RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,140
(mostly I was trembling)
I was often fraught with
anxieties; fretting over
all sorts of things, and I'm
like that a lot now, still.
Apparently, most people
don't see that about me.
I'm always told, somewhat
incongruously, that I'm
a 'take the reins' kind of
a guy, a firm and decisive
sort. My Biker friend Ed
used to say that I was 'the
guy to have around in a
crisis' or when something
needed doing, or when
trouble hit. Maybe Ed
misread impulsiveness
for decisiveness; I never
knew. Poor old Ed's lost
in a veteran's home now;
I can't even ask.
-
Escaping all that restlessness
was always a goal of mine.
The composer Philip Glass,
sometime in the 1980's composed
a video piece, with a score, that
he called 'Koyaanasquatsi,' (if
that spelling is right). It means
'Life Out of Balance,' they said,
and it was startling because in
the combination of music and
image it encapsulated that rather
frenzied, internalized side of'
things which events and social
happenings represented. It was
'classically raucous.' As I once
put it. When I first viewed this,
in 1982 I think, I was a bit stunned,
into silence I guess. The broad
encapsulation which it engenders
caught all of the world history that
we may have ever know and turned
it into a disquiet of increasing speed;
starting out with ancient cave paintings
and frenetically increasing in tempo
and image as it rolls its way across
everything and into the then modern
day. Speed, tempo, and fast-view
roll across modern scenes of alienation.
The musical score rides it all along.
Quite something.
-
I probably have watched it 30 times;
which is a huge dedication by me.
(Reflecting modernity, I don't think,
if you asked me, that I could even find
my VCR tape of it, here, somewhere).
It's also funny now how the striking
totality of it pre-dates any idea of
household computers and their vast
reach and hold over everyone. How
knowledge and grasp have changed.
None of that was entered into within
this film.
-
Catching up, back then, to Philip Glass,
after 'The Chairman Dances,' and 'Nixon
In China,' and then all his later work was
quite a task. It's a very characteristic music
now as I listen to it. He's got his own
register and sound and 'tempo' - I'm not
even sure what he's doing these days, if
it's more work or not; nor how old age has
been serving, for good, or bad. I imagine
he's getting on in age. It's sometimes
funny how, after some years, even
the most groundbreaking work,
in this case progressively-composed
music, begins to be seen (heard)
for what it is - not that really
THAT groundbreaking at all but
rather just an evolving throw of
that persona's musical or writerly
ways and tendencies; and seen then
on the sliding scale of THAT
person's work, in line with all
others. If it was any good, it stays
in place, sort of in a canon of work.
If not (rock music, say, as an
example, it almost becomes an
unlistenable wrangle of bad
artifice from another era.
A joke.
-
I figured, always, it was about categories.
Everything that we live falls into a small
category of sorts; our own sorts. Each
small thought-niche we may construct
along the way - of our thoughts and
actions. They all leave trace and legacy
behind, things we can go back to and
source from for further actions. No
denying that. From the farm-boy
wilds of Pennsylvania, to the urban
wilds of NYC, and again back to the
overlord-farmlands of the seminary,
I walked through all sorts of different
fires - mostly only to bring fading
embers home with me : Things that
were hot at first but which cooled over
time to mere personal curiosities and
quirks. By which I got known; all that
'action man of the hour' stuff : the guy
you'd need around when trouble hit.
No truth to any of that at all, but I kept
it unspoken. It was all more of a reactive
vibrancy, I'd guess, that people picked
up on. I don't know where it ever came
from, but mostly I was trembling.
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