of advanced teachers, so advanced she could teach at home and the students came to her. Glass gave me a sense of presence, her teaching, self-knowledge gained, how she confirmed the young composer in his own direction.   

nadia boulanger

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A DUNNO-WHAT KINDA DAY

It has been a dunno-what kinda day. Woke up feeling ready to go. Had the day scheduled to go to town for pills, gas and groceries. I know in advance a trip to town means I'll be so exhausted by the time it's all over, I can only take a nap. Today, the nap didn't happen right away. Had the radio going on an afternoon talk show, like Fresh Air, hearing it without paying attention. Up after an hour, then back down for another hour. Woke from that nap feeling at home again. Put on a movie, watched for half an hour and turned it off. Good film, but mind not willing to pay attention. Found a watermelon at the grocery store. I passed by the display thinking I have not painted a watermelon in a long time. I miss painting watermelons. I walked through the whole store thinking I'd like to make a one-day watermelon painting tomorrow. I've been so distracted for so long, I've not made anything to call art. I want to get back into the groove. Found a canvas already stretched, ready to go, one I stretched some years ago. I stopped painting before getting to it. The melon is in the refrigerator and the canvas is ready.

I've put on some Philip Glass music, four pieces, him playing electric organ. The one playing now, Contrary Motion, is solo. The others have accompaniment of piano and soprano sax. They were composed and recorded in the period of time I'm in his memoirs now, early 1970s. He practiced yoga and meditated regularly. He and wife went overland to India, rode trains across India to the Himalayan city, Darjeeling, and into northern India. He was overtaken by a serious interest in Tibetan Buddhism. It could be my suggestible imagination, I feel like I hear Tibetan music in his compositions, a lengthy repetition with variations moving around inside the patterns set up by the repetitions. It is meditative. I follow the sound in mind's eye, recalling the bouncing ball. His repetitions are relaxing as a good massage, like Tibetan chants. I'm vowing to self to play more Glass in the future. I have probably a dozen CDs of his music, all of which I love. It's a bit odd first time hearing it, but it took hold of me right away. I have his Dracula album. It is made as a soundtrack to the original Dracula movie with Bella Lugosi. I might order Dracula from netflix and play the Glass music with it. Good plan. I don't really want to watch the movie, but have a feeling Glass's soundtrack will make it new. 

I saw a clip today of news comic Jon Stewart losing a degree of my regard. Not that it matters to him. Or me. He made some unnecessary repeat swipes at Rebecca Dolezal, the wannabe. I recalled his sentimental show of embracing Kaitlyn Bruce Jenner in his proud of self way for being so piously PC, the champion of tolerance. Then a white woman wanted to be a black woman. He played the white racist role. What white woman in her right mind would want to be a nigger bitch? He can't get over his own dismay that a white chick would want to be black. He can handle a guy wanting to be a chick, sooo liberal, but not a chick wanting to be black. Methinks he might protesteth too much. It makes me never want to identify self liberal again. It strikes me hypocritical from a man quick to point the finger at hypocrisy. Reminds me of the saying that three fingers point back at self when pointing the finger at someone else. He's a bit off on the civil war too. He fails to notice it was a Northern invasion. In the South, it's called the War of Yankee Aggression. The North invaded the South. You don't see historical accounts of any Yankee cities burned to the ground by Southern troops. He's rewriting history too. He's still funny. Stewart has become a disappointment to me in his smug liberalism. He's a show liberal, a very well paid celebrity television comedian. Again, I remind self, the medium, itself, is the message.  

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SENSE AND SENSELESSNESS

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matisse 

Saturday, I had so many places to be, so many things to do, I decided to stay home, write and have a long nap. I'm thinking this is today's agenda as well. I'm seeing a pattern in  behavior. When I have too much expected from outside self, I tend to balk like a donkey and stand still, unmoveable. I wanted to go everyplace expected. First, a bluegrass jam at friend's house with some good musicians, also my neighbors and friends. An old-time band I like and haven't seen in a few years was playing at the bandstand in the Sparta park. At the next house down the road, Josh was visiting for the weekend with a handful of musician friends, interesting people. I looked forward to it until the day it all happened. On the day it happened, I didn't want to do any of it. It was exhausting to think about. I could have made videos and written about the experiences, but when it came time to go out the door, I didn't care enough to go. Went to bed, took a good nap. Woke up ready to write and wrote up into the evening. Went next door to see Josh and friends, stayed until really late, sitting about, talking, relaxed. Three of them, at different times, picked up a guitar and sang a couple of their own songs that were good-worded and well performed, just sitting quietly, all of them good musicians. 

matisse

I'd been going every day for three weeks, and last week refused to go anywhere, had the whole week at home. By Saturday, I was so content not going anywhere, I couldn't stand the thought of going out into the world, reminding self, this is the Age of Television, I'm expected to smile a lot, talk and watch everything I say. Reading in Philip Glass's memoir, he quoted Nadia Boulanger, "Il faut faire un effort." In English, it is necessary to make an effort. She was talking about the artist with one's form, in this case music composition. I bring this up, because it came to mind when I was thinking it's too much effort to go from one place to another all day. Busy-mind self said to relaxed-mind self, It's necessary to make an effort. Relaxed mind self responded, But necessary only in one's art form, not for when the effort involves driving and drains on energy. I pre-forgave self for side-stepping a logjam. 

matisse

The day's rain has begun, a gentle summer shower sounding like wind in the leaves. And then it stopped. Everywhere I look online today and yesterday, I see pictures of the white guy that shot up the black church in Charleston. Every picture I see of him reminds me I don't even want to think about this latest effort for a guaranteed spot on national news by another psychotic child-adult. Something happens we call senseless is no longer unusual. Senselessness, mindlessness, is the new normal. I think it's interesting. It can rightfully be said of this time, "That doesn't make any sense," It reminds me there is no sense anyway. Our traditional, collectively believed ideas of order are breaking down now, changing. That which worked before doesn't work anymore. This is something I must accept or go nuts with frustration. Everything traditional doesn't work anymore. The rules have changed mid-game without notice. I don't see much of the rational anywhere in everyday life. We live by habits, schedules and distractions. I see so little of the rational that I tend to choke when somebody remarks, What happened to reason? I don't see reason anywhere. Reason is good for problem solving, and that's about it. 

matisse

I see the world I live in, near and extended, without sense. Somebody comments on irrational behavior in alarm, and I don't know what to say. It makes perfect sense to me. Of course I don't expect rational behavior in this time. We depend on certain social rules that keep us from killing each other. Somebody side-steps the collectively agreed upon rules and it's called senseless. Just about everything we do is senseless, this church shooting just another senseless act. It had plenty of thought behind it, but no sense. I notice the cops didn't beat him to near death when they arrested him. They were good to him. He'll be the star of the white gangs in prison. Of course, the people of color in the prison will see him through cross-hairs. The white gangs will be his backup. I can't even get near processing the grief that erupted in the church. I can't think about it, because it's too big, way too big to get my mind around. That the same people might have died in the wreck of a church van on the interstate is quite a different thing to mourn than shot down in church by a mean little bastard. I can't dismiss the event or the mind behind it, can't accept it either. The enormity of the grief around this event is too big for my mind to behold, and has the capacity to break my heart if I go with it. The craziest aspect of all, it was no surprise to anybody. When the book is written, it will take a thousand pages.  

matisse by matisse

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THE INTIMACY OF READING

ralph stanley and the clinch mountain boys

oil on canvas by tj worthington

A facebook friend posted today his thoughts and experience on a lifetime of reading, looking at the books, in particular, that were important to him, that stay with him. Like I look at a bookshelf and my eye falls on One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian, a Chinese dissident living in Paris. I feel the same glow in my heart as when I gaze at the window and see a squirrel at the birdfeeder, tail curled behind its head, nibbling a seed. The spine of the book reminds me of the content, as powerful for me in the time of reading it as Henry Miller's Colossus of Marousi in the time of reading it. James Lord's biography of Italian/Swiss/French sculptor, Giacometti, was important, because I came to know him, admire his mind, his vision, how simply he lived. At the end, Giacometti died and was buried. I closed the book, sat in the chair and cried for half an hour. It was the same as hearing of the death of one of my closest friends. I see a piece by Giacometti today and feel his presence in it. The only tool he used was his pocket knife, which inspired use of minimal tools in my own art making. I use a drill, a saw, a brush, and a palette knife, wood glue. 

philippe petit

I see the title, Man On Wire, and remember Philippe Petit, who walked the wire between WTC towers. I have three newspaper articles I've kept because they said something powerful to me. One was an article from the Village Voice when Andy Warhol was shot. Another, Philippe Petit's amazing event walking the wire. The third, an article from a newspaper about Johnny Weissmuller, a famous Tarzan from the Fifties, kept alive a vegetable in an Acapulco condo on the beach, tubes and round the clock nurses. Couldn't talk from stroke after stroke after stroke, unable to die because heart was so healthy from a lifetime of rigorous exercise. All he could do was give out a Tarzan yell from time to time and run shivers through the whole condo. I think the Tarzan story told me exercise aint what it's cracked up to be. Why was Petit's event so meaningful for me? He walked a wire between two buildings that sway, up high in the wind above the city of canyons. I know that I could not even stand on the roof of a skyscraper, could not step out of the elevator or stair well door. I sure as hell could not stand at the edge and look down at the street two tenths of a mile below. I don't know all there is to know about self, not even close, but I do know that. Him crawling over the edge and just stepping onto the wire rates my total respect. I'd rather read about him than Henry Kissinger. 

johnny weissmuller

The Lance and the Shield, by Robert M Utley, a biography of Sitting Bull, hit me as deeply as the Giacometti biography. By the end, I knew Sitting Bull, the man himself, who he was. I felt something I had never before felt from a biography, that I knew this man, knew him well. His values were mine. He seemed as familiar as reading a memoir by someone I already knew well. Like Wendy Salinger's, Listen, a beautifully written memoir of living through sexual child abuse by daddy, illustrated for me why my friend Wendy was wired tight as a banjo string. Sitting Bull, I felt I knew as well as I knew Wendy. I spoke with a woman friend about it who was somewhat psychic. She told me to ask him. I said I don't know how. She said, Yes you do, just do it. Later, at home, I went into a kind of meditation, settled down, and appealed to Sitting Bull in spirit. He appeared. We were in his tipi, either side of a small fire in the center. We smoked the pipe. I was in awe, hesitant to speak. I was thinking this is about more than a silly question. Eventually, I asked him why he is so familiar to me, why I know him so well. He said, "I am your real father." We spoke a little bit more, though mostly sat in silence. I visited him a few more times, no more questions and answers, only silence. I painted a portrait of him that is on the wall maybe four feet from where I sit. My version looks more like Gregory Peck in brown face. 

The Lance and the Shield was reprinted years later with new title and some places rewritten, Sitting Bull. I read it. And found later, a book of stories from the life of Sitting Bull that were passed down through the family, by his great-grandson, Ernie LaPointe. They're among the book treasures in the house. Another treasure in the house is Ralph Stanley's memoir, Man Of Constant Sorrow, written for him by Eddie Dean, who wrote it in Stanley's own words, as if Stanley, himself, wrote it. I have to credit Dean, because it is so beautifully written. I carried the copy to a show at Fairview and asked Ralph to sign it. I couldn't speak. I knew if I spoke a word I'd break out in tears that wouldn't stop. I asked him to sign it by opening the book and putting it before him. He got it. He wrote his signature in it, and that was all I wanted. I'm not one to ask writers to sign books, but this was necessary. I painted a portrait of him and his band playing at Fairview Ruritan, drove it to Clintwood, Virginia, and gave it to the Ralph Stanley museum in appreciation for his music. Asked if I'd like to meet him, I declined. I said I'd turn to jello. They said, he's just a man. I said, I know. He's also Ralph Stanley. A biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone, opened their music to me, one of the great gifts of my life. A few days ago I started Philip Glass's memoir, Words Without Music. I can see already it's going to be one of those books that is a treasure for how deeply it speaks to me. 

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LISTENING TO MUSIC FROM MALI

ali farka toure

I thought maybe I could put some music on and not be dominated by it while writing you. I thought something largely instrumental with vocals in another language and picked Ali Farka Toure of Mali in northern Africa. Timbuktu is in Mali, though Ali Farka Toure is from Niafunke in Mali, a ways up the Niger river from Timbuktu. Immediately it pulled me in and won't let go. Won't even let me turn it off. This Malian music he plays has a lilting rhythm that flows with a camel's walk. I can see somebody riding a camel to his rhythms. Evidently, a camel rider must relax into the flow of the camel's back. I see them in films, the rider's body flowing with the rocking boat of the camel's back. I'd guess it would be a good exercise for the rider's spine. It couldn't be as bad for the back as driving a truck. This Malian music has a relaxed lope about it suggesting reggae. I find when I want to hear reggae it is only Burning Spear I want to hear. I have other albums by different reggae artists. Bob Marley feels a little too pop for my taste. Burning Spear thinks about things and his songs concern what he thinks about. I saw him at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, 03. I don't know if he ever saw the audience. His eyes were closed the entire show. He only looked at the floor walking onstage. His singing felt very much like the words in his songs. His songs are meditative, full of thought, a world of intense poverty, racism, white man pushing black man down, looking to Africa as home land, holy; a rise-up black man spirit. The people in his band played beautiful music with no demonstration of emotion, no jumping up and down. They played like they were jamming at somebody's house. Spear gave the appearance of indifference to everything but the music, jumping rope in the rhythms with his voice. He flowed in the music; he and the music were one, the singer and the song. His was one of the great concerts of my life, close to seeing Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse from about ten feet away in 1963 on their Straight No Chaser tour. 

ali farka toure

I laugh at myself thinking I could hear Ali Farka Toure pick acoustic-electric guitar with fingernails instead of picks in his style that is sensational in its subtle artistry. To an ear that passes over details, it is simple, repetitive rhythm that repeats past what an American ear conditioned by pop music can listen to comfortably. It gets into a Philip Glass repetition that seems to stay the same, though changes continually. The changing notes in the repeating rhythm make a more abstract melodic line than we who live in the world of American pop music have any access to by way of experience. Which is to say, Ali Farka Toure was fresh and brand new first time I heard him in the late 1980s. By then I'd been hearing Philip Glass for several years. Glass has studied musics of Africa and South America, Asia, primitive peoples, the music of the world. What I'm hearing now could be Glass with vocals in another language or nonsense syllables. The Malian music is a good walking music. Its rhythm is a walking lope, not like walking in the mall, but walking for a hundred miles, a long walk through a desert region with no clouds in the sky. Ali Farka Toure's music is as much from the soul of Malian culture as Doc Watson's music came from Appalachian culture in America. Watson is as accomplished a guitar picker as Ali Farka Toure, just in a different style of music and ways of playing it. Ali Farka Toure was drawn to John Lee Hooker's music. As I hear Hooker in my head, I can hear why. Possibly in the particular place John Lee Hooker grew up in southern Mississippi, the place could possibly have had some Malians in the mix of western African peoples. It seems like Hooker had this music in his earliest years. The Bo Diddley beat came from a certain kind of very simple church in south Mississippi where rhythm was kept hitting the floor with a stick that looks like a long, straight walking stick. It keeps the Bo Diddley beat for the singing, the rocknroll sound that went from Bo Diddley through the Velvet Undergound into punk in the mid 1970s and ever since. 

kar kar and ali farka toure

Earlier in the week I saw a film that came from netflix, I'll Sing For You. It is a documentary in that it is non-scripted, camera visits different people and listens to them talk. The film featured a Malian musician named Kar Kar. The camera spent a period of time following him in his everyday life at home in what I took to be Timbuktu. If not there, then nearby. Kar Kar was a young Malian musician several years earlier. He recorded a few times. One of his songs about Mali was played on the radio every day for many years to come. Kar Kar went to Paris to get some paying work and live in a Malian hostel. He married the woman he adored. They had a good life then she died. Kar Kar returned to Mali with a broken heart in his later years. He played the same lilting rhythms Ali Farka Toure played, who appeared in the film a couple times accompanying Kar Kar on guitar. In one of the scenes they were walking while they played. Neither one looked at the strings, gaze straight ahead. I may have to see it again soon. The music inspired me to listen to my Malian music. Before putting on Ali Farka Toure, I listened to Afel Bocoum's album Alkibar. Both are from Niafunke, Mali, up the Niger river from Timbuktu. The music of these musicians and the people making music with them on instruments like a one-string violin, acoustic 6-string guitar and some other local instruments I can't name, is essentially what we call folk music. Ali Farka Toure made a good bit of money in North America and Europe from rising interest in African music. His music continues to sell well. His son is recording now. I've heard somewhere or read somewhere in recent past that he has given a large portion of his new wealth to the people of his region, making education available, improving health facilities, etc, making his world a better place. This adds something to his music I didn't hear before. Before, I heard a singer and guitar picker. Since learning what he's done with his wealth, I hear a remarkable human being. To an American it's odd to behold someone new-rich selfless with his money. Timbuktu is indeed a long ways from here.   

kar kar and ali farka toure

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