September sound meditations
this one is for Larry @dronefinger and Rene @basssleeper
”Sounds of every sort are surging incessantly through the air. When we walk by the seaside, a salty tang of brine enters our mouth ; when we watch a draught of wormwood being mixed in our presence, a bitter effluence touches it. So from every object flows a stream of matter, spreading out in all directions. The stream must flow without rest or intermission, since our senses are perpetually alert and everything is always liable to be seen or smelt or to provoke sensation by sound.”
“With the solemn hush of night all around, we listen to sounds; we speak aloud without a word uttered. We have many other paradoxical experiences of the same kind, all of which seem bent on shaking our faith in the senses. But all to no purpose. Most of this illusion is due to the mental assumptions which we ourselves superimpose, so that things not perceived by the senses pass for perceptions. There is nothing harder than to separate the facts as revealed from the questionable interpretations promptly imposed on them by the mind.”
excerpts from Lucretius, On the nature of the Universe
“Spinoza’s ethics is the philosophy of the becoming-active, in parallel, of mind and body, from an origin in passion, in impingement, in so pure and productive a receptivity that it can only be conceived as a third state, an excluded middle, prior to the distinction between activity and passivity: affect. This “origin” is never left behind, but doubles one like a shadow that is always almost perceived, and cannot but be perceived, in effect.”
“A political knowledge-practice that takes an inclusive, nonjudgmental approach to tending belonging-together in an intense, affectively engaged way is an ethics-as opposed to a morality. Political ecology is an amoral collective ethics. Ethics is a tending of coming-together, a caring for belonging as such.”
excerpts from Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual
this one is to welcome a new cycle with leaves in the wind… 🍂 🍃🌿
“Now that we have discovered the nature of the mind and of the vital spirit as a part of the man, drop this name harmony which was passed down to the musicians from the heights of Helicon – or else perhaps they fetched it themselves from some other source and applied it to the matter of their art, which had then no name of its own. Whatever it be, let them keep it.”
“ […] sounds are disseminated in all directions because each one,
after its initial splintering into a great many parts, gives. birth to others, just as a spark of fire often propagates itself by starting fires of its own. So places out of the direct path are often filled with voices, which surge round every obstacle, one sound being provoked by another. But visual films all continue in straight lines along their initial paths, so that no one can see over a wall, as he can hear voices from inside it. Even a voice, however, is blunted in its passage through barriers and reaches our ears blurred, so that we seem to hear a mere noise rather than words.”
excerpts from Lucretius, On the nature of the Universe
…and a very last one before getting back to the grind….
From the time my hands have been gradually giving up on me for various reasons, I have been trying to find ways to use them so that they might still helping me to think within sound, tracing if not playing, touching, pressing, turning, caressing, plugging, touching again. This way I ‘feel’ somewhat connected, in spite of lack of sensibility due to nerve damage. It’s actually something strange, touching without feeling (or sensing…). Like avoiding any sentimental response on a pure skin level, though enhancing a deeper response in embodied resonance. Difficult (…and perhaps useless) to even trying to explain. I’m using my hands that don’t “feel”, to activate sensuousness anywhere else.