All Hallows Eve

Back in the mid 80's when I was in college, Halloween revolved around huge costume parties on "The Hill." This was where numerous Frat Houses would mix up the grain punch, tap the kegs, hire the bands and it would get ugly. College kids from all over road-tripped to Bethlehem, PA for the Halloween festivities.Thousands of dressed up and intoxicated undergrads letting loose in the way only costumed anonymity allows. The parties were on the Saturday night closest to the actual Holiday. You would stumble around the Hill from party to party, swill beers, dance to cover bands,get knee-walkin' hammered and crack up at the various creative and not-so-creative costumes. You saw the requisite paper-mache genetalia, the transvestites and the ghouls,the superheroes and M&M's. One year the boys and I went as "The Wanderers." The next year we did the "Temptations" complete with matching shrimp-colored ruffle front tux shirts and tuxes from a thrift store.
Once the parties on the Hill were over, we basically forgot about the scheduled Halloween trick-or-treating facet of this gig. Junior year we were sitting around the living room of our of-campus house having a few beers and the door bell rang. It was about 7:30 and some neighborhood kids from South Bethlehem were trick or treating. As a house of college age knuckleheads, we neither anticpated kids nor had any candy. The poor souls who hit our house that evening were treated to slices of white bread and cigarettes in their treat bag. The next day a few parents stopped by to complain.We sheepishly explained it was the "trick" portion of the evening and apologized.

More on Shostakovich’s Privacy: Saying-without-being-said-to-have-said, Finding-without-being-found-to-have-found

Roderigo: Tush, never tell me! I take it much unkindly that thou, Iago, who hast my purse as if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.
Iago: ’Sblood, but you'll not hear me! If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me!”
  —  Shakespeare, Othello, I.1.1-5.

T he previous blogpost was mostly about hyperlinks as illocutionary acts, and the ways in which Shostakovich may have covered his tracks and obfuscated (some of) his meanings.

S everal readers emailed me to express surprise that several courts have ruled in the way that they have. The emailers were basically saying that the theory of knowing, responsible ‘linguistic agency’ under the law is, in their view, not only about the acts of speaking/writing but also about acts of listening/reading and could equally well be about the act of searching for content to hear or read.

I n other words, the audience members who are listening to a musical work, or searching for music to listen to—or the readers reading a blog, or entering search terms searching for content that they then click on and proceed to read—should bear [do bear] ethical and legal responsibility for their listening and searching and reading.

I n that connection, I observe an upsurge in attention to privacy, on the part of many users of search engines recently. I routinely monitor the traffic on this site, mostly with an eye to making the blog responsive to the issues and interests and concerns of the readers who spend time reading what I put up here.

I t was only three months ago CMT blog received its first hits that originated with Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle, and StartPage. Today, visitors from around the world arrive at CMT about 5% of the time from searches initiated at one or another of those anonymized search-proxy sites.

I xquick is my favorite among these search engine anonymizer/search-proxy sites. It has earned the EuroPriSe "European Privacy Seal" for privacy and data-handling practices, is certified by CertifiedSecure and is registered with the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

T hese search engine anonymizers/search-proxies do not interfere with most SEO or site editorial practices that matter to me as a blog author—things that relate to the “what” of site content. The search engine anonymizers/search-proxies only obfuscate the “where” and the “who,” protecting the searchers’ privacy.

M y own use of anonymous search proxy sites arises less out of a concern for my own privacy than out of my need to monitor CMT pagerank in an objective way that is not biased/confounded by my own music-related online searching activity. If you are a professional musician or a faculty member of a conservatory, that objective-monitoring motivation may be true for you as well.

B ut if enhancing your online privacy is important to you and if you haven’t considered using an anonymous search proxy site until now, please give one or more of these sites a try. Resist being described [by the search-engine residue of your searches], like Käthe Kollwitz and her drawings and sculptures resist being described... as mere residue of so many [brush/pencil/pastel/chisel/key] strokes.

H ere are a couple of links for you who are, like the readers who sent me emails, astounded by the recent Canadian and Spanish court decisions...

• Ixquick.com
  
• StartPage.com
  
• DuckDuckGo.com
  
• Scroogle.org
  
• Gibiru.com
  
• Habermann I. Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England. Ashgate, 2003. [illocutionary speech acts and English common law]
  
• Marmor A, Soames S. Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law. Oxford Univ, 2011.
  
• Nissenbaum H. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford Law, 2009.
  
• Searle J, Vanderveken D. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge Univ, 2009.
  
• Solove D. Understanding Privacy. Harvard Univ, 2010.
  
• Vollmann W. Europe Central. Penguin, 2005.

From Frankie (Letter 15)

Frankie - A Mexican Mafia hit man and leader of prison "booty bandits." After seeing me rubbing antifungal ointment on the bleeding bedsores on my buttocks at the Madison Street jail, he proposed we have a gay prison marriage.

Englandman,

What’s up my friend? I know it’s been a while since you heard from me, but I will be out again soon, and hopefully we can correspond through the computer.

I will be a daddy soon, sometime in November cuz this time that I got out I had sex all day and night. She ended up pregnant. Once my baby is born, I’ll send you a picture. 

So whatever happened with your butt sores? Did they ever come back? Me and you both know that it wasn’t cuz of the bunk. I was pounding you too hard, and I should have been easier on you.

Oh! As for Cuban Boy, he ain’t wrote to me in years. He forgot all about me.

Thank you for the book, but the prison won’t give me Hard Time With Sheriff Joe. I’ll send it home, so when I get out I can read it.

I need a good chess book with all the moves and rules cuz a lot of people make up their own rules or stuff they learn in here, and with a book I can show them the real deal.

I don’t have much time left and no parole. I’m doing 115% of my sentence cuz as of December 29^th 2011 I will kill my sentence completely, but now they got some bullshit rule that if you violate parole, you have to serve 115%. It’s more time than what the judge gives you. Another scam the Arizona Department of Corrections is doing to keep prisoners in longer, so they can collect even more taxpayers money. You already know this state sucks when it comes to laws.

Let’s work on getting me a new passport, so that I can fly over to England to see you. What happened to our plans? 

Give my regards to your mom, dad and sister!

Much Love & Respect

Frankie

Click here for Frankie’s previous letter

Shaun Attwood

English Shaun

My sister, Karen, has started a Facebook page for her ebook, English Shaun, which gives the family perspective on my case and some of my early blogs: http://www.facebook.com/pages/English-Shaun/302006496478414

Shaun Attwood

Question Time

Anonymous wrote:

I find your story intriguing, but I have to ask: what made you change your mind about recreational drug use?

Obviously a stint in prison - and such a grueling stint - is the legal system's way of saying "fuck you, you can't do that" but the law and someone's personal beliefs are independent of each other.

I'm a semi-regular user of certain party drugs (for simplicity let's say legal stimulants like 6-APB) but I don't see any moral dilemma -- I make a free, uncoerced decision to consume a drug by assessing the scientific data published about it.

As a man with far more life experience, your opinion really interests me. I'd love to know the moral and intellectual process you went through to get from dealer to anti-drug use speaker.

Reply:

Thanks for the deep question. I know how drugs start and how they end. Where are the old drug addicts? Either dead, in prison, or mental hospital. It's a lottery, but over time, poisoning your body loses its fun and does you in. I just lost two more friends to drugs in recent months, including Joey Crack from Hard Time. It's reached the point now where I'm wondering which of my friends are going to die next.

Click here for the previous Question Time

Shaun Attwood

Midori: Close Readings of the Third Kind; ‘Deep Linking’ in Shostakovich’s Op. 134

Y   ou just have to ‘see’ more music in this music.”
  —  Valery Gergiev, regarding Shostakovich’s musical/spatial imagery, quoted by Fanning, p. 77.

T here is a sense of space and gravity... of invisible forces and large-scale coherence in the moves by Midori (五嶋 みどり, Gotō Midori), especially in her performance of the Shostakovich, Op. 134, with pianist Özgür Aydin. It is as though each phrase is a consequence of something more remote than what the immediately preceding bars contained. Her recital tonight was like an expedition...

• Mozart - Sonata in E-flat Major K.380
  
• Shostakovich - Sonata Op. 134
  
• Schumann - Sonata in A minor, Op. 105
  
• Schubert - Fantasy in C Major, D.934

T he Andante first movement of the Shostakovich with its twelve-tone parts embodies a kind of spacy ‘otherness’—an alien mysteriousness in this otherwise predominantly tonal movement. The violin’s expression of Shostakovich’s musical signature: D—eS—C—H (the music notes D—E-flat—C—B)... feels more like a “quotation” in this context—feels more like a citation of a statement made at another time by someone else, than a statement in its own right.

W hy does this sonata’s first movement evoke Bach for me? And what about the idiomatic ‘jazz’ figures in the piano part, about 2 minutes into the second movement (Allegretto) and about 8 minutes into the third movement (Largo)?

T he phrases are played as if they are in “double quotes”—reporting where they’ve been and what they’ve seen. They have an arresting effect. Are they accurate? Are they really meant by Shostakovich to reference artifacts of our own culture or are they instead a kind of caricature or impostor? Shrewdly constructed by an alien intelligence from outer space and sent to us for some alien purpose? Or is it devised by an empathetic terrestrial intelligence?

T he Allegretto scherzo in E-flat major is impulsive, vehement. The Largo is infused with drama, but it too is mysterious—ambiguous in its direction and tonality and genre... A Bach-like passacaglia that has now returned from outer space, changed by contact with unknown extraterrestrials? (Maybe I should not have had the absinthe before the concert...)

K ristian Hibberd’s 2005 dissertation was the first application of the ideas of philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin to understanding Shostakovich’s music—theories of ‘carnival’ and ‘registers,’ voiced in discourse. Since then, others have likewise found Bakhtin’s concepts helpful (see the Chapters in Part II of Pauline Fairclough’s multi-author edited volume, plus Chapter 6 and the Epilogue in Judith Kuhn’s book, links below). They examine Shostakovich’s musical language, exploring controversies pertaining to the composer’s labile and contradictory meanings.

T hese authors give an account of the diverse interpretations by partisans in the musicological “Shostakovich Wars,” reporting that the Wars have demolished the notion of one, fixed meaning in Shostakovich’s music. Political? Hard to tell for sure whether Shostakovich was a loyal communist or a dissident! Expressions of post-modern subjectivity, filled with various voices, inscribing each other, filled with uncertainty? Hard to tell whose narratives these are!

T o me, Shostakovich’s design in Op. 134 seems prophetic of our current hyperlinked, cross-referential age. In each movement I wonder: Is Shostakovich expounding, or quoting, or inline linking (referring to the expressions of others)? Did the Soviet authorities hold him liable for his musical deep linking? for carnivalizing or caricaturizing or referencing Soviet and Western culture? Do Midori and Aydin?

A nd, 40-plus years after it was composed, how should we feel about these deep-link references? Its gestures are “late-20th Century” through and through, and I wonder how it will be received in 50 years or 100. But I am after this performance impressed by it also as a composition about composing—a ‘meta’ commentary about reporting and referencing and linking. It is that aspect of this music that interests me most. And I wonder whether it is that aspect that will contribute most to this sonata’s continuing attractiveness and relevance in the distant future.

T    he ‘inner’ sounsdcapes of writing and reading bear resonance of [and refer to, or link to—] ‘outer’ soundscapes... the world is always full of sounds... they enter and depart in processions as events pass us or as we pass them. This is why the music of the streets has no beginning or end but is all middle.”
  —  Marianne Ping Huang, ‘Gestures of the Unheard,’ in The Novelness of Bakhtin, p.168.

• Midori website
  
• Özgür Aydin website
  
• Shostakovich Op. 134 page at Wikipedia.org
  
• Deep Linking page at BitLaw
  
• Supreme Court of Canada, Crookes et al. v. Newton, 2011 SCC 47, 19-OCT-2011. [linking of defamatory material is not defamatory]
  
• Panez O. Spanish court rules that linking to potential copyright infringing material is not copyright infringement. EFF, 05-AUG-2011.
  
• Bakhtin M. The Dialogic Imagination. Emerson C, Holquist M, trs. Univ Texas, 1998.
  
• Bakhtin M. Art & Answerability. Univ Texas, 1990.
  
• Bakhtin M. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Univ Texas, 1992.
  
• Barta P, et al., eds. Carnivalizing Difference: Bakhtin and the Other. Routledge, 2001.
  
• Blevins J, ed. Dialogism and Lyric Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre. Susquehannah Univ, 2008.
  
• Bruhn J, Lundquist J, eds. The Novelness of Bakhtin: Perspectives and Possibilities. Tusculanum, 2001.
  
• Carpenter E. 'Russian theorists on modality in Shostakovich’s music,' in: Shostakovich Studies, Fanning D, ed. 2e. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Fairclough P, ed. Shostakovich Studies 2. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fanning D. 'Shostakovich and structural hearing,' in Shostakovich Studies, Vol. 2, Fairclough P, ed. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fay L, ed. Shostakovich and His World. Princeton Univ, 2004. (pp. 309-10, 344, 348)
  
• Haynes D. Bakhtin and the Visual Arts. Cambridge, 2008.
  
• Hibberd K. Shostakovich and Bakhtin: A Critical Investigation of the Late Works (1974-1975). PhD dissertation, Univ London, 2005.
  
• Holquist M. New Accents: Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2e. Routledge, 2002.
  
• Jones M. Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin: Readings in Dostoyevsky's Fantastic Realism. Cambridge Univ, 2005.
  
• Kuhn J. Shostakovich in Dialogue. Ashgate, 2010.
  
• Midori G. Einfach Midori. Henschel, 2004.
  
• Morris P, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. Hodder-Arnold, 2009.
  
• Rzhevsky N, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture. Cambridge Univ, 1998.
  
• Salzer F. Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music. Dover, 1962.

T-Shirts and Gaming

Do you ever watch the World Series of Poker? If so, then you have noticed some of the lamentable get-ups these players wear to the table. T-Shirts and ball caps, hooded sweatshirts,head phones and gaudy necklaces....really these players are dressed like funnel cake jockeys at a Carnival....or like they are about to clean out the garage.A conglomeration of sartorial swill. The bets in these televised games reach 7 figures as a matter of course. Perhaps the players could come to the table in a collared shirt?
Cards and table games are often on the sportsmen's menu and the poker game at the hunting club can be just as lively and entertaining as trip to a casino. However, in Atlantic City the sketchy guy next to you at the Craps table will more likely be wearing a sleeveless Molly Hatchet Tour shirt than a blazer. Gamblers leave their kids napping on benches,grind their smokes out on the carpet and practically drool on themselves as they wager away the car payment.Dumpy broads in monochromatic warm-up gear with fanny packs and bad make-up are a stark contrast to the fairly hot waitress fetching your Bourbon. When Resorts first opened in Jersey in the late '70's....you had to at least wear a sport coat in the evening to be admitted.This rule has seemingly deteriorated to a policy that would allow entrance to a crack head in a soiled diaper and flip flops.
Juxtaposed to the current mut-o-rama in U.S. gambling halls is the image of Bond in evening wear at the Chemin de Fer table in Monte Carlo or the players in black tie in Havana in the 50's. My Dad told me of trips to Havana in the early 50's when you took an off-white dinner jacket along with your regular black tie rig so you could alternate on different nights at different casinos. Don't the TV producers get it...what a class image they would create if the televised Poker was dressed up a bit.Don't the struggling casinos get it...they may get a better class of players with more money if they employed a modest dress code so you did not have to worry about catching a dose of crabs at the black-jack table.

From T-Bone (Letter 15) and My Response

T-Bone - Radiating power and strength, this deeply-spiritual massively-built African-American towers over most inmates. He is a prison gladiator with more stab wounds than Julius Caesar. A good man to have on your side.

The guy I mentioned in my last letter, who keeps trying to turn out the youngsters who need things, raised his voice at me after he bumped into me. He yelled at me in front of a guard. I thank God for self-control. The cops have been watching for some time now, waiting to see if I would kick his sick ass, but I know their game. This guy is a rat, and yes, the Administration doesn’t like him, but I will not do their dirty work!

This place is the pits. I thank God for letting me experience it one last time, so that I won’t ever go back to the way of thinking that leads to places like this.

I’ve had female sexual offers to do work for people who are in the mix, but I am not prepared to risk my freedom and my life, so I said NO with total conviction. I even pushed one guy across the room, and into a toilet.

I am not into being anyone’s sucker, and I hope and pray that you, Shaun, my friend, are being careful because you are going to be BIG, and don’t be fooled – that day is coming. You will be making movies, including mine, and I am not going to allow anything or anyone to get in the way of me keeping my commitments.

I know the workload has been rough on you, and you have a lot of young people who look up to you. We all need a little time to play, but don’t give in to thoughts of doing something that alters your mind. Be on guard, my friend, and never let go of doing right.

My Response to T-Bone:

I am being careful, T-Bone. Everything is expanding so positively, I imagine it will get BIG. If it gets to the movie level, I’d like to repay my parents for my legal fees. Success doesn’t come easy – it is a long hard hunt through a vicious jungle where dangerous animals are waiting to gobble you up and poisonous plants tear at your skin. But I will make it, no matter how many years of hard work it takes. We will sit down, and get your life story out as a book and a movie.

Regarding playtime, if I’m not working, I’m at the fitness centre. I have three more belts to go to black in karate. Mind mind-altering substances are far from my mind. I barely drink alcohol these days as the hangover is such a waste of time. I am always on guard, and thanks to prison, I can see right through the people who are trying to trip me up.

Click here for Letter 14

Click here to join the T-Bone Appreciation Society 

T-Bone's Kindle ebook. UK version. US version. Or download to your PC from Lulu.com. All proceeds going to help T-Bone in prison.

Shaun Attwood

A New Outfitter for Sporting Set

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Yesterday I was fortunate to meet and shoot with the proprieter of Artemis Outfitters. Located in Greenville,Delaware, this shop offers fine guns, field gear and related items for anyone taking to the field or gearing up for fishing.

The owner, Grier Wakefield, and I participated in a field shoot at a farm in Berks County PA Sunday morning. Based on Grier's shooting skills, which I witnessed first hand, he is perfectly suited to own and manage a store which caters to shooting and hunting enthusiasts. His store features Brownings,Benellis and Berettas as well as Filson and Remington gear. One can also find vintage decoys,ammo,pre-owned double guns and collectible artwork.The shop is on DE route 52. I take 52 as an alternate to get to my waterfowl club when traffic is ugly on I-95 and 476 so get a chance to go by on occassion. If you are in the area and need a good field piece or waxed canvas Filson, or just want to browse for hunting collectibles....stop in and tell Grier MLS sent you.

When Not to Smash Someone - A Lesson From My Karate Friends

In a US jail, if some calls you a “punk”, a “bitch” or gets in your face and is abusive, the convict code requires you to hit that person or else you get smashed by gang members of your own race. Unfortunately, this sets you up with a fist-clenching reaction for the rest of your life towards disrespectful loudmouths.

Last night, I went to London with ten people from my karate club (Guildford Seiki-Juku), nearly all black belts, two senseis (our teachers), one a 3^rd Dan (third-degree black belt). Setting off to watch and support a local cage fighter, Nick “HeadHunter” Chapman, I wondered what would happen if muggers or drunks tried to accost my friends.

On the way home, three drunks started yelling at us. One kicked a can at us, and shouted in a loud and challenging way, almost obstructing our path across a bridge. Gripped by the prison reaction, I braced for a fight, but the black belts swerved around the drunks as if they didn’t exist, the flow of their conversation continuing as if nothing had happened.

I found such a mature response interesting in comparison to the jail experience.

Shaun Attwood  

James Mobberley: Electroacoustic Excitation, Anodized/Bionic/Fleshly Hybrids

M   y friend and colleague, Carter Enyeart, provided not only the idea behind the piece and its reason for being, but also the recorded sound material for the fixed media... [live cello plus recorded, digitally-processed] sculpted sounds from that same instrument.”
  —  James Mobberley, program notes.

T he Charlotte Street Foundation’s annual Generative Performing Artist Awards Celebration at the H&R Block ‘City Stage Theater’ in Kansas City’s Union Station last night was really excellent. I especially enjoyed the part of the program honoring UMKC Conservatory composition faculty member James Mobberley, featuring two of his compositions.

• Mobberley – Alter Ego (2006) for cello and fixed media, Carter Enyeart (vc)
  
• Mobberley – Icarus Wept (1994-97) for trumptet and fixed media, Keith Benjamin (trpt)

C onsummately beautiful DAW editing and engineering of the fixed media sound! The ‘immersive’ intensity was boosted by having the live performer positioned in between two powered monitors, less than 1 meter away. (Ordinarily, in electroacoustic performances the fixed media speakers are deployed around the periphery of the performance space, and the musician operating the mixing surface is typically located in the center or at the rear of the hall, the net effect of which is a sense of remoteness or detachedness of the fixed media from the live performers. By contrast, the close-range speaker config last night was ‘in-your-face’ proximity, tantamount to making the monitors into ensemble players sitting right the heck next to the human soloist.)

I f you are familiar with Benjamin’s and/or Enyeart’s playing, you know that neither of them ever lacks for intensity or conviction, even under ‘normal’ conditions. But these specific Mobberley pieces, plus the point-blank immersive set-up, plus the exuberant, celebratory buzz infusing the audience members and performers and Charlotte Street leadership in attendance—put the passion over the top... these factors all combined to make the sound totally cook, man!


H ave a listen to some previously-recorded sessions on the SoundCloud link below.

P .S.— Keith Benjamin uses a Bach 1-1/4 ‘B’ mouthpiece with a #24 backbore.

W   as funded by the NEA, a U.S. federal agency; therefore, the original concept [for ‘Icarus Wept’], involving full frontal nudity, had to be abandoned... impromptu recording session and ‘brain-fry’ in which we came up not only with trumpet sounds of all kinds but also with the formula for a ‘partially androgynacious anodized serial copolymer,’ patent-pending... [digitized sounds including] Keith’s trumpet stand, swirling coins, laughter, and various expletives [see the Caleb Kelly MIT book, link below]... Icarus’s flight toward the sun and sudden realization of his [fatal] mistake... Three movement titles (Getting Waxed; Climbing the Blue Staircase; 11 Feet from the Sun) reflect themes of Icarus. However, the other two (Somebody Else’s Face; Strap on Your Lobster) have nothing to do with Icarus at all, or with weeping either, pretty much.”
  —  James Mobberley, program notes.

• James Mobberley page at UMKC Conservatory
  
• James Mobberley mp3 tracks at SoundCloud.com
  
• Charlotte Street Foundation website
  
• Keith Benjamin page at UMKC Conservatory
  
• Carter Enyeart website
  
• Bey T, Bailey W. Micro-bionic: Radical Electronic Music and Sound Art in the 21st Century. Creation, 2009.
  
• Dyson F. Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. Univ California, 2009.
  
• Erlmann V. Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality. Zone, 2010.
  
• Holmes T. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. 3e. Routledge, 2008.
  
• Kelly C. Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction. MIT, 2009.
  
• Toop D. Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. Continuum, 2010.
  
• Voegelin S. Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. Continuum, 2010.