The ‘obligation to speak’ produces a dialogue of art – a rhetoric of art – in which I sometimes enjoy participating. Generating this rhetoric of art is sometimes clarifying about my work (for me or, I hope, for others) and/but it is also sometimes a frustrating afterthought, an obligation. I do think about trying to create organic behaviour, natural textures, etc. in my music, an idea I talk about often, and this idea – this product of rhetoric – has helped me refine what I do, why I do it and how I do it. It would, however, be remiss of me if I did not also acknowledge that there are times, absent of coherent rhetoric, where I am inarticulately art-full, where I am playing with tones – imagining tones – without any coherent sense of what or why, but compelled wether by childish delight, poetic inspiration or pathological curiosity ‘to art’ (the verb). In articulating this, though, don’t I turn it into ‘a rhetoric of art’ just as I separate it from that? The chicken-egg dance begins again.
composition
Writing about music is like dancing about apocrypha
Composing thoughts on Andrew Durkin’s ‘Decompsition: A Music Manifesto’
I’m currently reading Andrew Durkin’s ‘Decomposition: a Music Manifesto’. It’s refreshing, insightful, and very readable, despite its size. Plenty to agree with, to champion, and plenty to disagree with too – exactly what I want from a book – and as it’s primarily concerned with music, generally, and authorship/authenticity more specifically, it’s rather an ideal book for me. Continue reading “Writing about music is like dancing about apocrypha”