"if someone where really the last man" (Robert Lax)

if someone
were really
the last man
alive on
earth

he'd
not be
a hermit

he'd be
a sur-
vivor

& would
probably
feel called
upon

to father
forth a
new race
of men

or, at
least,
of beings

he might
(but maybe
he would
n't)

he might
for one thing,
not believe
he was the
last

or he might
be content
just to
watch the
days go
by

speculating
on what the
silence would
be like

when even
he had
vanished

- Robert Lax (taken from A Thing That Is, 1997)

Die Literatur greift immer dem Leben vor (Oscar Wilde)

„Die Literatur greift immer dem Leben vor. Sie ahmt das Leben nicht nach, sondern formt es nach ihrer Absicht.”

- Oscar Wilde

Der Vorzug höherer Naturen (Friedrich Hebbel)

"Es ist der Vorzug höherer Naturen, daß sie die Welt mit allen ihren Einzelheiten immer symbolisch sehen."

- (Christian) Friedrich Hebbel (18.03.1813 - 13.12.1863), Dramatiker und Lyriker.

LINKS:
Wikipedia Biographie

Hebbel Schriften - bei Gutenberg

"There is no poem, no painting that will hold..." (Robert Lax)

There is no poem, no painting
that will hold on paper or canvas
the look of the three trees
standing in the valley
with their young green leaves.

They are three girls
pouring speech like water
poised and waiting
for their dancing lesson.

They are three girls on tiptoe
with arms uplifted
dancing in the valley's early light.

- Robert Lax, written in the 1940's (from A Thing That Is, 1997)

The look of a poem (Robert Lax)

Here's an excerpt from a letter Robert Lax wrote to Susan Howe in 1975:

"the look of the poem: i've always
liked the
idea of a poem or a word as a single
(arp-like image)
alone on a page

(an object of contemplation)

i like white space &
i like to see a vertical
column centered
sometimes verticality helps in
another way
image follows image
as frame follows frame
on a film

verticality helps the
poet withhold his
image until
(through earlier
images) the
mind is prepared
for it.


(quoted by Paul J. Spaeth - Curator of the Lax Archives at St. Bonaventure University - in his introduction to A Thing That Is by Robert Lax, 1997. A stimulating and beautifully contemplative collection, I find.)

Diamanda Galás version of Gloomy Sunday

Here's one of my all-time favourite songs, in an interpretation that finally does justice to it: Diamanda Galás as she performs "Gloomy Sunday":
Diamanda Galás - Gloomy Sunday - YouTube

Though the audio quality of this recording is debatable, Galás interpretation puts this version skyhigh above all the rest of the (sometimes REALLY pathetic) versions that are currently posted on YouTube (more than 500 offerings, at the moment, most of them negligible). Those other contributions to the "Gloomy Sunday" canon on YouTube, now THEY make ME gloomy.



Malediction and Prayer, released 1998



The Singer, released 1992

Now, go check out Diamanda Galás' CD's "The Singer" and "Malediction and Prayer" for versions of manifestly superior artistic (and sound) quality.

More about Diamanda Galás under
Diamanda Galás - artist site

Stockhausen : Excerpt from "Himmelfahrt"

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of Stockhausen's "Himmelfahrt":



More audio excerpts are available on the official Stockhausen site:
Stockhausen - official site - Multimedia section

Ausgeh-Tipp: Konzert mit Werken von Karlheinz Stockhausen am 28.09.2008

Concert of the Internationl Ensemble Modern Academy: Final concert of the IEMA students 2007/08 /
Konzert der Internationalen Ensemble Modern Akademie: Abschlusskonzert der IEMA-Stipendiaten 07/08

Date / Datum: 28. September 2008, 19:30
Location / Ort: School for Music and the Performing Arts, Frankfurt on Main / Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt am Main

Compositions by / Werke von Karlheinz Stockhausen

Program / Programm:
DER KLEINE HARLEKIN for clarinet (1975) für Klarinette
MANTRA for 2 pianos and electronics (1970) für 2 Klaviere und Elektronik
ORCHESTER-FINALISTEN Excerpts (1995/96) Auszüge
SPIRAL for solo performer with optional instrument and short wave receiver (1968) für Solist mit beliebigem Instrument und Kurzwellenempfänger

Conductor / Dirigent: Clemens Heil
Sound / Klangregie: Sebastian Schottke

Links:
Ensemble Modern website (English)

Ensemble Modern website (Deutsch)

Aspekte des Seriellen bei Stockhausen. Essay von Karl-Heinz Essl (erschienen 1989 im "Almanach Wien Modern '89") This essay explores aspects of Gottfried Michael Koenig's, John Cage's and Stockhausen's contributions to serialism and aleatoric music.

Stockhausen in memoriam "My life is extremely one-sided: what counts are the works as scores, recordings, films and books. That is my spirit formed into music and a sonic universe of moments of my soul." - K. Stockhausen (Sept. 25th, 2007.)

"Mein Leben ist extrem einseitig: die Werke als Partituren, Schallplatten, Filme, Bücher zählen. Das ist mein in Musik geformter Geist und ein Universum von Momenten meiner Seele in Klang." - K. Stockhausen (25.09.2007.)

Wiki Biographie (Deutsch)

Wiki biography (English)

Stockhausen Website

concert review : Gruppen für drei Orchester at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, on Sept. 21, 2008

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek - Literatur von und über Stockausen

Solitude (Bukowski)

"I was a man who thrived on solitude: Without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude: but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me."

- Charles Bukowski (Factotum, 1975)

The Beginning of Music and the End of It (John Cage)

"Many people in our society now go around the streets and in the buses and so forth playing radios with earphones on and they don't hear the world around them. They hear only what they have chosen to hear.

I can't understand why they cut themselves off from that rich experience which is free. I think this is the beginning of music, and I think that the end of music may very well be in those record collections."

- John Cage, in conversation with E. Grimes (1984), from: Richard Kostelanetz (1988, page 235).

Bob Rutman & Steel Cello Ensemble: Next concert in Berlin on Oct. 4th 2008

I remember meeting Bob Rutman in 1990, in the Berlin suburb of Koepenick. He had just relocated to a reunified Berlin, five decades after fleeing Germany in 1938 together with his mother, and after an adventurous life in the States. I experienced him as a very nice chap, modest and charismatic. I'm very glad to see he's still going strong.
All the best to you, Bob!

Links:
Artist site

I particularly like the track called "Dresden" on the MySpace site:
Steel Cello Ensemble - MySpace

Next concerts with his Steel Cello Ensemble are scheduled for October 4th and 11th (both in Berlin) - the latter is the vernissage of an exhibition: Concerts coming up

Biographie - bei K.Ginsberg Konzertagentur (Deutsch)

Biography - at K.Ginsberg artists agency (English)

Interview - Alert, Ausgabe #7 (Juli-September 2002)

Ausgeh-Tipp : Ensemble Modern spielt Stockhausen in Frankfurt am 23.09.2008

Im August 2008 wäre Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007) 80 Jahre alt geworden. Heute abend huldigt das Ensemble Modern den Komponisten mit einer Aufführung seines Stückes MANTRA für 2 Klaviere und Elektronik aus dem Jahr 1970.

Alte Oper
Frankfurt am Main
23.09.2008, 20:30 Uhr

Moderation: Dr. Bernd Leukert
Klangregie: Felix Dreher
Solisten: Hermann Kretzschmar und Ueli Wiget
Gast: Prof. emer. Alfons Kontarsky

Links:
Ensemble Modern - Tourneeplan auf Homepage
Stockhausen Veranstaltungsreihe in Köln - zum 80.ten
Stockhausen Bio - Wikipediea

I write poetry, because... (Allen Ginsberg)

Well, the following really puts it into a nutshell.
I guess I can underwrite this:

"I write poetry because I want to be alone and want to talk to people."
- Allen Ginsberg (from "Improvisation in Beijing", the preface to Cosmopolitan Greetings. Poems 1986-1992, Penguin, 1994, page xiv)

The "Pop" or American Haiku (Jack Kerouac)

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese
Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined
to seventeen syllables but since the language
structure is different I don't think American
Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be
completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry
about syllables because American speech is
something again...bursting to pop.

Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free
of all poetic trickery and make a little picture
and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi
Pastorella." - Jack Kerouac, American Haiku (1959)


Thunder in the mountains -
the iron
Of my mother's love
- from Desolation Angels (novel, published 1965)


Arms folded
to the moon,
Among the cows.
- from: Book of Haiku (1968)


A quiet Autumn night
and these fools
Are starting to argue


In Haikkaido a cat
has no luck


Every cat in Kyoto
can see through the fog.


In London-town cats
can sleep
In the butcher's doorway.
- from The Northport Haiku (1964)


Early morning yellow flowers,
thinking about
the drunkards of Mexico


No telegram today
only more leaves
fell.


Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.


Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.
- from American Haiku (1959)


More examples of Kerouac's haikus can be found under:
Haikus by Jack Kerouac.

More about Kerouac and haiku under:
Pop! The Jack Kerouac Haiku Page

On Writing (Kerouac)

"Always considered writing my duty on earth."
- Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)

(from: Atop an Underwood. Early Stories and Other Writings (1936-1943), page vii, Viking, 1999, edited by Paul Marion)


"You, man must write exactly as everything rushes into your head and AT ONCE. The pain of writing is just that..."
- Jack Kerouac, letter to Neal Cassidy, 6 October, 1950

Quotationspage - Jack Kerouac

On the free flowing prose method of writing (Jack Kerouac)

It was at about the time that Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans that he was approached by Allen Ginsberg and others to formally explicate exactly how he wrote it, how he did Spontaneous Prose. Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote famously said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing." Despite such criticism, it should be kept in mind that what Kerouac said about writing and how he wrote are sometimes seen to be separate. According to Carolyn Cassady and other people who knew him he rewrote and rewrote. Some claim his own style was in no way spontaneous. However it should be taken into account that throughout most of the '50s, Kerouac was constantly trying to have his work published, and consequently he often revised and re-arranged manuscripts in an often futile attempt to interest publishers, as is clearly documented in his collected letters (which are in themselves wonderful examples of his style). The Subterraneans and Visions of Cody are possibly the best examples of Kerouac's free-flowing spontaneous prose method.

The above is part of a nicely done article under: Jack Kerouac - Wikipedia biography.

See also the following entries, where examples of spontaneous prose style are presented and elaborated:
The Subterraneans - Wikipedia entry,
Visions of Cody - Wikipedia entry.

Definition of a Poet (Jack Kerouac)

DEFINITION OF A POET (1941)

A poet is a fellow who
spends his time thinking
about what it is that's
wrong, and although he
knows he can never quite
find out what this wrong
is, he goes right on
thinking it out and writing
it down.
A poet is a blind optimist.
The world is against him for
many reasons. But the
poet persists. He believes
that he is on the right track,
no matter what any of his
fellow men say. In his
eternal search for truth, the
poet is alone.
He tries to be timeless in a
society built on time.

- Jack Keroauc (1922 - 1969.
Full name: Jean Louis Lebris de Kerouac.)

From: Atop an Underwood. Early Stories and Other Writings (1936-1943), page 122, Viking, 1999, edited, introduced and with commentary by Paul Marion.

Here's an excerpt from Paul Marion's introductory comments to the above poem, taken from page 121 of Atop an Underwood:

"To Kerouac, the poet was the ideal, the highest form of a writer, the artist-writer, of whom he wrote:

"Their use lies in being able to erect structures of thought for mankind."

He described Whitmaman as his "first real influence" and the reason he decided to hit the American road.

Young Kerouac experimented with poetry in all forms, but traditional verse forms did not suit him. In 1940 he explained why:

"I feel that the words are put backwards. I'd rather have simple prose-poetry, to the point, concise, and more digestible. Outside of that, poetry is sublime. Poets are happy people,because they too are sublime."

He later added a few original forms to the array of poetic forms, including the "pop", a three-line American or Western haiku without syllable restrictions, and the "blues", which he defined as "a complete poem filling in one notebook page, of small or medium size, usually in 15-to-25 lines, known as a Chorus, i.e., 223rd Chorus of Mexico City Blues in the Book of Blues."

Further stuff, by and about Kerouac, under:
audio files - Jack Keroauc recites, etc..
Dharma Beat.
Kerouac Alley.
Jack Kerouac - Wikipedia biography.

German links:
Kerouac - Encarta Biographie,
Kerouac - Wikipedia Biographie,
Kerouac - Lonesome Traveller Biographie.

Torturing The Canvas (Tanka)

Here's another excerpt from the forthcoming haiga book project:

There's no looking back
Once you've taken your first breath –
No risks, equals no
Discoveries – no increase
In perception: stagnation

© 2008 George H.E. Koehler

For more excerpts from the forthcoming book, check out the following link:Rektozhan on deviantART

The Poet's Vitriolic Pen (Tanka)

Here's another excerpt from the forthcoming book titled POEMS YOU SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, a collaboration between George Koehler and Ray Rubeque.

The following tanka of mine is part of a haiga, the corresponding illustration (not shown here) was created by Ray Rubeque.

There'll be no painting
With words anymore from me:
Where arts are prone to
Be deep-fried in hate, only
A flame-thrower tongue will do

© 2008 George H. E. Koehler

For more excerpts from the forthcoming book, check out the following link: Rektozhan on deviantART

Notes by the Way (Combining alignment with disjointure)

Combining alignment with disjointure in free improvisation:

The first instalment (Series #1) of recordings from the UglyBeautyCage Archives has been posted under www.archives.org. Check it out! You can download all these great tracks from UglyBeautyCage Archives - Series No. 1.

These 4 spontaneous compositions came into existence as the fruits of unrehearsed playing and spontaneous improvisation by the duo of Ralph Lichtensteiger and George Koehler, on Nov 21, 1999.

They are part of a larger blizzard of hardcore dada that evolved during a series of rehearsals, to investigate and develop material for our UglyBeautyCage project, and in preparation for two concerts in Frankfurt which were held on March 31 and April 1, 2000. There are no overdubs on these recordings.

Beginning To Feel Constructed:
Instruments used: electric guitar, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus

Dialogue 1:
Instruments used: electric guitar, bowed electric bass, flute, harmonica, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus

Dialogue 2:
Instruments used: electric guitar, electric bass, violin, harmonica, flute, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus, voice

Plant Trouble:
Instruments used: voice, electric bass, electric guitar, MiniDisk player (scratching), prepared piano corpus


For a selection of live recordings from the Zeil 5 Concert, Frankfurt, as well as photo documentation of the concert preparations, see under:
Zeil 5 Concert (Live, 2000) 2CD package








Photo © Ralph Lichtensteiger



More sound investigations, that form a part of the overall UglyBeautyCage project, can be found under the following:
Dialogue with John Cage (one)
UglyBeautyCage - Audio-visual-semantic incubator (a collection of TEXTS USED)
Dialogue with John Cage (two)
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage
Study Pieces 2002 & 2003
From Here To Emptiness


For more recordings from musique trouvé, see under musique trouvé, all available CD's

Notes By The Way (Interaction in Music)

"A captured moment of spontaneous creativity is worth more than a thousand hours of computerised perfection." - Louis Rey, 1997 (Liner notes to Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions (March 1969 - April '71) 2CDs, issued 1997.)

Live interaction between musicians breathes life into the recordings of compositions - surely that's not REALLY difficult to grasp?

These days, considering the possibilities of increased control that modern studio facilities offer, it should be possible to easily combine the creative processes such as those of jazz musicians in the Sixties, so that the interpretation of compositions profits from interaction, i.e., one should record compositions in a live ensemble manner without overdubbing, just as if the group where in a concert situation, as opposed to recording each instrument separately, and arranging the tracks on tape or disc.

Overdubs are all very well, and particularly useful if you compose in this way, but making music together with others boils down to interaction, that's more important than perfectionism.

I feel that the fruit of a group effort will always be among the most interesting results of creating music. Only control freaks prefer to play by themselves. And remain alone. Which can become rather sad, since isolation easily increases egocentricity.

Making music with others remains one of the most incredible ways of communicating, sometimes you can't even say WHAT it is you've been communicating, since the most important things that occur often happen without words. I suppose a better term for this collaborative process could be communion, as opposed to communication.
© George H. E. Koehler

"Komponieren bedeutet erfinden, entdecken" (Stockhausen)

"Komponieren bedeutet erfinden, entdecken und wirklich seine eigene Sprache erneuern, und sich nie wiederholen. Das ist ja gar nicht mein Problem, wie viele jetzt sich für Stockhausen interessieren - das wichtige ist, ist das jedes Werk ein Kern-Werk ist." - Karlheinz Stockhausen



"Composing means inventing, discovering and really renewing one's own language, and never repeating oneself. It's not my problem at all, how many are now interested in Stockhausen - the important thing is that every opus be a core opus." - Karlheinz Stockhausen (translated by George Koehler)

Things Painting No. 22 (Lichtensteiger)

Here's another image from Ralph Lichtensteiger's gallery. Find more under: Collapse Of All Isms

More of Ralph's paintings:
Slideshow - Things
Things paintings
More paintings, and drawings