| << 5 October 2004 | 2004 > October | 16 October 2004 >> |
Friday, 8 October 2004
Y2K4 ::
Tonight V and I went to the opening concert for Y2K4, an “international live looping festival.” We missed most of the opening act, but got to hear Sunao Inami, Rick Walker, and Bernhard Wagner’s set. The three had never played together before, but improvised a seamless 45 minute piece, morphing between, and blending, Wagner’s often-lush layers of guitar, Walker’s heavily processed voice and percussion, and Inami’s beautifully subtle and intricate electronic textures. There’s a danger in contexts like this of settling into drones or diverging into cacophony, but this piece oscillated well between the unpleasant extremes—above all else the players were listening to each other, knowing when to lead and when to yield. As I left, I wondered what a world would be like where there was so much beautiful and spontaneous music that no one ever bothered to record anything. It seemed I’d just gotten a hint.
Kerry's "global test" ::
Spinsanity: Bush/Cheney campaign fails the honesty test (10/3). The Republicans have been harping on those two words “global test,” apart from their context. If I were Kerry, I’d say something like: “The ‘global test’ I spoke of was whether we are conducting ourselves with honesty and integrity when communicating with other nations and the American public. Is it any surprise, then, that Bush hates that idea so much?”