I mention to other humans from time to time that I dislike capitalism. I hold it in high disdain, actually, for its abhorrent nature. Asshole capitalists. Let them rot in a molten, golden soup. Some humans often shoot back at me something along the lines of well, you are selling your wares for money, too, so you are a capitalist. Either they are sealed in their own fundamentalist bubble so they cannot see the context of my existence or they outright refuse to believe that anything other than their own point of view exists.

Of course I sell my wares for money. I have to survive in the society that contains us. Ideals exist that I may pine for, but I do not simply abandon everything to pursue them. As much as capitalist scum want a free for all, our occidental world is one of compromise, not of extremes. I sell my wares for money but I don’t jump at the chance to monetize every grain that grows from the bosom of my brain or hara. We are all somewhere on an axis, not at an chuck everything and live an ideal or submit to the capitalist free for all extreme.

Axis thinking. Brian Eno wrote about it in his novel. I’ve talked about it for decades. I’m sure we are not the only ones. Consider it.

This article is one of many that claim that consonance and dissonance are cultural traits. Exposure to western music has trained most of us to veer towards perfect fifths and similar rot. Perfect fifths have their place, of course, but just not in the helpings that I’m usually presented. This concept of subjective evaluation of music bothers some people, especially those of the fundamentalist strain. I’m using the word fundamentalist in a broader sense than usual, indicating any who have steadfast points of views not easily swayed by counter-evidence.

(This)

Our hearing apparati has jointly evolved in a uniform way, so on a physical level, we perceive sound equally. We differ in the way our brain interprets and sorts it. Brains love to categorize.

I grew up fully exposed to western music. Moreover, the western music I was mostly exposed to as a youth was a very narrow slice of all that was available in the occidental realm. The western music of West Texas was, as you might guess, western music! The plodding one two of country was my introduction to a universe that envelops most of my waking and dreaming thoughts. My uncle was the only outsider in this respect, as I got a good dose of Baroque and Renaissance classical when I was in his presence when no-one was complaining about the racket.

My penchance for outsider tonalities surely has its roots in the rejection of my upbringing and the atmosphere surrounding it, though I’ve never disgarded western tonality wholly and probably never will. Working within its vastness will satisfy me for epochs to come, for I can contintue to harvest the partially abandoned corners of its sonority. On that note, I shall add some B flatness over a percolating F#m6 arpeggio.

Dani tasked me with writing the sountrack to his new short film Sheriff. I’d’ve picked a less mundane name, but it’s his project and I only assist, not interfere. My idea is to create a series of 9 - 12 miniatures between one and two and a half minutes each.

Thus the complication arrives.

My sense of musical movement is been set in gear that spins cogs at a glacial pace. I’m listening to Possible Planet by Steve Roach as I type and imagine he’d have the same problem that I have.

The first miniature is based on an improvisation called Suckin Down the Opium which sprang raw from my hara a few days back. It’s a solo, stark and bleak, over an F#m6 arpeggio. I used the Condor’s overdrive into my usual double Brothers boost (the initial with tone ascended into the ionosphere and the second with tone descended into the lithosphere), which adds to the spontaneous, raw vibe.

Anyone who isn’t an insect scurrying about my balcony at this moment will know that my improvisations tend to meander. Suckin Down the Opium meandered less than most, but still tended to draw itself out towards a blurred horizon. The miniature, now conditionally titled He Lumbers Forward, for reasons already stated, cannot do that. The goal is to capture the lolling feel of the improvisation in two minutes, roughly.

I’m disappointed with results so far.

Fuck um.

The first mid-hump of Dobruška and her Piglet (since, as I mentioned in a previous entry, Dobruška is certainly not a dromedary), gave me problems for epochs upon epochs. I used recapitulations of themes, new themes, lack of themes, and ululating white noise for the section, all of which resulted in jarring transitions on both of its borders. Inspiration finally struck last Sunday, which should be ever celebrated in the future as the day that Flamenco humped Dobruška.

Christian, who I consider a fetid lump of homunculous meat, told me that his Flamenco instructor, José, suggested I add a pad to some acoustic doodling he wrote. He sent me two files detailing the task. I found José’s fumblings pleasant and transcribed them into one of the handy spiral notebooks of blank sheet music that occupy one of the littered surfaces in my studio. Instead of immediately beginning to add pads to these fumblings (I’m not a fan of the word pad referring to a synthesizer drone beneath other musical movements), I realized that I could translate and mutate the ideas to another realm - namely the first mid-hump of Dobruška and her Piglet.

José’s ditty is in F# lydian, or that is the vista from which I view it. The only idea I retained from the original mid-hump sketches was that the section was portioned into d and e, raising the tonal center a major second halfway through. I mangled the original idea enough to make it my own, imply earlier and later themes, and 7/8-ify it.

Strangely, the first mid-hump was written in 6/8, but clearly accented in 7/8. My mind had obviously been trecherous during the initial phases of inscribing the paths through Dobruška’s abstract thicket.

I’m satisfied with the results, though I cannot play the Flamenco Travesty part (as I call it) sufficiently smoothly yet. During the process, I asked myself a few times where the vague line might be between inspiration and plagiarism. I’m of the mind that in this case, clearly the former. I could toss a line into the credits reading Gracias a José, Herr Flamenquist, por inspirarme. Aunque, even were a trained marmot to listen to both back to back, he’d only find cursory similarity.

Though, considering it, wouldn’t I have to also toss lines in to the credits to the effect of Thanks to Daniel Denis / Dmitri Shostakovich / Brian Eno / Robert Wyatt / etc … for the multitudinous pieces they inspired? The Grand Marmot who is clearly the tribunal for plagiaristic suspicions lands me clearly on the inspiration side of that vague line.

And, most importantly, I used ululating white noise as a backdrop.

It’s a wonderful world - it’s a real crying shame croons David Sylvian as I begin the short journey from one end of a dense thicket to another. The thicket, or, in other words, this entry, is as yet only vaguely known, as it should be. The process reminds me of my compositional strategy over the last three years.

What strategy is that, Herr Underling?

Like a savage thicket, or woods if you are of the more civilized ilk, pieces of music appear in my mental landscape amorphous and untamed. Initially, entrances into the morass are simply dents into its wild tangles. I begin to hack a path, uprooting and pruning until it is navigable, or at least navigable to an extent. I retreat and begin from another point on the parameter.

Were I to ascend in a dirigible from somewhere in the outskirts from time to time to observe my cuttings, splicing and replantings, I’d see the thatch slowly transforming from an abstraction of overlapping greens and browns into something that resembles one of those hedge labyrinths you learned about from those naughty intellectual books your parents had squirreled away in one of their recessed shelving assemblies.

Every time I’d gaze down from my sleek, agile dirigible, I’d have to accustom myself to a the new configuration of slightly repostured paths and recoulored floral arrangements. I am victim to familiarity’s bane. What I hear (or see) again and again begins to be correct. I make my notes as I listen (or see), regardless. I DIE, regardless, or perhaps a portion of me dies when the correctness of the form is torsioned. I finally move on to the new correctness.

Fuck um.

For a specific example, I rerecorded the second hump in Dobruška and her Piglet during the last few days. I call it the second hump because Dobruška is certainly not a dromedary. Though the original branches, twigs, twisting paths and scattered leaves of this part was played sloppily, my obdurate mind still held to its essence as I observed my new cuttings. Perceiving the vague line between the familiarity bane and personal quality is no task for a ploughless peasant.

I perused an article this morning. I won’t mention the source to that article since it won’t be around any longer after the heat death of the universe, during which most of you will be reading this, when my writings become the only remaining literature that gives that warm feeling that harkens back to the olden days: the days to which we should return. Lap up the words, serfs, as you grovel.

The article concerned traditionalists. That’s not the word the article used, but it is more precise concerning these soon (I use that word very loosely) to be scriptures. Said humans find a fixed point in history and dub it holy. This fixed point, of course, can be any arbitrary stretch of time, as long as its pervading ruleset is vaguely the same. I’ll call the personification of that ruleset the sovereign. Traditionalists derive their sense of ethics from this abstract ruler, as peasants did once from their king in feudal times. Progressive thinking and modernism are tossed into the bin without thought.

One must stay static and obey the scripture penned by the sovereign. The rigidity provides a stable framework. There is no room for ethical fluidity or evolution, as distorting said scripture makes no sense to the constricted mind.

Bubbles with thick membranes contain militant traditionalists. Their world is insulated. Their scripture is law. Their ethics extends to bubble members only. Those outside are held in suspicion, like a mustelid at a fowl convention. A common dilemma is the reduced bubble and its rigid ethics, breeding sociopaths. The article didn’t go into it, but I can imagine that minimal bubbles with impermeable surfaces can have succinct, inked scriptures. Indelible scriptures. A larger bubble and more permeable membranal wall reduces sociopathy, promotes altruism and the idea that it’s maybe a good idea to return that wallet you found in the gutter, even a wallet with 2500€ tastily banked inside, and even a wallet with a snapshot of an immigrant Pakistani family sitting beside the cash.

Exploratory minds don’t follow the will of sovereigns. And don’t be fooled by the artist that wants to reproduce the sound or look of those that peaked during the time of the sovereignty he worships. On an abstract level, he only lives, ethically and creatively, during the reign of that bygone epoch. Don’t trust him. In fact, kick him into the gutter. Break his nose and fingers while you’re at it. Cut out his kidneys and dine on them.

Fuck um.

Ritual appeals to conformists and conformists perpetuate ritual. The idea that everything goes as planned and everyone behaves in a predictable manner is another facet of familiarity. It is tied with safety. Within a cultural bubble, a safe form of art is a form of art that stays within boundaries predefined by years of repitition. The art itself is a ritual. All improvisation must remain within the boundaries. Whilst arbitrary boundaries themselves can be used to help an artist approach material with a fresh perspective, boundaries set by endless ritual are far more restrictive. They create opacity in the membrane of the bubble.

The inhabitants of the bubble become an isolated village. Their artistic ritual is a cult where any outsider who wants to be a part must conform rigidly to strictures or be rejected, or at least endlessly corrected. There is only one way and it is the right way. It reminds me frighteningly of dogmatic religion, another bubble cult formed from ritual.

I’ve seen this phenomena especially in folk musics, though it’s certainly alive in other arenas. The ritual, over time, defines what is puro for the music. Deviation creates tarnished bastardizations. Hybrids are smirked at. Of course, the village inhabitants are brought closer by this puro. In fact, it enforces the sense of community. When the comet wipes out the rest of the species, this village will be happy alone with their puro. On different levels of abstraction, every village is prone to this centricism. Those that manifest centricism in art have an opportunity to preach their version of puro to those outside the bubble, to those willing to be indoctrinated. I view this as a manner of releasing said puro into the wild so it can be hybridized with other forms. In the case of music, it can by hybridized with other rhythms, melodic ideas, and harmonic structures. The village elders will not be pleased.

Artistic egoism?

Purists are ridiculous just from the fact that every connotation of puro both the same (abstractly) and different (specifically), and the majority of village inhabitants either don’t realize it or simply reject it.

The same idea is to never learn a word of a foreign tongue though the world is populated with them. Hybridizations in all things are seeds of evolution.

I talked with the gypsy loving douchebag Christián yesterday briefly about my dislike of noodling and how musical structures that only serve as a receptacle for guitar (or any other instrument) improvisation aren’t really to my taste. I prefer when the structure, or harmonic, rhythmic and melodic form of a piece is on the altar and all instrumental parts serve to enhance its body.

When a body of work as vast as a folk music exists, such as flamenco, I always pause to worder why there is so little variation in form. There is also very little variation in timbre. This leads me to believe that it is music that is so tied to the public’s expectations that it is immobile. The musicians themselves may only sense it unconciously. Their choice of musical calling is a folk tradition and should stay within various boundries. Perhaps they’d never voice it in that manner. It’d remain unconcious.

I sense a connection with the idea of home, or at least security. On the whole, humans tend towards cultural mores that bring the sensation of safety and familiarity. The raiz of familiarity and family is the same. Gravitatino towards family has always been a bane of the species. No matter the consequence - family first. No matter the consecquence - familiarity first. The consequence here is that a musical form ossifies. By form, I mean rhythmic and harmonic structure. Anything departing from the structure is no longer regarded as a part of said folk art.

One shouldn’t shake the tree! An acorn might fall and impale your skull! Worse yet, it may fall to the ground, inter itself, mutate and grow into something altogether different and beautiful.

Ossified forms cannot hold my interest over time. Creative modules within me understand what can and could be done within an ossified form, and intellectually, I appreciate those possibilities. However, stronger creative modules within me ask Why not variate the rhythm suddenly for a few bars? Why always lead into the same cadence? Let’s add an electric cello in this part. Wouldn’t a drone in this section add atosphere? You are playing the same two chords over and over, anyway. And so on.

Paletos flee from under the shaking tree. They sense foundations being uprooted. They claw towards the tried and true. Fuck um.

I’m listening to Shambal Lies Supine Part 2 on Musicoin, as I have submitted it to a contest. I laughingly call it a contest, as Robert Calvert laughingly called one of his songs an enunciation or somesuch. I predict a maximum of seven people (or groups) entering the contest and the winner not being Flavigula. Flavigula should win, however, not because I am vainglorious, but because in contrast to the other music that will be submitted, Shambal Lies Supine Part 2 will stand out. It will be unique. Listeners will either scratch their twin bovine heads or decrease the volume to background levels. Fuck um.

Reminded by Calvert’s announcement on a live album that I don’t own anymore, I downloaded a bootleg from the Hype tour. The quality is atrocious. I’ll deal with it as long as possible. He’s chattering now about something. When the talk ends and the music starts is the moment all is considered. Before, only jabber. After, trancendence or planar death.

Back to Shambal Lies Supine Part 2, I consider my involment, cursory as it is, with Atom Collector Records. Like all musical communities, to an extent, it is a bubble. The membrane is quite permeable, however, and my entry was simple. I was accomodated. The main proprietor even played a Flavigula track on his Sunday radio show. Organic Influence, it was. I retraced the conversation in the chat room when my composition settled in the earcups of the five or six listeners. I boil the comments down to a single term: trippy. Ok. That’s fine. Fuck um.

I’m certain that multitudinous music community bubbles exist online, bringing together arbitrary and otherwise disconnected people and their disparate musics. They are musically heterogeneous but (mostly) humanly homogeneous. This contrasts musical bubbles like Christián’s sacred Flamenco bubble in Jerez, which is musically homogeneous and more humanly heterogeneous, though i suspect not too much. The focus is the music stylistically. The gypsy scum give lessons, perform barbaric rituals they call performances, and snort cocaine. In contrast, the Atom Collector Record crew are interested in two things only: 1. The acceptance of their music, whatever genre it may be, and it’s semi-distribution. 2. Jabbering about as most small communities do. #2 is less of a concern to me, as the topics, when they drift from music and cryptocurrencies, are trivial small talk, the jabber of paletos. Fuck um.

I added routine to the topics of this entry, so I suppose I should add something about the subject before I sign off to do something productive with my time, such as send anonymous packets of strychnine to arbitrary gypsy scum in the south. The only creative routine I currently have is going through daily jazz lessons, performing them, modifying them and using ideas for raw ideas that sometimes become parts of my own compositions. What I should do is invent a series of exercises to perform every morning. These could be scales, arpeggios, triad contortions or rhythmic training rituals that supercede anything a gypsy scum could come up with. The problem is to not get stuck into any set routine, but allow it to evolve.

Consider the alternative: sit and watch the membrane of any chosen bubble become so thick one can no longer see out, much less exit.

The type of art that has appealed to me since my days living parched and shackled in a hovel in West Texas has always been the art of the outlier. The origin of this affinity is only semi-clear. I obviously had no love for my shackles. I obviously had no love for the conservative bubble my parents constructed around me. I obviously had no love for the lack of preforations in that bubble. There were a few preforations, however.

I didn’t consciously turn to outlier art, and especially outlier music. It seemed to seek me out. Or, rather, it had symbiosis with my sense of aesthetic. Again, from where came that sense of aesthetic? I obviously had no love for my shackles, etc. One always must question the environment presented as normality. I see traditionalist art, and especially traditionalist music, as music is my chosen art form, as a pillar to the obstinate past and a barrier to progress. I tend to appreciate a dollop of it, but usually around the edges of the pillar. Yes - the edge cases - those bordering on parting from the pillar.

The case for learning the traditional arts, or at least about them, resonates with me, especially as a cretin who creates his own art. To dart around a pillar, one has to know the dimensions of the pillar. Pillars are, after all, nasty momenuments to stagnation. Thump at the edge cases and watch them crumble into the chaos of blackness. Let the particles swirl and coelesce again into different monstrosities, even mingling from the dust of edge cases from other pillars.

Deconstruction.

Reconstruction.

But with different intent and form.

It follows that I object to bowing to hierarchies. Gender roles are preforated. Wealth structures crumble. They mingle in the black chaos to become newer visages. Those will crumble yet again in some not too distant future. Fuck um. Therefore I don’t see the point in arguing for or against any established manner of conduct, class or mapping. Only the outliers floating in the chaos and said pillars’ crumbling edge cases really appeal to me. Standing up for or standing against said pillars can be the eternal debate of others.

Fuck um.

Now it’s time to work of my twisted deconstruction of Take the A Train.

A friendship only on one of the participants terms isn’t a friendship at all, actually, but more like a business contract. Anyone familiar with my blog entries will know that I am not the biggest fan of business contracts. They reek of artificiality. They are the stagnant film on the surface of relationship’s pond. Fuck um.

As I grow ancient, I notice more and more friendships that edge closer and closer to said contracts. My initial impressions of reasons edge towards knowing people becoming more conservative as time goes by. Playing it more safe. There can no longer be as much fucking around with time. Perhaps it is a symptom of middle age crises. I only know that I have not yet fallen victim to viewing friendships as a type of contract. As a type of stench coating a ostensibly deeper pond.

I type yet because I may fall into that morass, converting myself to a two dimensional film. I write this in hopes of rereading and remembering not to.

One obvious evidence is when someone places so-called friends into roles. In the mind of the person who sees people as contracts, he / she / it becomes a sort of Master of Ceremonies, a director or even playwright. During the course of a meeting, his friends are characters, each having specific roles, and each walking a narrow path - that bath being his / her / its part. Deviating even slightly from that path perturbs the Master of Ceremonies. He / she / it feels a loss of control. He / she / it feels a breach of contract.

I’m illustrating an extreme of the phenomenon, of course. But, think. We’ve all seen it.

Another point of view is that of balance. Every relationship has a tipping point where the grey becomes more obscure - where transparency finally fails. I try seeing from this viewpoint, as well. Basically, one or both parties have traversed differing roads and become less and less capabale of tolerating what they see as the other’s hovno. The easiest is to part ways. More fulfilling, however, could be to try cease from judgment and love the other for who he / she / it is, frustrating as it might be. Maybe the balance is not a one dimensional measure, after all. Re-clarifying greys are multidimensional tasks.

I’ve been trying to escape judgmental people since my childhood. My deathly pueblo Fort Stockton was filled with them. I succeeded for a years, basking in friendships that, as Christián would say, were puro. Some of the old despair is eking its way back into my life, however. I touch on it because ignoring the phenomenon would be disaster in the end.