Beginning sketches of my second creative project, a music project, working title “Idiot Prayer”. Main compositional element: melody. Melody writing is a sonic practice as sound is a medium for sharing melody. One of my EPs uses melody to represent ecological entanglement. https://soundcloud.com/wesurf/boy-lucid-dreams-on-foothill
La la la
prayer: “an earnest hope or wish.”
prayer as repetition, the simple limited idiot mind forgets it’s values. needs a practice. music can function as a prayer, an acoustic latching into a nuanced set of values, inexplicable through text.
being an idiot, being “authentic”, meaning communicating in one’s own way, slowing down the rapid communication networks or simply avoiding them ;).
“Only the idiot has access to the wholly Other. Idiotism discloses a field of immanence of events and singularities for thought; this field eludes
subjectivation and psychologisation altogether.” Byung-Chul Han
theories and research: idiotism by Byung-Chul Han, Deleuzian concepts of “being animal” & a body without organs, queer existential psychotherapy (fear, becoming, trauma), non-linear time, indigenous knowledge production, decolonising academia.
holes: prayer is often seen as a religious practice. how have I been forced into a prayer practice? in primary school we sounded prayer every morning, and went to mass on special occasions, but my parents never forced me to engage with religous beliefs. what is my agency to use this word? perhaps the dangers of idiotism is a lack of self-reflection.
my personal experiences of religion: growing up in rural (post-)catholic ireland, living in a western tibetan buddhist centre in 2018. and personal interests: agnostic buddhism (stephen bachelor), zen poetry as a spiritual & musical practice (japanese poets issa, basho). reconstruction of celtic folklore? as in my last project using Gaelic songs for electronic composition. deconstruction of catholic songs I had to sing outside of tesco to make money for our school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCN1W_Re34s&ab_channel=Alive-OSongMemories put a beat on it! DJ oatcore. but mostly, imagining the possibility of prayer outside of institutionalised belief systems and even collective beliefs, as singular expression, music.
lala la with beats. Also inspired by transition of draingang members Bladee and Ecco2K”s musicking towards promotion of spiritual values, love etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FewUrsr9XaQ&ab_channel=Bladee-Topic and Arthur Russel’s engagement with popular music, bringing together the experimental values of avant garde culture of 70s downtown New York, and the potency of rhythym, melody and the general accessibility of popular music forms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O92UBBaiI4&ab_channel=AshleyPaul
reasons: feeling limited by critical theory, I need a magical fun outlet. My younger self found electronic composition as a therapeutic outlet which has become a fundamental practice in my life. I’ve been releasing music alongside my studies, creating worlds and spreading ideas with melody. I have not been able to engage this practice within the culture of sound art.
Recently a lecturer said in class that Sound Art is more “cerebral” than music, because it “takes more research to create” and “anyone can put their fingers on a keyboard and make it sound ‘nice'”. Perhaps they had an intention to aggravate rather than make a point, but no one responded. Can we expand research beyond linguistic keyboard tapping and militant academic reading to walking, sensuality, friendships, listening, freaking out, falling over, farting, the whole spiritual voyage of being a concious flesh balloon etc. Perhaps music also takes an incredible amount of research! I know in my compositional practice I translate my life experiences into music. We deserve to validate our way of telling stories. Does sound Art culture reflects avant garde music’s distaste towards popular music composition?
What I could do with my second creative project is to analyse and problematise the distain towards melody and popular music forms in the ‘Sound Arts’ culture (western SA, or beyond?). But also I want to diverge from rational critical theory toward other ways of telling stories, and protect my music lalaing from having to contextualise it to prove its “cerebreality”. Academia says, Yes! Critique me, but you must use my tools to make a critique. It’s a trap! Whats the hack?