Psalm for Journeys

LAKE LIGHT (Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, February 2009)

PSALM FOR JOURNEYS

Walk, up
and over mountains
(so many mountains)

Follow thin and falling waters
to find wide river
passage

Reach
the place where blue lake shimmers
huge beneath the sky

Hold
this in the heart

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Notes for ACROSS BLUE MOUNTAINS

(Red Sky, Blue Mountains- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2008)

Here are some notes and comments about the tracks on ACROSS BLUE MOUNTAINS- SONGS AND SOUNDWORKS 2006-2008:


National, Harvest
This piece began as an exploratory improvisation on a borrowed vintage National New Yorker steel guitar. I fell in love immediately with the rough growl of the middle range, and I kept going back for those notes, that sound.
National New Yorker, Fender Blues Junior; mic-ed with a Radio Shack dynamic mic hung over the grille.

Never Run Dry
A simple song for voice and acoustic guitar. Dedicated with love to anybody who is hurting deep inside.
Vocal, Epiphone guitar; mic-ed with MXL-V63M

Eagle Dreams of Open Water
I imagined this piece as a gamelan composition for acoustic steel guitars in layers; but a gamelan sped up: like a bird's metabolism maybe, or spring run-off from mountains.
Epiphone guitar, Silvertone lap steel (John Goss modified); mic-ed with Studio Projects C3. (Thank you, Glenn Howland.)

The Women at Three Mile Bridge Road
My mystery novel HIGHWAY IN THE BLOOD tells the story of a steel player named Buck Hawkins who leaves behind some trouble in Texas only to find more trouble back home in Vermont. In the book, he composes a Dobro tune dedicated to some people and a place at the heart of the story. I thought it would be fun to actually write and record the piece in character as Buck.
1977 Dobro, 1974 Estrada guitar; mic-ed with Studio Projects C3.

Texas Double Eagle Railroad Blues
A strange little rockabilly blues with a touch of Zen, this came to me one fall day as maple leaves fell. In recording and mixing this version, I tried to keep to a 1950s small-studio /southern AM radio /late night vibe: lots of echo and a hot, sticky mix. (You can hear the full band version on the CD RUSTY ROMANCE- ROOTS N" ROLL.)
Vocal, 1974 Estrada , 1990s Mexican Telecaster, Fender Blues Junior; mic-ed with MXL V63M, Radio Shack dynamic.

Red Sky Prayer Across Blue Mountains
I made this piece on a cold, stark, and beautiful November afternoon. It’s made from the collage and reassembly of some pieces from alternate versions of previous compositions— Including “National, Harvest” and “November Path –for Dennis Darrah”.
National New Yorker, Silvertone lap steel, Lexicon jam man; processed with Acid software.

Colors of Dusk, Colors of Dawn- for Thomas Merton
Reading Thomas Merton’s words in the silent mornings and evenings has often been an inspiration to me, as has the experience of changing light and color in the unfolding dawn and dusk.
I spent most of the late winter and early spring of 2008 on this piece. It was my intent to express in sound those liminal colors, moods, and textures. The process began with a long, direct-recorded improvisation on steel guitar (I remember it as being my Melobar SL-6, but my tracking notes say it was the Silvertone.)
The extensive reshaping and sound painting was done in Acid and Cool Edit Pro.

Across Blue Mountains: New CD

(View From Isle La Motte- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2007)

I'm pleased to report that I've just about finished my new solo CD, ACROSS BLUE MOUNTAINS: SONGS AND SOUNDWORKS. It features lots of atmospheric steel guitar and some intimate vocals. I think it's my most personal collection yet; a journey into inner and outer landscapes. You can listen to some of it here:

http://www.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1959081.html

I'm also excited to announce that we've just finishing mixing the new Rusty Romance album. It's being mastered as I write this. More to follow soon.

October Sunset, Lake Champlain

October Sunset, Lake Champlain

(painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2008)

Migration

Migration (Monoprint by Kevin Macneil Brown, papers and black paint, 2007)

Sparrow and Fog

Poised at the edge of
seasons changing
or two weather systems
crashing together,
the white-throated sparrow,
in migration, begins to move now
south-east through heavy fog.

(Or perhaps that poise,
that pause, this fog, that waiting,
those seasons, those systems,
that moving, those directions

are only for us
are only pale
August perceptions…)

There are some questions,
I have found,
For which the best answers might be:

Call notes of birds;
Thick white silence.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

August, 2008

Still Point

Still Point;
Light Across Water

(Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, acyrlic on board, spring 2008)

Bright orange glow
(5:15) at

the point of soon-to-rise sun

Within that, blue cloud striations
and, just above: darker, almost black.

Further from this center, to the
north of east, a muted
peach-colored gleam; soft, and
brightening into that orange as
the eye follows

Toward the point of rising light;

The Virgin Point (Merton’s term)
and I feel a yearning toward—no, an attainment of
such a place, a feeling

By this, I mean
the moment, the locus
of new beginning

Where all that is not
necessary falls away into
an open, loving void

(as though swallowed
complete, by
bigger ocean!)

Wave upon wave
love returns to itself,
its strength-- already
considerable--gathering,
felt and
known

that magnificent
blue-green roar!

-kmb, May 08

--------------------------------------

I'm excited to announce the publication in one volume of my two poem cycles NORTH COAST DREAMING and LUMINIST DIARY. Here's more information, and a way to order a copy:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2152993

It's also available at Bear Pond Books, in Montpelier, Vermont.

And more news: I'll be showing some of my paintings as part of the Montpelier Art Walk this June. Here's more information:

http://www.lazypear.com/art_gallery/art_walk/montpelier_art_walk.html

Eagle Dreams of Open Waters

Rock, Water, Sky
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown
(Acrylic on canvas, March 2008)


-------------------


Breathing hard beneath
first spring sun

running, wide-striding
along mud of the river path


after the long winter, from inside I can only
make rough outline
of the joy of
all of
this.


Better, then, to describe
up there, the eagle:

high in clear blue sky.
lifted by warming
earth through cool winds,

he's been dreaming
for a while now.


But today it's real
to see and sense:

the fast-moving truth of open water.


-kmb, April 08


------------------------------


Sun today, and clean fresh winds. But last week it snowed, and I was feeling under the weather. Thanks to Rusty Romance's stellar soundman, Glenn Howland--aka Mr. Coffee, aka Treeline Stringband-- I was able to record my way out of the blues. Glenn loaned me a fine mic and pre-amp particularly suited for acoustic music and I spent a day recording some pieces I've been working on for a few months. (How did Glenn know they were finished? Hmmm...)

One of the compositions I recorded was this piece for acoustic guitar-- a small-bodied Epiphone-- and acoustic steel-- the cool little 5 dollar Silvertone that John Goss made into a lap steel and gave to me.
I just finished mixing the piece today, using compression and echo to add texture, space, and motion around the notes. It's sort of an impressionistic acoustic slide guitar gamelan thing, maybe:
http://www.jukeboxalive.com/player/player.php?sid=1959093&method=play

New Harbor, Maine: Three Morning Views, Three Shoreline Transformations

(Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown- acrylic on canvas, summer 2007)

It is becoming more and more clear to me that making all of this-- words, music, images--is simply a way to hold on for a long moment to the things that matter to me, before they pass through my hands, my apprehensions.

And now, a re-posted link to some contemplative water music:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1638551.html

Winter Light: Image and Sound

January Dusk

Kevin Macneil Brown, winter 2008, acrylic on canvas

And, in the same spirit, here is a long ambient/liminal piece I began in January and just completed yesterday:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1716973.html

Thank you for looking and listening.

You Are My Horizon

You Are My Horizon 1, You Are My Horizon 2

Kevin Macneil Brown, summer 2007

acrylic on canvas

December Outpost

Blue Sky
Broken clouds

Dark wing shadow
above
shimmer

(Crossing the
lake in September,
inner silence)


Scumbled blessings
Contrast of
Light and shadow


Reflected back,
the True World of

Love, that silence:

Blue water breathing.

-Kevin Macneil Brown
(from the ferry VALCOUR, Sept. 2007)


-----------------------------------------------------

Here are my thoughts about music in 2007, from DUSTED MAGAZINE:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/686



And here is a small gathering of material that might be part of my next album:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1689137.html

Blessings and peace to all. I'll be back to this journal late in January.

Words for November

This piece of mine ran originally in ULTRARUNNING and most recently in the BARRE-MONTPELIER TIMES ARGUS and RUTLAND HERALD :


Running with the Wind Eagle

By KEVIN MACNEIL BROWN Correspondent

It wasn't supposed to be a vision quest, just a simple run up my favorite Vermont mountain trail: up the old carriage road to the bare rock summit of Mount Hunger, then down the other side and across the wooded ridge to the open, sun-baked ledges of White Rock Mountain. It was not an epic journey, just a couple of hours of moderately-challenging trail running.

Thomas Merton, the monk and writer, once wrote something to the effect that to begin each day by describing the same mountain is to be in the grip of delusion. One way I've found to escape that grip is to simply take myself physically right into — and onto — that mountain, the one I see almost every morning.

Above all, it was the amazing clarity of the morning air that pulled me out to run that autumn day. I'd been up on those trails a few times that season, on longer approaches. But today I was greedy for one more gulp of that mountain air, hungry for another look at that long, all-encompassing view from the peak.

So I ran — first through groves of hardwood, then, as I climbed higher, through dark, cool pines. The mountain was mine alone, it seemed.

I reached the summit after a short and exhilarating rock scramble. Stopping to catch my breath and drink in the view, I noticed the odd way the clear morning light seemed to lengthen the far Adirondack peaks to the West: an optical illusion that created dark spires and towers that I knew weren't really there.

Turning eastward, I took in a long line of high, thin, mackerel-flecked clouds that stretched like an ocean, breaking like silver-gray surf just above the Presidential Range of New Hampshire's White Mountains.

For a while I watched in awe as four falcons, streamlined for motion in a way that I never would be, circled in a warm updraft current that rose, an invisible spiral, from the ridgeline below. The fast flight of the falcons made me restless, made me want to run again. So I found the trail down into the col between the two mountains. There, with blue sky high above me, I leaped from rock to rock in the shadowed, wet and mossy woods.

Then my breath caught for an instant when something dark passed behind and above me. In my imagination I saw clearly the crook of a giant black wing. It was huge beyond comprehension, some kind of spirit, I thought, darker even than these dark woods. The crisp air around me seemed to grow suddenly cold. I shivered, feeling something between fear and awe as a mysterious breeze passed over my sweating skin.

Minutes later, I came out into the open, warm and sunny ledges of White Rock, then followed the rocky, steep and rooted trail down.

It was a few days later that I came across the story, told by the Abenaki natives of Vermont — and retold wonderfully by the writer Joseph Bruchac — of the Wind Eagle in the high mountains. In this story, the primal being who was the Transformer, the Changer — known to some as Gluskabi, to others as Odzihozo — was tired of the way the winds had so often ruined his canoe voyages and impeded his travel.

He decided to leave his lakeside home and climb to the highest peak, the abode of the massive, fierce bird that created and controlled the winds. Through trickery, he got this creature — the Wind Eagle — wedged into a rock-cleft. Trapped there, the dark and massive raptor could no longer make the winds blow.

Satisfied with his work, the Transformer descended. It was only later, when the lakeside land grew still and breezeless and unbearably hot, that the Transformer realized his mistake. He knew now that he'd have to return to the mountain and free the Wind Eagle. He did so, and the cooling breezes returned at last, along, of course, with the fiercer winds.

It might have been a bird, or a cloud, even a plane, that made the dark shadow I felt pass across the sky and forest that morning. Or it might have been a figment of my imagination, an anomaly of heartbeat and respiration.

It really doesn't matter, though, because now I know about the Wind Eagle. And I know that when I run in the mountains — when I move my lungs, my muscles, my legs — something else moves too. It is something big and powerful and beyond my control and intention, yet somehow transformed by my own perception and attention.

It is transformed by my willingness, through motion and surrender, to set something like spirit free.

October Report: Shoreline Transformations

After having spent some time during the past couple of weeks mixing and mastering, I am pleased to announce that my new CD,
LIMINAL MUSIC 4: THREE SHORELINE TRANSFORMATIONS/THE FIRST LAST OUTPOST, is finished. I'll be releasing it in a limited edition, each copy with a hand-painted shorescape insert and an actual NOAA marine weather forecast print-out included.
The two long pieces are very slow-moving, with subtle, shifting spacial dimensions and a liminal harmonic and melodic haze - my attempt at conjuring in sound the deeper structures and fog-bound, tidal, breaking-wave mysteries of eternal shorelines.
If you would like to order a copy, please contact me at:
Bucky@rustyromance.com

You can listen to the music here:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1638551.html


As for the band, Rusty Romance, we are taking some time off from gigs this fall to spend time learning new songs that Rusty and I have written for the band, working towards a new 2008 album.
We'll be back on stage at First Night Montpelier, on New Year's Eve.

Back To Liminal

It’s been a busy summer with Rusty Romance-- a few road trips, Including a show at the Moxie Festival in Lisbon, Maine. But the band schedule is settling down for a while, so I’m at last finding time to catch up on this journal.
An earlier trip to Maine with the band-- staying in New Harbor, a beautiful, tiny Maine lobstering port-- filled me with inspiring images. I spent some downtime sketching the rocks, water, and boats. Now, back home in Vermont, I’ve been painting from those inspirations a few mornings a week. The other mornings I’ve been working away at my latest novel, about which I’m not ready to say much.
One exciting thing about painting is the way it has reinforced my ideas and approaches to musical composition. Back in May and June I created two long pieces that will likely make up my next CD, tentatively titled THE FIRST LAST OUTPOST. Both pieces begin with the same “drawing”: a performance on lap steel and looping device recorded in real time. But then each piece is worked into a “painting” with what I call transformations and sound-smears: like sonic brush-strokes; manipulations of light, shadow, texture.

As these works formed, I found myself returning to the ethos of my earlier concept of Liminal Music. To explain that concept a little better, here’s something I wrote in a 2005 retrospective:

Thoughts on Composition, Spring Equinox 2005

I’m sure that I share with many other composers the desire --the deep yearning-- to make sonic structures that I want to hear, that I want to exist in the world.
This imagining and this yearning most often lead me to the making of sound assemblages--evocations of place and landscape, inner and outer; narrative songs set within and woven with reference points of musical style and memory-- that while not always exactly, in the end, what I might have imagined them to be, turn out to be exactly what they need to be, even with all their mistakes and imperfections.
In the composing, improvisation, recording, and production processes--most often solitary--I have used the spacial considerations of effecting, panning, and mixing to leave an empty space for myself, and, by extension, for the listener.
In one sense, this is the ultimate creative self-centeredness: putting myself at the center of the sonic world. Of course, the inherent paradox is that this presence reveals itself as an absence: A silent space, in the midst of other spaces both silent and sounding.

When I began composing music that tended toward the-- for lack of a better word-- abstract, I realized that I was making works that, while stemming from the ambient tradition, did not work very well as background music. These were pieces that asked for focused attention, that needed the listener to share in the intended evocation of inner and outer landscapes, both experienced and conjured.
In looking for a name to describe these works, I came to see that the music was about places both real and imagined, about states of in-between: between sleeping and wakefulness; between land and water, between darkness and light at dusk or dawn. Thus the name: Liminal Music.

Would You Like to Listen?

The link below will take you to a sampling of my music, including some pieces I've written about in this weblog.

http://www.jukeboxalive.com/albums.php?profile=1027587

I plan on updating the jukebox site every couple of months. The next time will probably be in early September.

Thanks for listening!

Spring Light

The onset of spring in northern New England brings changes in the light: the softening of hues; the lengthening of duration and shadow. This March the snow is still deep-- more than a foot in my backyard. But every day the snow-pack shrinks a little more, and even another big storm could only temporarily change the tide of spring's arrival.

In the past few weeks I've stayed with the themes and concerns of my composition THE INEFFABLE FREEDOM OF CAPTURED LIGHT. I've been painting on canvas in the mornings, answering a call that the exploration of changing light has offered. And I've spun off new musical pieces from various juxtapositions and confluences of the sonic elements of INEFFABLE FREEDOM, using them as sonic background to the act of painting. Over the weeks this work has cohered into a whole that I would like to someday present as an installation piece. (Right now the installation exists only in my studio.)

Given these concerns and interests it's perhaps no surprise that I'd be pulled into the sound world of a composer deeply influenced by the energies of visual art. As winter became spring, I found myself listening in the afternoons to a lot of Morton Feldman, including his six-hour-long STRING QUARTET NO. 2, which, I'll admit, I experienced as If I were reading a novel-- settling into it over the course of a few days, each time taking up where I'd left off before. There are sections of luminous and mystical beauty in this work; mysteries of tone and harmony that sometimes touched a longing in me and truly hurt my heart.

Also a musical companion some afternoons has been Susan Alcorn's remarkable AND I AWAIT (THE RESURRECTION OF THE PEDAL STEEL GUITAR). Susan Alcorn commits to and inhabits each note she plays; It's an all too rare quality in a musician, and for the listener, it can open up worlds. The long title piece offers surprises each time I hear it. And Susan's version of the Italian tune "Volare" is a pure joy: dreamy, alluringly textured, melodic; conjuring with an orchestra of multi -tracked pedal steel guitar something that suggests to me what Les Paul and Mary Ford might have come up with if they'd been hanging out with Sun Ra.

And now this morning the sky is blue. The snow has melted down an inch since yesterday. Time to go out for a run.

A Composition Journal, Part 4

January 21

AM
Made a few changes to "The Freedom of Captured Light" this morning. Returning to the
third-- and the first finished-- version, made some EQ changes to tame the hiss and rumble, making sure to keep the overall tonal coloration.
Next, I added complexity by doubling--then tripling-- the whole piece in separate tracks, panning and time-shifting (not by much) each track to create a sense of spaciousness and transparency.
And now this piece has come newly alive.

PM
Committing to a name: THE INEFFABLE FREEDOM OF CAPTURED LIGHT.

JANUARY 25

Morning reading : Cold Mountain Poet. A force of nature; humanity almost, but not quite, subsumed in rock, mountains, rivers, pines. (winds and waters.)
These poems, in David Hinton's deep and powerful translations (MOUNTAIN HOME: THE WILDERNESS POETRY OF ANCIENT CHINA) are having an effect on my musical composition. Or am I just riding a wave of synchronicity in my inner winter life right now?

Coffee, work on editing yesterday's two reviews for DUSTED. A quiet house for a while, so I took advantage and vacuumed floors.

Settled into some late-morning work on CAPTURED LIGHT: recorded glass bowls , struck with sticks. The sound made me think of bare rock beneath my feet. I treated the recordings with rolled-off old-time radio EQ, made a few various cuts and copies , then placed them within the mix of the most recent , composite, version of the entire piece. The bowls have a close-up sound that reminds me of a footpath, and perhaps that up-close-ness adds some welcome human scale/perspective as it wanders, unfolds within the big-sky, wide- horizon of sound that is predominant in the composition.


JANUARY 28
Afternoon
Hot bath, a beer. Reading in Holbrook's 1939 biography of Ethan Allen. An entertaining and engaging read, written in a sly and energetic "Yankee" voice.
Later, watching the sky change, the light move, I listen again to "The Ineffable Freedom of Captured Light ." I hear now that perhaps there should be some steel guitar early in the piece--a glimpse of blue as distant allure-- sliding in with major 7th blossoming, entering, reverb-ed for sense of distance, on the left--far left..

Now the sky has gone from blue to striations of violet--then a last blush of rose captured in high windows of high towers at Vermont College. The evergreens are almost black: spruces straight and tall; white pines caught stilled in what looks like mid-motion-- splay, sway, wave...
Dusk falling. I slipped off for a short winter's day nap.

Rising. Up and at 'em. Started a white bean stew.
Some work tonight on "captured light..", adding steel entrances as early hints of blue.
Also some EQ, scooping out bass mud accrued by multi-tracking.

JANUARY 29
Up at 6:30. Sub-zero again. Listening to latest version of "light", I think it's as good as I can make it. That is, it is what it is.
This piece really does go well with watching sunrise or sunset play out against the winter sky. The composition is 20 minutes and 50 seconds long. Maybe I should offer the listener instructions to begin playing the piece 20:50 before sunrise or sunset, and to look out a window while he or she listens.

You can listen here:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1638143.html

A Composition Journal, Part 3

January 14 - afternoon

All this microscopic listening makes me edgy, grumpy. So, out for an hour's run in the snow.
My reward: Gray-green river, high and fast-moving under gray, snowing sky. The calm, monastery-like beauty of pine woods at Redstone park: snow-covered wooden benches, the stream and falls full, as they've been all winter.

Clear-headed, grounded, aerated, I listen yet again. I hear a few places that need work. I add more white (metallophone shimmer, pitch-shifted, reverbed), a bit of distant blue (steel guitar again; cut, looped, reverbed). I hear also a need for some translucent haze in the white (bells).

But for now, I need another break. I tend to get obsessive, working, pushing on until I'm satisfied--and/or exhausted. I'm going to try to do this piece a little differently.

January 15

Morning; a few more brushstrokes added. Listened on walkperson while I shoveled wet snow. Listened again while I walked to work. Almost done.


January 17

Crystal clear and cold-- sub-zero -- this morning. Some work on "Captured Light." An attempt at fine-tuning, but not quite getting it. Our heating system being fixed today, so it's COLD in the house. Bright sun, dazzling white snow-- shadows of tree branches on shiny surface crust.
I abandon music for the day, go out for a run. Back at home, I make a slow- simmering tomato sauce with peppers and hot Italian sausage-- an attempt to warm the house. Successful.


PM- Another attempt at EQ tweaking: cutting highs, boosting lower mids. Much better results: the piece has a thickness and warmth it didn't have before.

January 20

Listened to and compared, while editing some writing projects, both versions--original and re-EQd-- today. The first sounded better: more spacious and and airy; more shimmer.
I think the second version was satisfying at first from a sense of safety: it made the piece sound more like my previous work-- dark, murky, almost black and white.
But today I can trust the NEW direction behind the making of this piece. It seems the first mix is the one to go with.
(That said, there is still a need for some hiss reduction, maybe a slight taming of lows...)

A Composition Journal, Part 2

January 12. 2007

Woke up late after 9 hours (!!) of sleep. Gray morning. Coffee, read a few poems by Tu Fu.... Read them again.
To work on "Captured Light." My mission today is to paint in sound the color field I see as Gold/bright green. This entails taking a section of yesterday's work, cutting it, then re-harmonizing it in the program Acid. (I have tuned it 21 half-steps up.) Then cutting again to size and proportion, laying it in so that it fills the right time/space within the piece. I'm quite sure I've never worked so visually before; but it seems appropriate, given the inspiration for the piece. Like stepping back from a canvas, I listen. Make changes. Step back. listen again.


January 13

This morning's work: simply listening.
Gray, warm-ish but raw outside. Like April again.

January 14

Deep sleep. Up at 7. Snow falling; big, pretty flakes in gray dark morning.
Coffee, reading in Tu Fu. Sadness in these words; an autumnal chill of aging, regret.
Work on "Freedom of Captured Light." Recorded a shimmering pulse of metallophone for the color-field White-gold; after that, a steel guitar melody arcing to a Major 7th as its highest tone: A yearning, sweeping arc of bright blue (from mountain tops to sky.)
Next, hours of layering, moving, removing, mixing.
Snow falling.

A Composition Journal, Part 1

For the past few weeks I've been working on a long composition, one that was, it seems, presaged by the arrival of the poem in my previous entry. For a while I'll devote this weblog to my journals about the creation of this work. I've never before kept a detailed daily journal of progress--from inspiration to implementation-- on a particular piece of music, so I'm finding this interesting.

January 9, 2007
Up at 6:30, reading the knife-sharp poems of Li Po-- David Hinton's remarkable translations in MOUNTAIN HOME: THE WILDERNESS POEMS OF ANCIENT CHINA ( New Directions).
Sun rise on snow-white mountains flamed with reddish gold; I watched, drank coffee.
A short run with the dog; cold, crisp morning with an April-like wind out of SE. Amazing striations/layers of color and shadow in the view across to the Worcester Range.


January 10
Up in the dark. Li Po resonance of words again: rich in peaceful shock of image, sound.
Thnking this morning, deeply, about color-field, landscape ... (that, really, landscape/shape alone is not what intrigues me, but rather the way light and sound act to shape it-- how paint and words and composition can be analog to that exchange -- and beyond that: how that exchange is a sign of Spirit's true existence.)
So, once again: sky, Luminism; Fitz Hugh Lane.
I'm imagining a long piece of music --1 hour?--of tone-fields as color, shape. (see the mountain drawing in yesterday's journal) Layers of tone (table organ, lap steel, bells) in reverberant space. Stacking, shifting, shadowing...to create a sonic view. Such a piece perhaps best made over a long period of time-- weeks? months?....
Title:
THE FREEDOM OF CAPTURED LIGHT.

January 11
Dark gives way to violet, within that, a perfect half moon. Coffee, and reading Tu Fu. These poems are structured, striated, with a more complex diction than the earlier wilderness poets, perhaps.

Last night I had set up microphone, table organ, yamaha reverb, Lexicon jam man. Now, this morning, with view of mountains flaming from salmon to violet pink then cooling to violet and, finally, snow white, I record a quiet piece: letting notes from the table organ rise and fall and layer within the reverb and delay. This will be the first stratum of the sonic view I intend to work on this winter.
Ths morning's work, relating back to the drawing-- which has become, it seems, the score for this piece-- is the gray, dark pine-colored "ground": the lower part of the canvas, of the view.
(Minor triad tonality (D # minor) with pentatonic scale tones rising and falling: shadow patterns.)