Riffs

Notes recorded March 25, 2021.

On Bandcamp: https://leebarry1.bandcamp.com/track/red-room-mississippi

Videos:

Various forces are nudging us in one way or another, including yourself. So should we proceed through our lives with wu wei (trying not to try), or trying until we know that the nudges are moving us in the "proper" direction?

De-skilled art is sometimes more cunning.

In multi-disciplinary art sometimes the work involves mostly resolving the concept to the point where it can actually be worked on. This is unlike Dada, in that you don't just rely on the readymade to obviate the need for some degree of craft.

(Originally recorded in March 2021)

This is somewhat related to what Umberto Eco was covering in his book The Infinity of Lists.

A culture prefers enclosed, stable forms when it is sure of its own identity, while when faced with a jumbled series of ill-defined phenomena, it starts making lists.

(Originally recorded June 2021)

The book referenced is actually published by Prestel Publishing:

Tweedy, Spencer, and Azerrad, Lawrence. Mirror Sound: The People and Processes Behind Self-Recorded Music. Germany, Prestel Publishing, 2020.

(Originally recorded 3/2021)

"Creativity" and "innovation" are long-time buzz words. But "curiosity" is now added to the mix. You have to be curious and be willing to experiment before innovation can occur.

(Originally recorded 5/19/2021)

"Musicist' is a word I coined in the 90s to describe a musician that enjoyed music for both its intrinsic and extrinsic qualities, and was essentially a DIY artist.

A Musicist is like a Physicist or an Artist. You could extrapolate it in the other direction with "Artician", and interestingly, "Physician".

What we might want ideally is to have the ability to make music manually, without the crutch of electronics, and now AI. The corollary in terms of running is the footwear industry. In music, focusing on the gear can shift attention away from the art form into a kind of materialism or even a kind of 'fashion'.