My easyjet flight to Basel today is made at least slightly less rough by the texts of Me Braxton. I have to say, I love the way this guy writes and speaks. He’S a real living gem. Check out this paragraph from his- symptomatic of his unique and eccentric parlance and always right on the button. I’m also posting it as it fllows on from my water post the other day:

“The sign of the circle in my music system denotes the identity of mutable logics, as a concept that seeks to identify sonic events from a tri-centric perspective (ie. individual, community, and symbolic integration- extending into spiritual). This is an approach to perceptual modeling that transcends the use of two diminsional static definitions as a way to achieve a summation recognition (that takes into account the fact of ‘multiple routes’ ( as in ‘there are many ways to find ‘God’). The concept of mutable logics was conceived as one in three principles – that is:1) mutable logics as a symbolic construct whose ‘qualities’ can be described as a) liquid character (movement), or the use of water and emotion: mutable logics as in ‘the house of intuition and ‘blending’ as opposed to a ‘jerky-ecthed’ sharp kind of movement 2) the second principle is the concept of stable logics, as a term to comment on recognition through fixed relationships ( and points of identity).”

In other amazing news you can actually order CDs and LPs now directly from my homepage under the mail-order section. Wow.

And one last epilog by mr cummings for the seekers out there:

EPILOG

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

e.e. cummings

I’m heading to Basel tomorrow to play. One of the most fascinating elements of this city is the drumming around the time of Carnival which is coming up soon. I remember listening to a distant group rehearse once and it was one of those beautiful moments when you don’t know quite what is going on- displacement, possums- the key to unlocking the doors. I trawled up this vid from youtube- you can at least imagine how these rhythms would sound by torchlight at night, echoing from distant cobbled lanes. Otherwordly.

Whilst extracting some melodies from the archives of Mr Stockhausen I came across some of his earlier text pieces- one of them in particular I thought was worth posting. I wonder if anyone did actually do this and found themselves caught in a loop and unable to get out.

My track of the day for you: Tears in Rain:

What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment… Nikola Tesla

I suppose one of the things I try to do on this blog is squeeze the juice out of my work and offer the essence as best and as concisely as I can (admittedly I have been caught ranting on about spirals and overtones but I to this day can still barely contain my excitement). If I do scream out with joy it is still done quietly and succinctly- after all, here in my little world, we all speak softly- there’s enough noise, excess, and hot air outside.

Were I to put my interior work from the last few years into a tiny nutshell or the inside of a grape it would sound something like this: a simple saxophone chord of spiraling 6ths like the ones I have posted so often before. Behind this however is my main internal work: understanding consciousness as matter and vica versa. This brings with it a whole host of tantalizing side trails which permeate our reality. Bit by bit I am getting closer to this point of understanding. Through sound. Through numbers. I’ve been given some beautiful keys in the form of sound to help me with this work and herein lies for me the chance to raise the bar regarding our perception of the universe around us. That is what drives me now. That is the drop of compressed juice I can offer you from the last few years of fruit picking.

Back to the now. Contrasts abounded in the last 3 days. In Barcelona I was lucky to improvise to the films of Martha Colburn. Goodness me! Her films were so dam amazing it was not easy to play. It was like being inside someone else’s dreams and it was quite a ride.

Not even 24 hours later I’m close to the Netherlands playing Trio jazz- it’s a jazz meets art affair and yes, a dear old gentleman is painting semi realistic portraits of us. Thanks to Martha though all I see is blood, spiders, breasts, wolves, indians and sunsets behind battlefields as Loverman seeps from my horn, or as Ahmet Shabo might say, building slowly and gracefully around the melodic foam that froths over regularly from their horns’ rims.

Let me tie up this baby with the words of a soft speaker. Lester Young himself:

In the flight today I was perusing through some Stockhausen CD texts. On some of them you are really not sure if someone is pulling your leg or not. This gem from the truly bizarre liner notes to “In Freundschaft”

“Any set of sensitive ears hooked up to a sensibly sensible brain and mind will open up the world of IN FREUNDSCHAFT to the splendor of Stephens’ garlands of spiraling basset-horn tones, in waves and vibrations of compressions from the shifting pillar of air inside her instrument.”

I also read that Stahlheinz claimed to be a great bebop pianist and could “make any party dance”. How I would have loved to play some bebop with him in waves with the shifting column of air inside my horn and my sensibly sensible brain.

Finishing on a light note here is my cover version of a Catalan football commentators build up to yet another Messi goal, spoken and screamed into my computer lap top using naught but sensible garlands of spiraling improvisational fervor all brought about by the cascading orange light and scent of greasy tortilla around me. Para disfrutar, Chicos: