Tuesday
quickly descending the wet concrete steps
a family of crows emerges noisily from the grass
my foot in a shallow puddle goes pish
earthworms stranded on the sidewalk
Walking quickly
as I drink coffee I get hot
looking at you makes me hot
it is hot inside but cold outside
inside my body is hot
if I were cut open I'd steam
like my hot words in the cool air
as we walk quickly
throught the light rain
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Image and Form, East and West
Cross genre writing often utilizes a form which incorporates poetry, graphic arrangement, and other types of writing (i.e. stream of consciousness or found text). In considering the status of cross-genre writing in comparison to more “traditional” poetry, I became curious about the effect of manipulating the content of poetry with a particular form. This form might be a physical distribution of words on a page, a systematic breakage of continuity relative to formal attributes (i.e. a physical boundary between types of writing), or other such manipulations, which in its application to poetry alone is referred to as concrete poetry.
This curiosity led me forward to an even subtler distinction than that of form and content: that of the relationship between abstract and imagistic language. There appeared to me a very definite relationship between an emphasis on form and the dominance of abstract language or ideas. Being left handed, this emphasis disconcerted me and has driven me to do the following analysis of the image verses form.
This search initially led me to imagistic poetry. Such poems as “everything depends on a red wheelbarrow…” seemed to offer the most promising example. But poetry like this always contains some abstract element that calls into question the ontological status of the image. The statement “everything depends on…” is a judgment that moves the reader to wonder about the wheelbarrow and what else it might symbolize, for its status as the absolute fulcrum is not only ambiguous but fantastic.
Likewise, in the poem by Ryokan: “Once we start to bounce a ball, / We will only be led on to, / Counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, / eight, nine, ten, / Only to start again—from the beginning!” We may immediately abstract the idea of cyclical phases and repetition, of seasons that endlessly lead into one another without our control.
Poetry almost always contains either a transition that sets up a relationship, or a judgment/explanation that qualifies the status of an image. This haiku by Issa is an excellent example of the former strategy: “snow melts / and the village floods / with children”. The image of a flood has a quality that is both impressive to imagine, and useful for describing the manner in which children come out in good weather. In a photograph subjects may be juxtaposed spatially, but in haiku a more intimate relationship may be set up.
In a particularly masterful poem by ryokan, the image is only suggested: “Maybe some rain is pattering; / Maybe the trees in the ravine are whispering / Or it may be the maple leaves scattering / In a gale at midnight.” The image of Ryokan lying awake at night listening to a sound is suggested by the images that the sound calls to his mind. An inexplicit image or state of affairs is rendered through the use of descriptive images.
It seems there are two kinds of imagistic poems: ones that give an image and a judgment that opens the image up to interpretation, and ones that through image alone describe the world. Because of its brevity, a poem is able to reduce its contents to basic elements of information, elements chosen because they depict either the most inclusive subject or the most specific.
Chinese poetry provides an interesting example of poems that utilize only images. Consider the following poem by Wang Wei:
Passing by the temple of accumulated fragrance
I am not sure where it is,
the temple of accumulated fragrance.
A few miles and I enter
the cloudy mountain peaks.
There is no path for men
among the ancient trees,
and where is the bell
that rings from deep in the mountains?
I hear a gurgling spring on a steep cliff
as the sun becomes cold
on the green pines.
Around dusk I find a clear pool
in a remote place in the woods.
I meditate, trying to control my thoughts.
-Trns JHE
This poem is about an evening excursion into the mountains in search of a temple Wang Wei has only heard of, but has never been to. The poem consists of entire concrete imagery, except for the statement of lack of knowledge in the first line (bu zhi xiang ji si). The last line, which in English I have rendered with the abstract noun “thoughts” in chinese is actually a concrete metaphor: “[trying to] control poisonous dragons”.
Lets take a look at another poem by Wang Wei and observe the similarities.
Deer thicket
No one is seen on the empty mountain,
but I can hear the sound of talking.
Sunset light enters the deep forest
and illuminates green moss as it rises.
-Trns JHE
In the beginning of this poem we see a common theme. The human element exists, but it is somewhere else, somewhere out of sight. Wang Wei mentions the temple, but he never arrives there. Indeed he never explicitly says that he is trying to get there. Likewise with the temple bell and the sounds of talking in the mountain: both are sounds that reach Wang Wei from an unknown source. This seems very similar to the poem mentioned above about listening to a sound at night.
Perhaps the red wheelbarrow poem, if it were written in Chinese, would look like this:
空庭中独然
红独轮车坐
Alone in the empty courtyard
Sits the red wheelbarrow
One thing that I notice about the Wang Wei is that the poems have almost no formal experimentation. Each poem is arranged in sets of five character lines. Deer park is four five character lines, and passing by is eight. This leads me to believe that there is in fact some correlation between concrete imagery and simplicity of form.
When a writer consciously decides to be creative with the form of his writing, oftentimes this form becomes the focal point of the poem and the meaning of the words as a result becomes abstract. In Wang Wei’s poetry, the focal point is contained in the landscape of the imagery of the poem. As a result, the form stays basic while the meaning of the words represents physical contour, color, and sound.
As a last note, because I have neglected to properly represent concrete poetry and instead have focused on imagistic poetry, I will provide the following link:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Images/morgan.jpg
This poem by Edward Morgan is fantastic. It portrays, using only three words, not only the structure of archives, but also the manner in which information disintegrates through time. One can immediately apprehend the layering of information, and, if one studies history, connect this poem to ones own life and experiences. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to find the origin of something and instead found a tiny fragment of a generation too far gone to have left anything substantial.
This curiosity led me forward to an even subtler distinction than that of form and content: that of the relationship between abstract and imagistic language. There appeared to me a very definite relationship between an emphasis on form and the dominance of abstract language or ideas. Being left handed, this emphasis disconcerted me and has driven me to do the following analysis of the image verses form.
This search initially led me to imagistic poetry. Such poems as “everything depends on a red wheelbarrow…” seemed to offer the most promising example. But poetry like this always contains some abstract element that calls into question the ontological status of the image. The statement “everything depends on…” is a judgment that moves the reader to wonder about the wheelbarrow and what else it might symbolize, for its status as the absolute fulcrum is not only ambiguous but fantastic.
Likewise, in the poem by Ryokan: “Once we start to bounce a ball, / We will only be led on to, / Counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, / eight, nine, ten, / Only to start again—from the beginning!” We may immediately abstract the idea of cyclical phases and repetition, of seasons that endlessly lead into one another without our control.
Poetry almost always contains either a transition that sets up a relationship, or a judgment/explanation that qualifies the status of an image. This haiku by Issa is an excellent example of the former strategy: “snow melts / and the village floods / with children”. The image of a flood has a quality that is both impressive to imagine, and useful for describing the manner in which children come out in good weather. In a photograph subjects may be juxtaposed spatially, but in haiku a more intimate relationship may be set up.
In a particularly masterful poem by ryokan, the image is only suggested: “Maybe some rain is pattering; / Maybe the trees in the ravine are whispering / Or it may be the maple leaves scattering / In a gale at midnight.” The image of Ryokan lying awake at night listening to a sound is suggested by the images that the sound calls to his mind. An inexplicit image or state of affairs is rendered through the use of descriptive images.
It seems there are two kinds of imagistic poems: ones that give an image and a judgment that opens the image up to interpretation, and ones that through image alone describe the world. Because of its brevity, a poem is able to reduce its contents to basic elements of information, elements chosen because they depict either the most inclusive subject or the most specific.
Chinese poetry provides an interesting example of poems that utilize only images. Consider the following poem by Wang Wei:
Passing by the temple of accumulated fragrance
I am not sure where it is,
the temple of accumulated fragrance.
A few miles and I enter
the cloudy mountain peaks.
There is no path for men
among the ancient trees,
and where is the bell
that rings from deep in the mountains?
I hear a gurgling spring on a steep cliff
as the sun becomes cold
on the green pines.
Around dusk I find a clear pool
in a remote place in the woods.
I meditate, trying to control my thoughts.
-Trns JHE
This poem is about an evening excursion into the mountains in search of a temple Wang Wei has only heard of, but has never been to. The poem consists of entire concrete imagery, except for the statement of lack of knowledge in the first line (bu zhi xiang ji si). The last line, which in English I have rendered with the abstract noun “thoughts” in chinese is actually a concrete metaphor: “[trying to] control poisonous dragons”.
Lets take a look at another poem by Wang Wei and observe the similarities.
Deer thicket
No one is seen on the empty mountain,
but I can hear the sound of talking.
Sunset light enters the deep forest
and illuminates green moss as it rises.
-Trns JHE
In the beginning of this poem we see a common theme. The human element exists, but it is somewhere else, somewhere out of sight. Wang Wei mentions the temple, but he never arrives there. Indeed he never explicitly says that he is trying to get there. Likewise with the temple bell and the sounds of talking in the mountain: both are sounds that reach Wang Wei from an unknown source. This seems very similar to the poem mentioned above about listening to a sound at night.
Perhaps the red wheelbarrow poem, if it were written in Chinese, would look like this:
空庭中独然
红独轮车坐
Alone in the empty courtyard
Sits the red wheelbarrow
One thing that I notice about the Wang Wei is that the poems have almost no formal experimentation. Each poem is arranged in sets of five character lines. Deer park is four five character lines, and passing by is eight. This leads me to believe that there is in fact some correlation between concrete imagery and simplicity of form.
When a writer consciously decides to be creative with the form of his writing, oftentimes this form becomes the focal point of the poem and the meaning of the words as a result becomes abstract. In Wang Wei’s poetry, the focal point is contained in the landscape of the imagery of the poem. As a result, the form stays basic while the meaning of the words represents physical contour, color, and sound.
As a last note, because I have neglected to properly represent concrete poetry and instead have focused on imagistic poetry, I will provide the following link:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Images/morgan.jpg
This poem by Edward Morgan is fantastic. It portrays, using only three words, not only the structure of archives, but also the manner in which information disintegrates through time. One can immediately apprehend the layering of information, and, if one studies history, connect this poem to ones own life and experiences. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to find the origin of something and instead found a tiny fragment of a generation too far gone to have left anything substantial.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Smoke and Seashells
Seashells and cardboard
boxes, the old worker
picking grapes, mines full of smoke.
Birds dive into the sea, rolling
down thermals, and it crumbles into nothing.
Our goal is creation, our destiny
may be the honey and the milk.
Replenish my thirst with your stare
and take a word from my throat.
On the edge the land is
constantly crumbling,
cascading in the cold sea.
I pick at the sand
in search of little seashells.
I like the oval ones that
shine all copper in the sun.
They stole it, the black
letters, black caps and silver
badges, towers and bridges
on the skyline. Smoke coming
out of the window where
a woman in a white apron leans out,
to catch the letter on the breeze,
the letter from her lover, gone
to Louisiana last year, that magic
letter written on metal foil
that shines all copper in the sun.
boxes, the old worker
picking grapes, mines full of smoke.
Birds dive into the sea, rolling
down thermals, and it crumbles into nothing.
Our goal is creation, our destiny
may be the honey and the milk.
Replenish my thirst with your stare
and take a word from my throat.
On the edge the land is
constantly crumbling,
cascading in the cold sea.
I pick at the sand
in search of little seashells.
I like the oval ones that
shine all copper in the sun.
They stole it, the black
letters, black caps and silver
badges, towers and bridges
on the skyline. Smoke coming
out of the window where
a woman in a white apron leans out,
to catch the letter on the breeze,
the letter from her lover, gone
to Louisiana last year, that magic
letter written on metal foil
that shines all copper in the sun.
Poems about Work
Remove the Ivy from the wall
Talking with my half-Chinese friend
about Sanskrit and Latin, I wonder
why my hands are cold.
A dry corn muffin,
I wet each mouthful
with a shot of hot, bitter coffee.
In the graveyard
I scrape lichen off granite
with my index finger.
Wind comes off the ocean
Over the salt marsh
An audience of cedars and headstones,
I clench the rubber handles
of the clippers, cut the vine.
Someday the ocean will cover this land.
I hope by then I am dead.
drifting with uprooted cedars
in the great wave.
-
Roofing
a steel nail into tar
forms a protective seal
tipping to adjust to the pitch
i put down my hammer
to remove an inchworm from my wrist
the coarse roof spreads out beneath me
all day I build this barrier
till my skin is burned
covered with a layer of dirt
till my muscles barely hold me up
a maple reaches high above us
shielding us
blocking the hot fury
of the celestial Father
always setting up a barrier
a wall to keep out thieves
a gas globe keeps out
clear chaos
a thin
film covering
organelles of cells
Talking with my half-Chinese friend
about Sanskrit and Latin, I wonder
why my hands are cold.
A dry corn muffin,
I wet each mouthful
with a shot of hot, bitter coffee.
In the graveyard
I scrape lichen off granite
with my index finger.
Wind comes off the ocean
Over the salt marsh
An audience of cedars and headstones,
I clench the rubber handles
of the clippers, cut the vine.
Someday the ocean will cover this land.
I hope by then I am dead.
drifting with uprooted cedars
in the great wave.
-
Roofing
a steel nail into tar
forms a protective seal
tipping to adjust to the pitch
i put down my hammer
to remove an inchworm from my wrist
the coarse roof spreads out beneath me
all day I build this barrier
till my skin is burned
covered with a layer of dirt
till my muscles barely hold me up
a maple reaches high above us
shielding us
blocking the hot fury
of the celestial Father
always setting up a barrier
a wall to keep out thieves
a gas globe keeps out
clear chaos
a thin
film covering
organelles of cells
Poems about Love and Beauty
Looking past the elbows of the rhododendron,
into the grove of screaming daffodils,
the green in her eyes disappeared,
melted like sand into water.
I wonder if they remember the last time?
Respond only if you really care, she said.
For the rest of my life I spoke
only when necessary.
If I climbed that tree and fell
onto the frozen pond,
the sound would slow time.
And cracks would crawl
from the impact,
searching the white desert for imperfections.
When I lay with you, I saw
every surrounding space.
Along the edge,
the yellow starlets:
pond grasses that flower when exposed.
Remember when we met?
The sky a glad sapphire that swallowed all doubt.
-
Coming and Going
His hair looked joyful, or was it her?
I am embraced by the household sun,
remove my jacket, accept a glass of shiraz.
Silver mist sticks to the windows.
Sniffling grape, a wasp evaluates
my fingers, cooling on the glass.
A stranger smiles, as curious as I
about what a face hides.
Like a fresh strawberry, the lilac liquid
Shakes my tongue. The light is yellow
on white wall, orange on brown couch.
I dare say we all forget everything.
Around eleven we looked at a nature book.
A crystal box with organs of fractal geometry
The flagellated organism jerking through glades
of eel grass gliding like green worms.
I hold the doorknob, release the faces.
The ocean wind bites my face
The blue moon begins to sink. I follow it
down a path cut through the salt marsh.
into the grove of screaming daffodils,
the green in her eyes disappeared,
melted like sand into water.
I wonder if they remember the last time?
Respond only if you really care, she said.
For the rest of my life I spoke
only when necessary.
If I climbed that tree and fell
onto the frozen pond,
the sound would slow time.
And cracks would crawl
from the impact,
searching the white desert for imperfections.
When I lay with you, I saw
every surrounding space.
Along the edge,
the yellow starlets:
pond grasses that flower when exposed.
Remember when we met?
The sky a glad sapphire that swallowed all doubt.
-
Coming and Going
His hair looked joyful, or was it her?
I am embraced by the household sun,
remove my jacket, accept a glass of shiraz.
Silver mist sticks to the windows.
Sniffling grape, a wasp evaluates
my fingers, cooling on the glass.
A stranger smiles, as curious as I
about what a face hides.
Like a fresh strawberry, the lilac liquid
Shakes my tongue. The light is yellow
on white wall, orange on brown couch.
I dare say we all forget everything.
Around eleven we looked at a nature book.
A crystal box with organs of fractal geometry
The flagellated organism jerking through glades
of eel grass gliding like green worms.
I hold the doorknob, release the faces.
The ocean wind bites my face
The blue moon begins to sink. I follow it
down a path cut through the salt marsh.
Poems about Dark and Cold
out of the arctic and
still containing the arctic
carrying a little cold around
in our heads pumpkin filling
to feed all the limbs
the cold blue language of salt
racing around in a circle
immutable like cuneiform
i carve my thoughts into rough blocks
and let them bake in the sun
but the drying and cracking
agitates me from a distance
and walking, always walking
i hear it falling apart
as I walk north toward the arctic
freezing seas and dragonsneck boatsmen
picking up seed pods and throwing
dust words into the air
i wish I could place myself in all life
but instead I place its soft limbs into my mouth
grinding and dissolving the bodies
of smaller animals to keep the sun catcher
glowing inside me, the chemical motor
goaded out of chaos from the milky seas
until all becomes glacier and blue ice language
-
Threshold of Concentration
The house is decorated in dark
solid colors. The light lies to me:
turns my whole into shivering bits.
I must be racing against myself.
The manifold surfaces of the jelly
Shine in the lamp light. I work slowly
To avoid getting the jelly on my papers.
In the process, I forget my possessions.
The sitting elephant smiles simply
from the corner. Paper clips scatter the
periphery of darkness. The copper arm
of the globe shines in the moonlight
I know what is out the window:
lonely towers dot the clearings
in the hills. They relay messages
like spaces between cells
With distance, all images are taken
up into the god of shadows, for
this reason I am afraid to go to the kitchen.
It is bright, but the hallway is full
of his dreams, the whites and browns
of the kitchen lasting, blazing out the
real darkness, like the boy I knew who
hung himself imitating Houdini.
still containing the arctic
carrying a little cold around
in our heads pumpkin filling
to feed all the limbs
the cold blue language of salt
racing around in a circle
immutable like cuneiform
i carve my thoughts into rough blocks
and let them bake in the sun
but the drying and cracking
agitates me from a distance
and walking, always walking
i hear it falling apart
as I walk north toward the arctic
freezing seas and dragonsneck boatsmen
picking up seed pods and throwing
dust words into the air
i wish I could place myself in all life
but instead I place its soft limbs into my mouth
grinding and dissolving the bodies
of smaller animals to keep the sun catcher
glowing inside me, the chemical motor
goaded out of chaos from the milky seas
until all becomes glacier and blue ice language
-
Threshold of Concentration
The house is decorated in dark
solid colors. The light lies to me:
turns my whole into shivering bits.
I must be racing against myself.
The manifold surfaces of the jelly
Shine in the lamp light. I work slowly
To avoid getting the jelly on my papers.
In the process, I forget my possessions.
The sitting elephant smiles simply
from the corner. Paper clips scatter the
periphery of darkness. The copper arm
of the globe shines in the moonlight
I know what is out the window:
lonely towers dot the clearings
in the hills. They relay messages
like spaces between cells
With distance, all images are taken
up into the god of shadows, for
this reason I am afraid to go to the kitchen.
It is bright, but the hallway is full
of his dreams, the whites and browns
of the kitchen lasting, blazing out the
real darkness, like the boy I knew who
hung himself imitating Houdini.
Review of Jarrod Fowler
On Jarrod Fowler’s “On Botanic and Rhythmic Structures” and “Translation as Rhythm”
“On Botanic and Rhythmic Structures” contains a number of different elements; I will try to address each in isolation. The packaging, as with all of Jarrods’ pieces, is straightforward yet somewhat confusing. The front contains a number of colorful boxes each with an illustration and description of the organisms featured on the disc. The light-beige insert on which this is printed complements the green and orange of the boxes very well. The back of the insert contains a statement of method and a list of the species of plants used in each track along with their positioning in the stereo field. This gives the overall impression of a catalog, and one initially wonders why this package contains a CD and not a field guide. That is because the CD is, in a sense, a translation of a field guide into a rhythmic system. The organisms featured on the cover and listed on the back are in fact the instruments used to create the music on the disc.
This brings us to the music contained therein. OBRS is essentially a percussion experiment/exploration utilizing the rhythmic action of environmental objects as a template. So, while the layout is ambient, the sound is rigidly percussive, jumping from silence to plant-texture-sound abruptly and then dropping off again. It is hard to tire of or learn the tracks because environmental rhythms are non-repetitive. Furthermore, each plant texture is very detailed, and as one only gets a fraction of a second to hear them, it is hard to fully take in every sound. This brings me to the first paradox of OBRS: it is structurally minimal, yet nearly impossible to digest fully. One might say it is macroscopically minimal while being microscopically (in rhythmic nuance and sonic-texture) maximal.
The second paradox of OBRS has to do with the musical status of the work. As a music producer, I understand that the context of music defines musical structure, and that context is indefinitely malleable. Jarrod has manipulated the context of his music, taking it away from the social realm, and has appropriated instead the catalogue of organisms represented by a field guide. This is similar to hip-hop where producers sample from other contexts (Motown, Jazz, or even Classical music) and reconstitute the material in a totally new context. Instead of sampling from a musical context, however, Jarrod has gone into the world and taken a non-musical object and translated it into a musical object. I believe that, while to many people OBRS may seem inaccessible, this is because they don’t realize that the elements composing OBRS are common elements of the music that they listen to on a regular basis. Even the abrupt nature of the soundscape can be compared to the variations and changes that punctuate classical music, only in OBRS the background to change is not melody but the listener’s own aural environment.
“Translation as Rhythm” is perhaps more dynamic and more challenging than OBRS. To begin again with the packaging, TAR is one of the most visually edible of Jarrod’s works. The two colors that dominate are white and a brownish yellow (I will refer to this latter color as huang because there is no English word for it as far as I know). I believe Jarrod chose white intentionally to play off the white of the plastic CD tray, an element often absent from his releases, which often dwell in clear plastic sleeves. There are four main outer surfaces to the packaging: the front cover is white with huang lettering and contains the title of the work above a block of numbers representing a rhythmic translation. When open, the left inner cover is solid Huang. The CD tray is white and contains a huang CD with the word rhythm in white lettering, with the letters rearranged in all possible combinations. The back cover is an inversion of the front, i.e. solid huang with a block of white numbers, a continuation of the rhythmic translation featured on the front. The front and back covers are inversions of each other, while the inside plays off the solid square of the insert with the circle of the CD, which is in turn delineated by the rows and columns of the word rhythm. In short, Jarrod has covered every inch of the CD packaging with manifestations of the concept, translation as rhythm, at the same time keeping it aesthetically pleasing.
The inside of the booklet contains, for each track, a text and/or graphic supplement, as well as an explanation of what is being translated, how it is being translated, and a description of the text/graphic supplement. Jarrod is being very generous to the listener here, but really he has to be. The nature of TAR is very unusual, and one must look at the supplement and read the explanation before and during the listening experience in order to understand what is going on. Again Jarrod’s work is very straightforward but also very confusing if one expects instant revelation without effort.
As for the listening experience, I found it very challenging but also very humorous. I didn’t expect to, but I laughed a lot while listening through the CD. Wittgenstein becomes a “decelerating series of clicks,” which I’m sure he would have loved, and James Whitehead’s “digital translation of unedited data” becomes pure noise, a generous “fuck you” to romantic art. I found the use of text-to-speech to be highly ironic, yet fitting, and I had fun on track four trying to pay attention to both left and right voices as they talked about one another. Track seven is a soothing atmospheric collection of field recordings that exist as a translation of locations on a map. After listening to the clicks, computer voices and static of the earlier tracks, the peaceful sublimity of track seven is a welcome experience, and adds a very open, spatial and concrete element to the concept of TAR. The last track is a text-to-speech summary of the contents of the CD, which declares that it “cannot logically exist as a translation of itself.” This reminds me of the 11th dimension theory: we cannot conceive of a dimension that would encompass the 11th because it contains every possible manifestation of every possible universe.
The question that TAR raises, whether the organization of qualitative transformations is a rhythmic act or sets off a series of rhythmic occurrences, is an interesting one and in truth cannot fully be addressed by language.
“On Botanic and Rhythmic Structures” contains a number of different elements; I will try to address each in isolation. The packaging, as with all of Jarrods’ pieces, is straightforward yet somewhat confusing. The front contains a number of colorful boxes each with an illustration and description of the organisms featured on the disc. The light-beige insert on which this is printed complements the green and orange of the boxes very well. The back of the insert contains a statement of method and a list of the species of plants used in each track along with their positioning in the stereo field. This gives the overall impression of a catalog, and one initially wonders why this package contains a CD and not a field guide. That is because the CD is, in a sense, a translation of a field guide into a rhythmic system. The organisms featured on the cover and listed on the back are in fact the instruments used to create the music on the disc.
This brings us to the music contained therein. OBRS is essentially a percussion experiment/exploration utilizing the rhythmic action of environmental objects as a template. So, while the layout is ambient, the sound is rigidly percussive, jumping from silence to plant-texture-sound abruptly and then dropping off again. It is hard to tire of or learn the tracks because environmental rhythms are non-repetitive. Furthermore, each plant texture is very detailed, and as one only gets a fraction of a second to hear them, it is hard to fully take in every sound. This brings me to the first paradox of OBRS: it is structurally minimal, yet nearly impossible to digest fully. One might say it is macroscopically minimal while being microscopically (in rhythmic nuance and sonic-texture) maximal.
The second paradox of OBRS has to do with the musical status of the work. As a music producer, I understand that the context of music defines musical structure, and that context is indefinitely malleable. Jarrod has manipulated the context of his music, taking it away from the social realm, and has appropriated instead the catalogue of organisms represented by a field guide. This is similar to hip-hop where producers sample from other contexts (Motown, Jazz, or even Classical music) and reconstitute the material in a totally new context. Instead of sampling from a musical context, however, Jarrod has gone into the world and taken a non-musical object and translated it into a musical object. I believe that, while to many people OBRS may seem inaccessible, this is because they don’t realize that the elements composing OBRS are common elements of the music that they listen to on a regular basis. Even the abrupt nature of the soundscape can be compared to the variations and changes that punctuate classical music, only in OBRS the background to change is not melody but the listener’s own aural environment.
“Translation as Rhythm” is perhaps more dynamic and more challenging than OBRS. To begin again with the packaging, TAR is one of the most visually edible of Jarrod’s works. The two colors that dominate are white and a brownish yellow (I will refer to this latter color as huang because there is no English word for it as far as I know). I believe Jarrod chose white intentionally to play off the white of the plastic CD tray, an element often absent from his releases, which often dwell in clear plastic sleeves. There are four main outer surfaces to the packaging: the front cover is white with huang lettering and contains the title of the work above a block of numbers representing a rhythmic translation. When open, the left inner cover is solid Huang. The CD tray is white and contains a huang CD with the word rhythm in white lettering, with the letters rearranged in all possible combinations. The back cover is an inversion of the front, i.e. solid huang with a block of white numbers, a continuation of the rhythmic translation featured on the front. The front and back covers are inversions of each other, while the inside plays off the solid square of the insert with the circle of the CD, which is in turn delineated by the rows and columns of the word rhythm. In short, Jarrod has covered every inch of the CD packaging with manifestations of the concept, translation as rhythm, at the same time keeping it aesthetically pleasing.
The inside of the booklet contains, for each track, a text and/or graphic supplement, as well as an explanation of what is being translated, how it is being translated, and a description of the text/graphic supplement. Jarrod is being very generous to the listener here, but really he has to be. The nature of TAR is very unusual, and one must look at the supplement and read the explanation before and during the listening experience in order to understand what is going on. Again Jarrod’s work is very straightforward but also very confusing if one expects instant revelation without effort.
As for the listening experience, I found it very challenging but also very humorous. I didn’t expect to, but I laughed a lot while listening through the CD. Wittgenstein becomes a “decelerating series of clicks,” which I’m sure he would have loved, and James Whitehead’s “digital translation of unedited data” becomes pure noise, a generous “fuck you” to romantic art. I found the use of text-to-speech to be highly ironic, yet fitting, and I had fun on track four trying to pay attention to both left and right voices as they talked about one another. Track seven is a soothing atmospheric collection of field recordings that exist as a translation of locations on a map. After listening to the clicks, computer voices and static of the earlier tracks, the peaceful sublimity of track seven is a welcome experience, and adds a very open, spatial and concrete element to the concept of TAR. The last track is a text-to-speech summary of the contents of the CD, which declares that it “cannot logically exist as a translation of itself.” This reminds me of the 11th dimension theory: we cannot conceive of a dimension that would encompass the 11th because it contains every possible manifestation of every possible universe.
The question that TAR raises, whether the organization of qualitative transformations is a rhythmic act or sets off a series of rhythmic occurrences, is an interesting one and in truth cannot fully be addressed by language.
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