rip ellie greenwich

I had one of those days where you come home and blare sixties girl groups loud and everything gets okay then. In the midst of this I found out Ellie Greenwich died, a writer of some such gems.

Here's another:

this moment of calm, a balm

okay, one idyllic meadow, (atop mont royal)
and one endless lake (champlain, from the train)

I love the wild space along train tracks - the corridors owned by the rail companies that cultivate wildflowers and kudzu or the like. Nature! and we in an air-conditioned projectile. Oh and so many water lilies seen. I moved to nyc via train exactly a year prior while on this rail holiday. The morning I left was all jamais-vu, and it is still here after a year's husk was shucked. (I also saw seas of corn.)

I've been on holiday in Montreal the last few days. Mostly I climbed the mountain in the middle of town. While I could post idyllic meadow photos, here instead is french television:

Emily Lacy: "Ice Music" @ Cabinet

(I reserved a spot in the Ice Music tent after getting this description via email from Cabinet):

"Working with time, music, color, and, temperature, "Ice Music" allows for fantasies of intimate visceral mischief with folk and electronic sound patterns. Performances made for 1-2 people will be available by Emily Lacy inside a small, freshly cooled homemade music environment, similar to an igloo or personal camping tent."

She led me into a tiny little igloo structure set up in a larger gallery space. The floors were sparkly felt, and the white cloth walls were built around a chickenwire frame. There are two fans blowing ice-patterned streamers. I was sortof expecting to be nervous in an ice tent with a stranger, but there was none of that. She went to work with her sampler and mic and built up beautiful layers until words came overflowing out. Have you ever had that experience (at a concert or otherwise) where you feel like a performer is playing just for you? It was exactly like that in the quality of the music, and then I had to remind myself that I was the only person that she was performing to. The space was tiny, and after feeling that perhaps I shouldn't map out the moles on her bare arms, I focus on the inlay on her guitar. After the sampler singing piece she played a sweet folk song on the guitar. The words are about the sea and color: universal. An alarm goes off in her pocket and our time is up. I thank her, and when I peek outside someone is there, cued up for the next session. I collect a cold seltzer, and then walk back out into the heat.

Crossing the Gowanus canal, there is a rave or something going on at the next bridge down. There are fish in the water, and up the way a man is assembling his bottle collection for recycling. I passed a crowded swimming pool on the way to the Cabinet performance space, and everywhere there are giant flowers blooming.

Link to her site here.

Kria Brekkan / Chemirocha

This song is such a jam, and I haven't posted anything by her here in a while.

Note: This is a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers by way of the Kipsigi tribe in Kenya.

roller coaster shadows in gmaps

"I think we live in an incomprehensible present... I'm not trying to explain the moment, I'm just trying to make it accessible."

-William Gibson, in No Maps for these Territories

A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars (Rhys Chatham) & Liquid Liquid @ Damrosch Park/ Lincoln Center

Some of the 200 guitarists

Somehow I ended up sitting in the front row even though I arrived when the seats were nearly all full. The stage extended around three sides of the seating area tho. A percussion group opened it up, performing in the walkway between, and it was interesting as it created a third space, and placed the audience and performers in the same viewing position.

Oh but the guitars! Rhys Chatham conducted from the (obscured) bandshell stage to four section leaders, who then led roughly 25 [corr., approx: 54] guitarists each. It was a sight, but then I had to close my eyes. The first part just straight melted and it was like listening to giant headphones on a water bed - better, even. I did not even feel that I was hearing it, more as feeling. Each guitarist appeared to be hooked up to their own amp and the sound moved about, sometimes one at a time, building up to all at once in sync. Then it went delicate, barely plucking singular strings, and it was like a garden of tiny flowers opening. Through all this Chatham is directing in what looks to be a self-created visual language. At one point he holds up a paper with a giant asterisk on it but otherwise it is mostly frozen gestures. The second movement began sounding like Growing (or should I say it sounded like Growing was inspired by it? I never know how to be proper with such references.) And it was like movements of light over space. My eyes are closed.
It all ends in a climax that vibrates the earth and men behind me stand up with their arms in the air as tho they have found god. Can it even be described as dense? It is beyond that; beyond "wall of sound," beyond (melodic) noise, beyond independent senses (synesthetic, even?) it was an experiential composition - it never could be recorded to be played back. (Unless each performer was separately recorded and played back on two hundred cd players!)

Liquid Liquid was tight! A police officer asked me to move from where I was dancing tho and I asked him where I could dance and he said not anywhere! I walked around to another area and found a better space to move. LL is three (3!) percussionists and one bass player! They still got it, good.

(top: Talking to a Stranger / Judi Dench. bottom: last Friday was my birthday. On my morning subway ride a man pulled a skateboard stacked with "free snacks and [dubbed] tapes." I got a copy of MJ's Off the Wall.)