Preface to the Hair Dryer Symposium
In this modern world in which circuitry is more lovely and complex than the human body, and the anxiety of separation from eternity is our most profound expression, we find ourselves only capable of loving objects that represent obscure metaphysical images such as: out of tune pianos, courtyards that open up onto houses where silence reigns, roadside attractions, abandoned farm equipment, and parking lots. Our poetry can be found in appliances, electricity, and the intricacies of anatomy.
In our bizarre and fantastic corner of the universe that the very fact of our existence has made basically unlivable we discover that music is the ideal parallel to the complexities and abstractions of daily life; music itself being nothing more than exalted and controlled sound. Producing sound, coercing silence to yield is always a poetic and experimental act. On this strange and contradictory terrain we find that some sounds overpower our senses while others remain inaudible, or even get lost in the harmonic ether. This shouldn't trouble our sense of justice. Just as a live human being is relatively the same as a dead human being give or take a few nervous spasms, natural reflexes, and a perfunctory system of interrelated organs, all sound is equally important and unimportant according to the mystifying design of such a vast and equally incomprehensible universe.
When we consider the infinite possibilities that sound presents the manipulator, it becomes difficult to understand why musicians consistently fail to express themselves individually, creatively, or with any degree of originality; though a share of the blame can justly be apportioned to an unhealthy society that encourages the artist to profane his art to attain ordinary goals and purposes. The very idea of music is so extraordinarily complicated that it becomes the imperative of the transmitter (i.e. musician) to present it as such. Music doesn't have to be understood, precisely because there is nothing to understand. Music shouldn't attempt to go anywhere, precisely because there is nowhere to go. It is poetic enough that sound exists, that frequencies can be altered, that radio waves can be coaxed to transport music across boundaries, borders and oceans.
Music doesn't belong in academies or schools, it shouldn't be marginalized, categorized, or filed into genres. Music does belong particularly where its purest form hasn't been welcome in the past: grocery stores, office buildings, factories, and especially in churches; in other words places where the raw material of sound is present, or to put it even more simply: everywhere.
Music is and should remain anarchic and revolutionary, not revolutionary in the base political sense, instead revolutionary in the more profound realm of the spirit. It should be spit in the face to any existing order since orders have proved themselves to be faulty, ineffectual and ephermal.
Instruments are superfluous and should be replaced by weapons or anything else capable of wounding, brutalizing, or significantly altering an audience member; thusly uprooting them from the immobilizing torpor of everyday modern existence.
Performances should consist of: Miracles of fire, spectacular inhuman feats,
gunfights, plagues, or on the other end of the spectrum (and equally as shocking) silence and immobility.
Anyway, we're terribly familiar with tomorrow. Terrorism is belief. Real blood, real pain, real tears. I hate to hear people playing from their heart. My heart never says anything. It just observes in numbing disbelief the horrifying spectacle of a decaying society.