David Moss: Between Time & Terrain

© David Moss, 1994. All rights reserved.

Radio was always "normal life" for an American boy growing up in the '50's & '60's. Unfortunately it was a stunted wasteland of pop repetition, with a limited repertoire and minute imagination. And so, I remember quite vividly the few times radio went beyond it's role of normalcy-creator -- suddenly alighting in my startled consciousness like the contemporary dream of flying saucers, that longed-for call of intelligent life from elsewhere in the universe. These revolutionary moments came in two flavors: Flavor One was an outpouring of sound-information in such an abstract, non-culturally linked mode that I was literally stunned by it's strangeness into a slightly altered state of mind; Flavor Two had to do with the concept of "story-telling "-- but in very unexpected ways, full of non-linear leaps and sonic-ritualism. But (and this is the power & the glory of our mass media) simply because these "audio-blooms" were coming from the speaker of a radio in the corner of the living-room in a middle-class house in the middle of Little Neck, NY, they were real and surreal at the same time -- and somehow, I was forced to fit this material into my "normal life". And that's really stretching the cultural boundaries. THESIS: In a strange way, American culture in the 1910's & '20's (the years that radio assumed it's modern shape) can be seen as the conscious antithesis of the feisty and subversive European avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism). Of course, this is what poets, writers, philosophers, and film-makers have always done: creating, and broadcasting, a unique, eccentric relationship between the personal-inner and cultural-outer world. But radio lagged far behind in this development, having seen it's own coming-of-age at the very same time as assembly-line, mass-production, Prohibition, and "marketing" were all shaping the features of the American cultural landscape. PUZZLE #1 In America today they're sky-diving & shooting the rapids, walking on hot coals, bungee- jumping, racing fast cars. Everywhere, people are risking their physical lives, risking death on a daily basis and then going back to their normal routine with no visible improvement in the life that surrounds us --in our Culture. This personal experience of risk has become so existential, so isolated, so alienated, that it brings nothing back to the culture which generates it. Every year, a new extreme seems to be reached, but somehow, it's never the end. What is all this deadly risk-taking? What happens to cultural life, to the life of the mind, feelings, fantasy and passion, when risk is defined as just another way of courting death in a socially semi-approved way.? Are these new rituals the symbol of a culturally evolving society, or the symptom of something else? Only a Science-Fiction novel could imagine a people that risks its health, its environment, its sanity, and its children, but steadfastly refuses to be caught dead listening (for example) to unexpected sounds from their radio by an unknown artist. In times of retrenchment and conservatism due to a tightening economic web and feelings of scarcity, this fear of change and failure devalues risk into elitist sport. But risk can be a creative tool for shaping Culture: One can both experience that formative, un-formatted "energy at the edges" , and then bring it back to neighbors and community, to daily life; to talk, share and find new balances Radio is always the evidence, and proof, of normalcy. But like every wasteland, the seeds (of "otherness") are there-- waiting -- the seeds of audio art, sonic-intensity, hšrspiel and not-yet-imagined musics. Radio offered the possibility of playful quasars of un-categorizable information pouring ideas into our ears, giving us the chance to playfully, personally organize the ether floating through our "normal" lives. And as my music developed, I found that I was interested in certain qualities that were, perhaps, not usual for "contemporary music". I found the need for a certain physicality, a sense of territory, a locating of the body. I began to experience sound as a tangible thing, as the act of a body; "texture", "density", "touch", "caress", "shape", "foreground", "architecture", these concepts became central to my work (my first solo record was titled "Terrain). And so, I found myself drawn to Radio, first (in the 60's) because it illuminated worlds that I hadn't known existed, second (in the 70's) because my own music was abstract enough that it could be powerful sound on radio, and third (in the 80's), because it offered a powerful invisible route to the bodies/experiences of uncountable others in the middle of their daily lives. Definition: Audio art, for me, is the momentary manifestation of personal timing and eccentric personality that occurs while dealing with materials of choice (musical instruments, objects, airwaves, etc.) broadcast over TIME...... It's power lives in the territory of surprise, in the landscape of possibilities. It is an architecture of individuality, a helix of memories always just diving into, or emerging from, a pool of chaos. My first project for radio (Soundspots: 75, 3-minute presentations of newly commissioned music) approached the medium from the perspective of Flavor One. Later works (Vox Box, Sound Sculptors, US Ear) were mixtures of Flavors One & Two, with a taste of the documentary thrown in. Then, around 1985, my perspective shifted in the direction of Flavor 2, as I began to read the work of Italo Calvino. I was immediately attracted to his mind, rhythms, linkages. I sensed a possibility to connect my world of semi-abstract sound/song (but oh so tangible!!) landscapes with the structured, quantum-layered surrealities of Calvino. Through Calvino I began to bring language to music and music to song and song to landscape and landscape to rhythms and rhythms to meaning and meaning to playfulness and playfulness to surprise and surprise to pleasure and pleasure to rhythm and rhythm to nonsense and nonsense to densities and densities to layers and layers to foreground and foreground to narrative and narrative to language>>......... As my connection to Calvino grew it became obvious that one perfect canvas for this linkage was radio: a way to embody the waves with words; to create & caress a landscape through illusion; to give back to language the power it craves and, at the same time, to subvert that power by filling it with pleasure. I began with a 5:00 piece for New American Radio called "Language Linkage", a portrait of some of the fantastical cities/places/evocations of place from Calvino's "Invisible Cities". Here it is clear that everything fractures into song. It is as if Calvino's words are a stream of light careening through the prism of my music; and the gorgeous, fractured spectrum that emerges is a song, and never the same song twice. "Evocation" is the principle in action here. How a sound evokes a memory, evokes a feeling, evokes an altered perception of time.... ANTITHESIS: Meanwhile in the 1990's products name people, business funds (fonts) the arts, access brings success and meaning is only momentary. In a world where Madonna lays claim to the Avant-garde, we know without a doubt that "Audio Art" fits in nowhere. So the question becomes: what fits into Audio Art? Certainly it has something to do with the idea of "risk": risk of mixtures, misplacements, mysterious mouths, moments of surprise, eccentric characters, jumbled categories & juggled hierarchies living on the edge of meaning, with a "radio" as conjuring presence. My next piece inspired by Calvino was "Conjure" (co-commissioned by Tellus, Harvestworks, Wexner Center, New American Radio), a 10:00 ride thru the hilarious, abstract, deeply philosophical, and terrain-tied ruminations of "Cosmicomics". My notes for the piece state: "Conjure" springs from 2 sources. First, the music world which I have developed over the last 15 years by blending asymmetric rhythms, songs, chants, extreme voices, eccentric percussion/electronic objects. And second, the rhythmic narratives of Italo Calvino which mysteriously (& playfully) re-focus "sound & meaning". Calvino writes "about" magic, quantum physics, elemental beings, languages, histories, scientists, banquets, and distant galaxies, through objects, desire, memory, longing, rhythm and confusion. "Conjure" is about pleasure, dwelling in the physicality of utterance, images and dancing rhythms; in the evoking aspect of text & texture. In this thick sonic stew lie assorted tidbits ("all ladles a lulu"). Individual ingredients are not so exotic: they all come from the supermarket of the Avant-garde. Is it music or sound poetry or just a personal blend that conjures up something other? "Step right up......" Process Note #1: I always found strong rhythmic information in the language of Calvino. It was possible for me to make small chants exactly from his sentences (thanks to the wonderful translations of William Weaver!). These chants came directly from the page into my mind and out of my mouth. As an improviser, I love the living, fluttering, yet earthy quality of the writing and thought. It's always ready to jump out at you in a new way. And so my songs become the translation (the carrying medium) of paper-scribbled phrases into phased wavelets that radiate through walls. Synthesis: I wanted to work on the borderline between meaning and music; sense and scintillation; utterance and utter nonsense. If you ask "what does it mean" you stop experiential-time in a way that allows the future to sneak up and hit you on the head. Oftentimes this is a pleasure and an intellectual jolt at the same time. This is what radio can be, what audio-art can offer, what can spring out of the every-day. And why not? David Moss, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, June 1994

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