schumann, beethoven, mingus, a spontaneous essay.

i was listening to the radio with kyote on a wednesday afternoon.

schumann was a fucking mess but when you hear the throaty clangor of his piano clashing against vivace strings like german tongues barking into a venetian night, when you hear his pianoforte syncopation lull then jar against melodic blackforest birdsongs, when the angst of his late compositions tear into something deeper than ears or mind to furiously dazzle, you realize his music was sincere and perfect. Languor and anarchy collide in schumann.

he died in an asylum in 1856 at 46 years of age and was still a fucking mess after a suicide attempt two years before. his ambition of becoming a concert pianist was promising as a student- schumann possessed equal proportions of talent, determination and technique- but the dream collapsed when his hand was worked by a machine of his own devising. The function of his invention was to increase the reach & strength of hands but it instead caused irreparable damage.

(there are other theories explaining the demise of his hand. One theory includes a botched surgery to separate ligaments. Another theory proposes faulty coordination of the hand to be an effect of mercury poisoning, mercury being a popular treatment of syphilis at the time. no one really knows but these theories all convey the slan of romantic conjecture unless, of course, you were schumann living through the raw experience, prior to the fauxfinish of a retelling, the ornamentation of myth, the gaudiness of an orator's language. . . the irony of perception and recitation and the mongering that occurs.)

schumann's a composer whose work I know more from his influences (schubert, beethoven) , his influencings (schoenberg, lizst, brahms), than his own actual compositions. but the abrasive ironwork, the bone-hammer of his piano concerto commanded attention and research and then the parallels to other artists start emerging.  

ie: the late voracious pianoworks of schumann compare in emotional texture to beethoven's final works, the hammerklavier and even the antimelodies of the grand fugue quartet. the syphilis connection to schubert offers a simple correlation in both's relatively young death after a prolific period of work. How all three suffered the torture of audio hallucinations becoming “angel songs” and then degenerate noise- cacophonies of unsound mine. I think of mingus, mingus the composer who preceded mingus the photographer. Mingus who preceded the bedraggled figure evicted from his apartment, bass-less and baseless, the tragic clown of his own musical selfportrait. Schumann was a man of hardedged suffering in a long line of them.

all in all schumann is a powerful orchestrator, a titan of the language of pure sound, a man whose mind swelled like a hornet's nest in a storm while spinning out an opus still marveled over today. . . a vessel dissolved by the power of the very acid it contained, like a narrative, like a nautilus, cantor's aleph, like a love or a lust, a shard of music in the afternoon sipping coffee with an orange scone.

Visions, revisions, momentum of a thing. . . .

Visions & Revisions.

Walked by a brick wall, an older building yawning in its form, a downtown alley of fractured concrete and bulging bricks where thick-iron braces mount whole levels of 1800's architecture. . . the slight curve of the walls, cement patches tearing into fissures, seams, the age self-evident and aesthetically charmed, the inevitable yield to gravity, and I was passing towards the Cape Fear river and the inky churn of her day's angst. Knots of vine dangled by thick wires while beneath the tangle of electric city and wild-growth nature, a buildup & breakdown of paint in the rough face of the deep red bricks, the wild calligraphy of shapes told an interesting story. Layers of texture, testimony, bird shit, faded mural ads for coca-cola and shaving cream, signage for long-departed hardware stores, tarred pipes piercing the walls, the gallery of scars that is Front Street. The notion of layering and delayering, deconstruction & reconstruction, work acted upon work with rebuilding and restripping, the way Life is. . . how history embeds itself in the visual. . . and this meditation became a reclaiming of my image-repertoire, became a rekindling of visual thought and work, the new tendrils & roots pushing tiny fingers into the earth and air and water, pushing energy into the cycle of creativity. What a friend calls the “Momentum”.

(Meanwhile Dvorak's string cycle “cypresses” and what a full-sound suite.)

Excavation, this is the word I revisit, that I find myself confronted with, again. The word & the idea, Excavation, even a canvas by de Kooning, has reentered my vocabulary. To unbury the Self from external exploits and submissions, the stripping of false layers, of excess, the onion layers of Being. To re-examine Identity, what constitutes the I of the moment.

1.25.11  Slagging out on the trails of poplar grove plantation. . . . rain & cold air worked against the run, but nothing like Sunday's 16 miler. Sunday's run was a fury of wild, clumsy labor with wind beating ears and face, traffic ripping mind back to thighs and knees, eroding all determination. . . . today's run felt fast, felt fluid with long strides and higher knees, red legs burning with the pleasure of the work, short trees beat percussive in large rain, the quick dodge of puddles and the fast lean into slopes, the trails unwind and whisper life into lungs, restful eyes, unstraining, easy. A mantra/ visualization presented itself during the run: a mindful passage where I enjoyed the earth propelling me, the earth of the trail pushing my kicks into easy mud-full scoops of sole, was a direct positive collaboration, the earth and my body, a reconnection, an understanding, a union. Reminiscent of a meditation from years ago: inhale, feel the pull of air come from the soles of your feet, from beneath your feet, sourced in the earth, the breath entering the body from soil and what is beneath the soil, feel the pull as the grounding part of breath, soul inhaling soul, then blow your deep-colored earth into the air as white vapor, as light, as void, quietude. The cleansing cycle of breath carried the run, naught left but the earth, the rain, the run.