You don't get to drive around, from show to show, playing for a few appreciative folks in various towns, hauling out your gear, sleeping on couches, eating on the fly, without a little harrassment from the cops. The drive from Guelph, Ontario, to the Michigan border is fine, but at the border Captain America here is protecting the land of the free from the scourge of...me. "Experimental music" confuses him, so he peeks in the trunk. He has a problem with the way I'm handling business. He would like to see documentation for all of the items in my car. He would like to know why I did not fill out form whatever when I entered Canada to list all of my gear. He would like to know what that big metal thing is ("a milkcan"), what is in it ("nothing"), why I have it ("it's a percussion instrument") and--wait, why ("I'm an experimental musician, officer"). He would like to know the value of all the gear in the car and whether any of it is stolen. It is not. If I was passing through wearing a suit? In a new car? With a suitcase full of clothes? Would he bother me? Because some dudes wear suits worth more than my gear and car combined. And they're thieves, of a sort.
I offer to empty the car and tell the officer the rich and exciting history of how I acquired all of this wonderful gear, going back to the floor tom (used, 1989), the bass drum (new, 1990), the saxophone (used, 1994), the wah wah pedal (orphaned, 1995), the Farfisa (used, 1995) etc etc. He waves me on. Hello America. Welcome to Detroit.
I played in this space, 2739 Edwin in the Hamtramck area of Detroit, last summer. I was on tour with my friend Tristan Trump, who played his Poverty Hymns set, while I did The Love Story. Both that show and this one were set up by Joel Peterson, who plays bass and a host of other string and wind instruments, writes music and brings a ton of good music through Detroit.
The space is an art gallery and the current artist, Marcelyn Bennett-Carpenter, graciously allows us to share the space with her work Turn for this performance. Turn has hundreds of thin, translucent elastic strips running floor-to-ceiling. It is stunning within the Edwin's white walls and wooden floors. It evokes the quality of frozen sound, calling to my mind audio waves that morph as I move through the space.
The night begins with a duo by Joel with Marko Novachcoff, a multi-instrumentalist with a collection of 600 rare, unusual and exotic wind instruments. This night Joel plays doublebass and a Balkan tambor, Marko plays bass flute, heckelphone (one of 100 in the world), khene, a Bulgarian shepherd's flute, and a few others. Beautiful, delicate sounds from these instruments, and Joel and Marko played like old friends.
I am comfortable in gallery spaces, and the acoustic at the Edwin gallery is perfect for acoustic instruments. But I am excited to see how the same set that I have been playing interacts in different spaces, so I play a similar set (leaning more heavily, perhaps, on the acoustic saxophone at the end). It is a decent crowd here, and I think they like the performance, but I am feeling something missing. The set works really well as an arc running through seemingly disparate activities: farfisa songs, electronic drones, and saxophone improvisations, but I find myself wishing I could do a stretched out set focusing on any of these. I guess the average set length so far on this tour has been around 45 minutes, with the rest of my time devoted to getting to places, conversations, hauling gear and sleeping. I am loving this tour, but need more than 45 minutes of music making in my life each day.
Can't have it all, I guess.
SET LIST 3/30
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 8
I visit relatives in Toronto and we talk about local and national politics. Rhetoric very similar to the crazytalk in the US is creeping into the way various issues are framed in Canada. In Toronto, the mayor -- described for me by one Canadian friend as a "fucking lunatic", and by another as a "redfaced madman" -- heads up a municipal government that seeks to "trim the fat" off of public transportation and environmental initiatives. What is it with municipal politicians and their fear of recycling and bicycling?
Reaching out to Toronto's large immigrant communities in mean and populist ways ("vote your [conservative] values") these maple-syrup-flavored Tea Party types seek to defund initiatives to support immigrant communities and prevent their grandparents from joining their families. They adopt the anti-gay, union-bashing, pro-Israeli apartheid rhetoric of their southern cousins. On the radio a few days ago I was thrilled to hear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been ousted in a no-confidence vote. I love no-confidence votes on politicians! I agree!
Radio listening has been good in Toronto. I keep catching excellent programming on CIUT 89.5FM, including Democracy Now. Elsewhere on the dial, I have heard a few hours of Polish programming, and I keep tuning in to a Chinese language station. I think it's Chinese: the only thing I understand is "ni hao", and the street names when the hosts report on traffic, so I mostly listen to it as music.
This is my first day off performing, but I get to stay busy. I meet Joe Sorbara at the University of Guelph, to teach his Contemporary Music Ensemble class how to perform my video score Dodging Bullets. His group, at least at this class meeting, has three percussionists, three guitarists, an electric bassist, an upright bassist, a flautist, a pianist, a vocalist, and a synth player. We run through a quick listening excercise and then the piece. Joe is doing a great job: the ensemble's run through is spot on. The piece will be on the CME's concert on campus here April 9th. It is rarely performed without me, and while I love to join various groups in the 23 minute work out, I'm delighted whenever people want to tackle it on their own.
Reaching out to Toronto's large immigrant communities in mean and populist ways ("vote your [conservative] values") these maple-syrup-flavored Tea Party types seek to defund initiatives to support immigrant communities and prevent their grandparents from joining their families. They adopt the anti-gay, union-bashing, pro-Israeli apartheid rhetoric of their southern cousins. On the radio a few days ago I was thrilled to hear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been ousted in a no-confidence vote. I love no-confidence votes on politicians! I agree!
Radio listening has been good in Toronto. I keep catching excellent programming on CIUT 89.5FM, including Democracy Now. Elsewhere on the dial, I have heard a few hours of Polish programming, and I keep tuning in to a Chinese language station. I think it's Chinese: the only thing I understand is "ni hao", and the street names when the hosts report on traffic, so I mostly listen to it as music.
This is my first day off performing, but I get to stay busy. I meet Joe Sorbara at the University of Guelph, to teach his Contemporary Music Ensemble class how to perform my video score Dodging Bullets. His group, at least at this class meeting, has three percussionists, three guitarists, an electric bassist, an upright bassist, a flautist, a pianist, a vocalist, and a synth player. We run through a quick listening excercise and then the piece. Joe is doing a great job: the ensemble's run through is spot on. The piece will be on the CME's concert on campus here April 9th. It is rarely performed without me, and while I love to join various groups in the 23 minute work out, I'm delighted whenever people want to tackle it on their own.
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 7
I go to London Ontario's "Covent Garden", which is not very similar to the one in the other London. Part mock-Whole Foods, part mall food court, I have an excellent cup of coffee and a spinach and feta börek. I love börek! Takes me back to good times eating excellent Turkish food in The Hague days, and even better: a week in Istanbul in 2006. I went there to exhibit a video, stayed for the wonderful people, the sights, and The Best Food There Is.
I have been calling this the Conquistadors Tour but I could also call it the Everybody is Awesome Tour. I play a trio set at Somewhere There in Toronto. The plan had been to play with Joe Sorbara, a wonderful drummer and composer, and Aaron Lumley, a creative improvising bassist, both based in Toronto. Joe and I played together the first time I came to Canada to play, in 2009, and Aaron and I met onstage in Amsterdam last year at an improv night. Joe and Aaron are awesome.
Alas, continuing a Montreal-can't-make-it theme of this tour, there is a train derailment, travel is screwed up, and Aaron is stuck in Montreal, so Joe calls his friend Heather Segger, a trombonist. She is awesome. It's been a while since I've performed an impromptu set with someone I've never worked with, and I am usually skeptical of these public meetings. I LOVE to play with new people, but I don't think it is always a good idea to confront an audience with a first meeting. I generally favor the kind of group improvisation that is an expression of a rigorous working method among the actors.
Happily, my skepticism is not pertinent this night. It is an absolute joy to play with Heather and Joe, to listen and react and antagonize along with them both. The music is really beautiful and their musical company, in front of the small audience at Somewhere There, is both challenging and comfortable. And inspiring. We'll get Aaron in on it next time.
Paul Dutton, who is awesome, comes out to the show. I got to share a bill with his group CCMC (with multi-disciplinary artist Michael Snow and plunderphonics godfather John Oswald) back in December. We traded CDs and his voice quintet Five Men Singing -- with David Moss, Jaap Blonk, Phil Minton and Koichi Makigami -- is a must have for fans of the genre of Awesome.
Brandon Valdivia (awesome) shows up after I'm done playing and we talk a bit, mostly about my piece Conquistadors. He reiterates something I used to feel, and something Pete Lebel (awesome) expressed the night before: the concern that making experimental music in a world going to shit is somehow decadent. In the wake of the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 I wanted to run away from the concert hall for what I thought was a more righteous place: a refugee camp, a field hospital, an orphanage. I wanted to do something "meaningful" because I thought doing something I was privileged to learn to do, for other privileged people, was somehow wrong. Yes, I would have trouble trusting an artist who hasn't had something similar cross their mind at some point, but suffice to say I don't feel this way about "decadence" anymore. There are people with names and addresses who order the bombing of other human beings, the evictions of people made homeless by natural disasters, the clear-cutting of forests, the building of another nuclear plant. They are not the names and addresses of my friends and colleagues who struggle to get by making music and art.
Certainly it is righteous to work with the at-risk and the marginalized, to empower people under the boot, to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, organize alongside the disenfranchised. There are so many ways to do meaningful, compassionate things. I think refusal to join the corporate economy, in favor of the gift economy -- how do you quantify a performance, or a piece of music, or a poem? -- is also a radical act. I think dealing in subtlety and genuine communication, in a culture that devalues both, is a radical act. I think that the concerts and exhibitions my peers put on, for a handful of people, for a handful of dollars, for little recognition, is to deal in a kind of optimism that is sincere and untainted by the rhetoric of political campaigns.
Communities of musicians and artists who struggle against the tide of commercialism and branding are the the opposite of decadent. It is thrilling and validating to get into these conversations among the people I am playing with and for on this tour. We have to know that we are doing the right thing despite every cynical indication to the contrary. Some of us come from privilege, some of us do not, but as experimental artists we are always working at the margins, voluntarily, involuntarily. Just as the marginalized can take on the consciousness of the oppressor, artists can endeavor to understand the consciousness of the oppressed. And we do not piss into the wind.
SET LIST 3/28
3 improvisations w/ Heather Segger (trombone), Joe Sorbara (drums), kn (altosax)
I have been calling this the Conquistadors Tour but I could also call it the Everybody is Awesome Tour. I play a trio set at Somewhere There in Toronto. The plan had been to play with Joe Sorbara, a wonderful drummer and composer, and Aaron Lumley, a creative improvising bassist, both based in Toronto. Joe and I played together the first time I came to Canada to play, in 2009, and Aaron and I met onstage in Amsterdam last year at an improv night. Joe and Aaron are awesome.
Alas, continuing a Montreal-can't-make-it theme of this tour, there is a train derailment, travel is screwed up, and Aaron is stuck in Montreal, so Joe calls his friend Heather Segger, a trombonist. She is awesome. It's been a while since I've performed an impromptu set with someone I've never worked with, and I am usually skeptical of these public meetings. I LOVE to play with new people, but I don't think it is always a good idea to confront an audience with a first meeting. I generally favor the kind of group improvisation that is an expression of a rigorous working method among the actors.
Happily, my skepticism is not pertinent this night. It is an absolute joy to play with Heather and Joe, to listen and react and antagonize along with them both. The music is really beautiful and their musical company, in front of the small audience at Somewhere There, is both challenging and comfortable. And inspiring. We'll get Aaron in on it next time.
Paul Dutton, who is awesome, comes out to the show. I got to share a bill with his group CCMC (with multi-disciplinary artist Michael Snow and plunderphonics godfather John Oswald) back in December. We traded CDs and his voice quintet Five Men Singing -- with David Moss, Jaap Blonk, Phil Minton and Koichi Makigami -- is a must have for fans of the genre of Awesome.
Brandon Valdivia (awesome) shows up after I'm done playing and we talk a bit, mostly about my piece Conquistadors. He reiterates something I used to feel, and something Pete Lebel (awesome) expressed the night before: the concern that making experimental music in a world going to shit is somehow decadent. In the wake of the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 I wanted to run away from the concert hall for what I thought was a more righteous place: a refugee camp, a field hospital, an orphanage. I wanted to do something "meaningful" because I thought doing something I was privileged to learn to do, for other privileged people, was somehow wrong. Yes, I would have trouble trusting an artist who hasn't had something similar cross their mind at some point, but suffice to say I don't feel this way about "decadence" anymore. There are people with names and addresses who order the bombing of other human beings, the evictions of people made homeless by natural disasters, the clear-cutting of forests, the building of another nuclear plant. They are not the names and addresses of my friends and colleagues who struggle to get by making music and art.
Certainly it is righteous to work with the at-risk and the marginalized, to empower people under the boot, to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, organize alongside the disenfranchised. There are so many ways to do meaningful, compassionate things. I think refusal to join the corporate economy, in favor of the gift economy -- how do you quantify a performance, or a piece of music, or a poem? -- is also a radical act. I think dealing in subtlety and genuine communication, in a culture that devalues both, is a radical act. I think that the concerts and exhibitions my peers put on, for a handful of people, for a handful of dollars, for little recognition, is to deal in a kind of optimism that is sincere and untainted by the rhetoric of political campaigns.
Communities of musicians and artists who struggle against the tide of commercialism and branding are the the opposite of decadent. It is thrilling and validating to get into these conversations among the people I am playing with and for on this tour. We have to know that we are doing the right thing despite every cynical indication to the contrary. Some of us come from privilege, some of us do not, but as experimental artists we are always working at the margins, voluntarily, involuntarily. Just as the marginalized can take on the consciousness of the oppressor, artists can endeavor to understand the consciousness of the oppressed. And we do not piss into the wind.
SET LIST 3/28
3 improvisations w/ Heather Segger (trombone), Joe Sorbara (drums), kn (altosax)
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 6
I spend most of the day in Toronto. At a secondhand shop I pick up two CDs to listen to: A Portrait of Sonny Criss and the People record Misbegotten Man. Sonny Criss, an alto player who I'd never heard, sounds like a less powerful Cannonball Adderley, a less fluid Sonny Stitt, a less funky Lou Donaldson, a less soulful Fathead Newman. Which is not to say the record isn't good; it's just not great.
The People record is fun though. I've seen Mary Halvorson play out a bit in NYC (with Crackleknob, with her quintet, and in other settings) and I've heard recordings, but never People. She's always great, but it was fresh hearing her like this. Her instrumental playing has been getting a lot of attention lately, all deserved. But I would love to see a People show sometime too, so I hope she keeps that going.
On the drive to London I put on another Czeslaw Niemen record: Enigmatic, with the epic 16-minute track "Bema Pamięci Żałobny Rapsod". Love it.
In London I play at Marigold Studios, a rehearsal and recording space in the city's downtrodden east side that sometimes hosts shows. I share the bill with Brandon Valdivia, an excellent drummer/multi-instrumentalist from Toronto who plays with Not the Wind, Not the Flag, and Audio Lodge, a local audio art collective.
My set is fine, but here's something for all you saxophonists to think about before starting to play: take the damn swab out the bell of the horn. I had arrived late, set up in a hurry, no time to soundcheck or even blow a note through the instrument. So at the end of my set, when I pick up the horn and start playing this circular breathing drone, I notice unusual resistance. True, I was playing on a dying reed, but man it took everything I had to keep the sound going. Turns out I was playing through a balled up silk swab at the bottom of the bell. Oops.
After the show I go to a country & western dive bar nearby with Pete Lebel, who organized the show, and his friend Morgan. It is karaoke night and though we don't participate we watch as a diverse crowd of seriously drunk older folks run through some hits. One dude did a better Bob Dylan impression than Bob Dylan could. We drink pitchers of Labatt 50.
When he's not making experimental music, Pete works at a homeless shelter and has made a big effort to organize the arts in this part of town without deferring to the developers seeking to gentrify it. It's a monumental task for anyone, anywhere. The conversation leads to priorities. I talk about recognizing the basics -- clean air, clean water, clean soil -- which need to be dealt with before other socio-political agitation can be meaningful. Pete responds that a lot of the damaged, marginalized people he works with at the shelter have more immediate challenges than the all-encompassing protection of the biosphere. It's a fair point. Morgan says that the celebrity and entertainment culture cut people off from knowing what is going on and what to do about it. We agree that it takes all kinds of activity, on various fronts, to make any serious challenge to the bad things we are all identifying.
My night ends, appropriately perhaps, watching The Towering Inferno with Funkadelic's Maggot Brain as the soundtrack.
SET LIST 3/27
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Strange Lands
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story
The People record is fun though. I've seen Mary Halvorson play out a bit in NYC (with Crackleknob, with her quintet, and in other settings) and I've heard recordings, but never People. She's always great, but it was fresh hearing her like this. Her instrumental playing has been getting a lot of attention lately, all deserved. But I would love to see a People show sometime too, so I hope she keeps that going.
On the drive to London I put on another Czeslaw Niemen record: Enigmatic, with the epic 16-minute track "Bema Pamięci Żałobny Rapsod". Love it.
In London I play at Marigold Studios, a rehearsal and recording space in the city's downtrodden east side that sometimes hosts shows. I share the bill with Brandon Valdivia, an excellent drummer/multi-instrumentalist from Toronto who plays with Not the Wind, Not the Flag, and Audio Lodge, a local audio art collective.
My set is fine, but here's something for all you saxophonists to think about before starting to play: take the damn swab out the bell of the horn. I had arrived late, set up in a hurry, no time to soundcheck or even blow a note through the instrument. So at the end of my set, when I pick up the horn and start playing this circular breathing drone, I notice unusual resistance. True, I was playing on a dying reed, but man it took everything I had to keep the sound going. Turns out I was playing through a balled up silk swab at the bottom of the bell. Oops.
After the show I go to a country & western dive bar nearby with Pete Lebel, who organized the show, and his friend Morgan. It is karaoke night and though we don't participate we watch as a diverse crowd of seriously drunk older folks run through some hits. One dude did a better Bob Dylan impression than Bob Dylan could. We drink pitchers of Labatt 50.
When he's not making experimental music, Pete works at a homeless shelter and has made a big effort to organize the arts in this part of town without deferring to the developers seeking to gentrify it. It's a monumental task for anyone, anywhere. The conversation leads to priorities. I talk about recognizing the basics -- clean air, clean water, clean soil -- which need to be dealt with before other socio-political agitation can be meaningful. Pete responds that a lot of the damaged, marginalized people he works with at the shelter have more immediate challenges than the all-encompassing protection of the biosphere. It's a fair point. Morgan says that the celebrity and entertainment culture cut people off from knowing what is going on and what to do about it. We agree that it takes all kinds of activity, on various fronts, to make any serious challenge to the bad things we are all identifying.
My night ends, appropriately perhaps, watching The Towering Inferno with Funkadelic's Maggot Brain as the soundtrack.
SET LIST 3/27
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Strange Lands
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story
Monday, March 28, 2011
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 5
Wake up at the Schoolhouse in Guelph and watch Wurld, a 23 minute stop-motion film by Elfin Saddle. It's good. Two Montreal musicians made this film in the their backyard over the course of a year, illustrating the arc of human civilization with little found objects and stuff from their garden.
I spend the afternoon in downtown Guelph. There are some cool secondhand shops and used furniture and bookstores. I am tempted by a cheesy $100 beat-generating organ of Swedish provenance. It is a good thing there is zero room in the back of my car.
I listen to the Pi soundtrack on the way to Toronto later in the day. I have listened to this disc as much as any other in the 12 years since I got it. Still like it, because I get to rewatch the film in my head as I listen, and it's one of my favorite films. For the first time, the disc skips!
In Toronto I play at Jeff Garcia's live-in art studio, Earthship. Let me tell you something, people: Jeff Garcia is awesome. His art fills the place and is the place. It's impossible to describe. The space is a dynamic work-in-constant-progress with paintings and sculptures and found objects everywhere. And the records we listen to before and in between sets! Isaac Hayes and Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler and Arthur Conley and dozens of things I don't recognize.
A band from Montreal has cancelled, is this a tour theme? A local trombone and guitar duo, Ghost Eye, start the evening off playing a collage soundscape with live visuals. Good sounds, but long. How long is too long? Ya never know. Jonathan Adjemian is up second. He performs a great set with voice and an old korg synthesizer. It's disarming the way he starts, telling an engaging, rambling story while the pop and squeal of the synth moves subtly to the foreground. Everyone is super nice at this place.
My set is my best so far on this tour and someone captured it. I was totally inspired by the space. The gear is sounding great and I get Helen Caldicott speaking through my tape player over a dubbed out casiotone beat as a prelude to The Love Story. The arc of the set feels really right at this point and the audience is totally committed, so I stretch out on the saxophone ending. After the set I teach everyone in the room how to circular breathe in 30 seconds.
SET LIST 3/26
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Strange Lands
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story
I spend the afternoon in downtown Guelph. There are some cool secondhand shops and used furniture and bookstores. I am tempted by a cheesy $100 beat-generating organ of Swedish provenance. It is a good thing there is zero room in the back of my car.
I listen to the Pi soundtrack on the way to Toronto later in the day. I have listened to this disc as much as any other in the 12 years since I got it. Still like it, because I get to rewatch the film in my head as I listen, and it's one of my favorite films. For the first time, the disc skips!
In Toronto I play at Jeff Garcia's live-in art studio, Earthship. Let me tell you something, people: Jeff Garcia is awesome. His art fills the place and is the place. It's impossible to describe. The space is a dynamic work-in-constant-progress with paintings and sculptures and found objects everywhere. And the records we listen to before and in between sets! Isaac Hayes and Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler and Arthur Conley and dozens of things I don't recognize.
A band from Montreal has cancelled, is this a tour theme? A local trombone and guitar duo, Ghost Eye, start the evening off playing a collage soundscape with live visuals. Good sounds, but long. How long is too long? Ya never know. Jonathan Adjemian is up second. He performs a great set with voice and an old korg synthesizer. It's disarming the way he starts, telling an engaging, rambling story while the pop and squeal of the synth moves subtly to the foreground. Everyone is super nice at this place.
My set is my best so far on this tour and someone captured it. I was totally inspired by the space. The gear is sounding great and I get Helen Caldicott speaking through my tape player over a dubbed out casiotone beat as a prelude to The Love Story. The arc of the set feels really right at this point and the audience is totally committed, so I stretch out on the saxophone ending. After the set I teach everyone in the room how to circular breathe in 30 seconds.
SET LIST 3/26
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Strange Lands
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story
Saturday, March 26, 2011
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 4
I spend a little time in Toronto before driving to Guelph. I go to Mercury Espresso Bar with Tad, who organized my shows in Canada. We talk about weird & experimental & creative music, the kind of stuff he is committed to presenting in Toronto. He knows every band, performer, label, film you've never heard of. It's an honor to be in his orbit & the conversation is a reminder to check out more of the artists & works that I know by name only. There's great shit out there.
On the drive I catch Democracy Now on 89.5FM, which I think is a university radio station out of Toronto. Today's show is a special focusing on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed hundreds of women in New York City. They were working under sweatshop conditions before labor laws came into place & the eyewitness accounts of that day are horrific: with exit doors locked (to prevent theft, the factory owners said) young women leapt to their death to avoid the flames. Others were burned at their sewing machines; because of filthy conditions, the fire swept through fast, leaving some women no time to attempt escape.
Within a few years laws were put into place protecting workers in the United States. Crafty corporate thugs figured out a way around these barriers to sacrificing people at the alter of capital: outsource the labor to places where such laws don't exist. On Democracy Now the discussion turns to a deadly fire that swept through a textile factory in Bangladesh in December 2010. The conditions were almost exactly the same: factory owners locked the exit doors and workers either burned or leapt to their deaths. The big difference between the fire in Bangladesh in 2010 & the one in NYC in 1911 is that the Bangladeshi workers assembling clothes for GAP Kids earn considerably less than factory workers one hundred years ago. Even adjusted for invlation. Following the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, workers organized and agitated for laws to protect them. Following the fire in Bangladesh, workers have done the same, and have been met with violence & repression. I really hate it when people say that corporate globalisation is important because it brings jobs to the Third World. Go work under those conditions then, for that kind of pay.
Anyway in Guelph I split the bill with Eamon McGrath, who makes stripped-down punk-folk. We play in Peter Bradley's living room, in a converted old schoolhouse, in the farmland on the outskirts of Guelph. It's a beautiful setting and a warm, intimate space. The distance from town keeps the crowd so small it's really a private concert for a handful. But that allows us all to have a nice conversation before the show. Eamon, who is from Edmonton, has toured the Netherlands a bit, so there's lots to discuss. After I learn that Jim Carrey is Canadian, the conversation somehow turns to European immigration laws & xenophobia: the crazy Swiss law against minarets (if they don't like foreign culture they should stop drinking coffee & eating chocolate, you know?), the Dutch fear that their country will be overrun by Muslims. Back when I lived in Holland even people who were otherwise "tolerant" & "liberal" would make some silly case against the "Islamification" of The Netherlands. It is out of control that there can be a "debate" in polite company over growing Muslim populations; imagine someone saying this to you, in a hushed, worried voice at a dinner party in any North American or European country: "in a few years, this country could be 30% Jewish!" Xenophobia sucks.
I have all my gear set up. Eamon plays a strong, committed set & then it's my turn. I play a 50 minute set & it feels good. There are so many levels to manage as I play: acoustic drums, lefthand organ bass through one amp, righthand organ, synth, drum machine, & feedback through another, delay settings, wah-wah position, vocals. The more I do this set, the less the minor hiccups seem to matter. I am enjoying this.
SET LIST 3/26
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Final Warning
Questionnaire
Strange Lands
The Love Story
On the drive I catch Democracy Now on 89.5FM, which I think is a university radio station out of Toronto. Today's show is a special focusing on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed hundreds of women in New York City. They were working under sweatshop conditions before labor laws came into place & the eyewitness accounts of that day are horrific: with exit doors locked (to prevent theft, the factory owners said) young women leapt to their death to avoid the flames. Others were burned at their sewing machines; because of filthy conditions, the fire swept through fast, leaving some women no time to attempt escape.
Within a few years laws were put into place protecting workers in the United States. Crafty corporate thugs figured out a way around these barriers to sacrificing people at the alter of capital: outsource the labor to places where such laws don't exist. On Democracy Now the discussion turns to a deadly fire that swept through a textile factory in Bangladesh in December 2010. The conditions were almost exactly the same: factory owners locked the exit doors and workers either burned or leapt to their deaths. The big difference between the fire in Bangladesh in 2010 & the one in NYC in 1911 is that the Bangladeshi workers assembling clothes for GAP Kids earn considerably less than factory workers one hundred years ago. Even adjusted for invlation. Following the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, workers organized and agitated for laws to protect them. Following the fire in Bangladesh, workers have done the same, and have been met with violence & repression. I really hate it when people say that corporate globalisation is important because it brings jobs to the Third World. Go work under those conditions then, for that kind of pay.
Anyway in Guelph I split the bill with Eamon McGrath, who makes stripped-down punk-folk. We play in Peter Bradley's living room, in a converted old schoolhouse, in the farmland on the outskirts of Guelph. It's a beautiful setting and a warm, intimate space. The distance from town keeps the crowd so small it's really a private concert for a handful. But that allows us all to have a nice conversation before the show. Eamon, who is from Edmonton, has toured the Netherlands a bit, so there's lots to discuss. After I learn that Jim Carrey is Canadian, the conversation somehow turns to European immigration laws & xenophobia: the crazy Swiss law against minarets (if they don't like foreign culture they should stop drinking coffee & eating chocolate, you know?), the Dutch fear that their country will be overrun by Muslims. Back when I lived in Holland even people who were otherwise "tolerant" & "liberal" would make some silly case against the "Islamification" of The Netherlands. It is out of control that there can be a "debate" in polite company over growing Muslim populations; imagine someone saying this to you, in a hushed, worried voice at a dinner party in any North American or European country: "in a few years, this country could be 30% Jewish!" Xenophobia sucks.
I have all my gear set up. Eamon plays a strong, committed set & then it's my turn. I play a 50 minute set & it feels good. There are so many levels to manage as I play: acoustic drums, lefthand organ bass through one amp, righthand organ, synth, drum machine, & feedback through another, delay settings, wah-wah position, vocals. The more I do this set, the less the minor hiccups seem to matter. I am enjoying this.
SET LIST 3/26
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Final Warning
Questionnaire
Strange Lands
The Love Story
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 3
It's snowing in Montreal & someone has boxed my car in with a giant SUV. After loading up I have to beep the horn for awhile but finally a dude comes outside and moves his Chevy. My car has New York license plates. He says he's from Poughkeepsie, which makes us friends.
Diego Espinosa, friend from The Hague days & virtuoso percussionist, invites me over for breakfast. Good times. We need to play together again! Here's a recording from the last time we played together: June 2008, with Rafal Mazur, in Amsterdam at a concert co-organized by STEIM, Mediamatic, and TAG: Energy (for Michel).
On the drive to Toronto I catch a little bit of a certain American rightwing radio host (whose name rhymes with "spawn insanity") talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate. After playing a clip from professional asshole Donald Trump shouting about something, he has two guests on: a "birther" who claims to have definitive evidence that will prove I don't know what, and a "liberal" introduced as "the lawyer for Hamas" who says that if one wanted to nail Obama there are far worse crimes. (I am inclined to agree.)
I put on a CD: it is a compilation of the earliest Czeslaw Niemen recordings, a lot of hilarity as he finds his feet in the early 60s, including a few tunes in Spanish and English ("teeech me hhhow tu tweeest"). My favorite song on the disc is "Sen o Warszawie", which is an awesome song. Niemen is the best.
The show in Toronto is at a new multipurpose event space & the organizer, Eric, brought me in last minute, which is a very nice thing to do! The space feels a bit like a conference room and alcohol is not served, but the fact that all three acts are set up when people come in, and we're all really different, creates a nice atmosphere & good expectation among the audience.
I play first. Since I am a late addition to the bill I play a condensed set, rushing through it a bit but with nice reactions & feedback from the crowd. Some folks dance in place a little to Conquistadors.
The second act is dd/mm/yyyy who play the old video game Street Fighter 2 using the audio signals from their drums and keyboards to control the action. I'm usually not into this sort of thing but they play good music, so the novelty isn't at the expense of quality. Besides, they have some nice, witty merch at the table & they're nice guys, so respect. The headliner is a duo from San Francisco on Thrill Jockey called Mi Ami. They play synth pop with heavy dance grooves. These Canadians here are not the best dancers but they are trying. One of the guys plays a Casio CZ-101 and it is really nice to hear again: my father bought me that keyboard back around 1984. My brother & sisters & I would use it to make live soundtracks to improvised home movies when we were kids. Talk about good times!
SET LIST 3/25
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Mouths Running Might (instrumental)
The Love Story
Diego Espinosa, friend from The Hague days & virtuoso percussionist, invites me over for breakfast. Good times. We need to play together again! Here's a recording from the last time we played together: June 2008, with Rafal Mazur, in Amsterdam at a concert co-organized by STEIM, Mediamatic, and TAG: Energy (for Michel).
On the drive to Toronto I catch a little bit of a certain American rightwing radio host (whose name rhymes with "spawn insanity") talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate. After playing a clip from professional asshole Donald Trump shouting about something, he has two guests on: a "birther" who claims to have definitive evidence that will prove I don't know what, and a "liberal" introduced as "the lawyer for Hamas" who says that if one wanted to nail Obama there are far worse crimes. (I am inclined to agree.)
I put on a CD: it is a compilation of the earliest Czeslaw Niemen recordings, a lot of hilarity as he finds his feet in the early 60s, including a few tunes in Spanish and English ("teeech me hhhow tu tweeest"). My favorite song on the disc is "Sen o Warszawie", which is an awesome song. Niemen is the best.
The show in Toronto is at a new multipurpose event space & the organizer, Eric, brought me in last minute, which is a very nice thing to do! The space feels a bit like a conference room and alcohol is not served, but the fact that all three acts are set up when people come in, and we're all really different, creates a nice atmosphere & good expectation among the audience.
I play first. Since I am a late addition to the bill I play a condensed set, rushing through it a bit but with nice reactions & feedback from the crowd. Some folks dance in place a little to Conquistadors.
The second act is dd/mm/yyyy who play the old video game Street Fighter 2 using the audio signals from their drums and keyboards to control the action. I'm usually not into this sort of thing but they play good music, so the novelty isn't at the expense of quality. Besides, they have some nice, witty merch at the table & they're nice guys, so respect. The headliner is a duo from San Francisco on Thrill Jockey called Mi Ami. They play synth pop with heavy dance grooves. These Canadians here are not the best dancers but they are trying. One of the guys plays a Casio CZ-101 and it is really nice to hear again: my father bought me that keyboard back around 1984. My brother & sisters & I would use it to make live soundtracks to improvised home movies when we were kids. Talk about good times!
SET LIST 3/25
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Mouths Running Might (instrumental)
The Love Story
Thursday, March 24, 2011
CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 2
TOUR DAY 2
On the drive from Ithaca to Montreal I listen to various NPR stations. The US House of Representatives just voted to defund National Public Radio. I listen to the way NPR reports American foreign policy, I am inclined to agree but for different reasons. Of course, the US Congress should also be defunded, so there's that.
The talk is of the constitutional politics behind the US attack on Libya (and the death of Elizabeth Taylor). No one addresses how utterly wrong it is to be bombing Libya, just whether the decision to do it was taken the right way. I have witnessed this rhetorical conspiracy so many times already, with other wars that are variously called humanitarian interventions or peacekeeping operations or whatever. I hate that another generation of young people has to learn to decipher this conspiracy. In a way, all of the songs I am performing on this tour deal with this very problem: decoding & deciphering the deceits of the conquistadors.
After two hours of this I find a great program on North Country Public Radio. The deejay, Bob, plays awesome cuts from Rhythm & Blues acts like Little Richard and the Cufflinks ("Guided Missiles", I am definitely going to cover that one!) mixed with some of the better British Invasion and summer of love stuff. Nothing post-1968, it's great. When I get out of range on the Canadian side I put on an old cassette: Mouse on Mars "nin niggung" on side A and Plaid "Rustproof Clockwork" on side B. Tomek or Jan Choloniewski lent me those CDs in Krakow, in 1999. Now that I'm putting my music out for sale I think sometimes about copyright and royalties. I guess it was illegal for me to copy those discs. But I spent hundreds of dollars on electronic music in the following two years after they turned me on to this stuff.
The day is bright and clear for most of the drive, and I see thousands of migratory birds dotting the sky and in the fields, more than I have seen in ages. It reminds me of something Derrick Jensen often writes and speaks about, how not so long ago migratory birds would darken the sky for days at a time. He refers to a species I cannot remember the name of at this moment, but I do remember that civilization intervened and that species doesn't exist anymore.
Animal House, the place I play in Montreal, is in a sort of punk/anarchist squat zone in St-Henri. It reminds me a little bit of the Metalkova area in Ljubljana, or some of the bigger squats in The Hague. I am playing in someone's living room, the front door to which is literally a few feet from operational train tracks. Joe is running the show, cooks me and his friends a couscous, vegetables and tofu. We listen to 13th Floor Elevators and Captain Beefheart. All the other acts--all locals--bail on the show for some reason.
Small crowd, all under 25. Half of them are committed listeners, the other half are talky and distracted. There is a heckler but he is a strange heckler: he loves the music! He's just a little bit not sober? Funny interactions ensue. He dances to Conquistadors, trys to play along on one of my drums to What We Have (I ask him nicely to stop, and he does), and then invite him to play along on A Bloodletting. I think he bought a CD. And he lets me use his (Canadian) cellphone, which is very cool thing to offer to a foreign musician on tour.
SET LIST MONTREAL 3/23
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Strange Lands
What We Have
Final Warning
Mouths Running Might
The Love Story
A Bloodletting
Questionnaire
On the drive from Ithaca to Montreal I listen to various NPR stations. The US House of Representatives just voted to defund National Public Radio. I listen to the way NPR reports American foreign policy, I am inclined to agree but for different reasons. Of course, the US Congress should also be defunded, so there's that.
The talk is of the constitutional politics behind the US attack on Libya (and the death of Elizabeth Taylor). No one addresses how utterly wrong it is to be bombing Libya, just whether the decision to do it was taken the right way. I have witnessed this rhetorical conspiracy so many times already, with other wars that are variously called humanitarian interventions or peacekeeping operations or whatever. I hate that another generation of young people has to learn to decipher this conspiracy. In a way, all of the songs I am performing on this tour deal with this very problem: decoding & deciphering the deceits of the conquistadors.
After two hours of this I find a great program on North Country Public Radio. The deejay, Bob, plays awesome cuts from Rhythm & Blues acts like Little Richard and the Cufflinks ("Guided Missiles", I am definitely going to cover that one!) mixed with some of the better British Invasion and summer of love stuff. Nothing post-1968, it's great. When I get out of range on the Canadian side I put on an old cassette: Mouse on Mars "nin niggung" on side A and Plaid "Rustproof Clockwork" on side B. Tomek or Jan Choloniewski lent me those CDs in Krakow, in 1999. Now that I'm putting my music out for sale I think sometimes about copyright and royalties. I guess it was illegal for me to copy those discs. But I spent hundreds of dollars on electronic music in the following two years after they turned me on to this stuff.
The day is bright and clear for most of the drive, and I see thousands of migratory birds dotting the sky and in the fields, more than I have seen in ages. It reminds me of something Derrick Jensen often writes and speaks about, how not so long ago migratory birds would darken the sky for days at a time. He refers to a species I cannot remember the name of at this moment, but I do remember that civilization intervened and that species doesn't exist anymore.
Animal House, the place I play in Montreal, is in a sort of punk/anarchist squat zone in St-Henri. It reminds me a little bit of the Metalkova area in Ljubljana, or some of the bigger squats in The Hague. I am playing in someone's living room, the front door to which is literally a few feet from operational train tracks. Joe is running the show, cooks me and his friends a couscous, vegetables and tofu. We listen to 13th Floor Elevators and Captain Beefheart. All the other acts--all locals--bail on the show for some reason.
Small crowd, all under 25. Half of them are committed listeners, the other half are talky and distracted. There is a heckler but he is a strange heckler: he loves the music! He's just a little bit not sober? Funny interactions ensue. He dances to Conquistadors, trys to play along on one of my drums to What We Have (I ask him nicely to stop, and he does), and then invite him to play along on A Bloodletting. I think he bought a CD. And he lets me use his (Canadian) cellphone, which is very cool thing to offer to a foreign musician on tour.
SET LIST MONTREAL 3/23
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Strange Lands
What We Have
Final Warning
Mouths Running Might
The Love Story
A Bloodletting
Questionnaire
CONQUISTADORS TOUR
I just produced an EP, on cassette tape, called "Conquistadors" under the banner of my AFGHANISTAN project. I am on a solo tour to promote the ideas behind the songs on the tape and others that I perform. Here's the tour schedule:
MAR 22: Ithaca NY @ Culture Shock
MAR 23: Montreal QC @ Animal House
MAR 24: Toronto ON @ Sun Room Gallery
MAR 25: Guelph ON @ The Schoolhouse
MAR 26: Toronto ON @ Earthship
MAR 27: London ON @ Marigold Studios
MAR 28: Toronto ON @ Somewhere There w/ Aaron Lumley, bass & Joe Sorbara, drums)
MAR 29: Guelph ON @ University of Guelph (teaching Dodging Bullets to Joe Sorbara's improvisation students)
MAR 30: Detroit MI @ 2739 Edwin
MAR 31: Toledo OH @ Robinwood Concert House
APR 1: Ypsilanti MI @ Pleasuredome
APR 2: day off in Chicago
APR 3: Champaign IL @ Dan Aykroyd's House
APR 4: St Louis MO @ Cranky Yellow
APR 5: day off in Louisville KY
APR 6: Louisville @ University of Louisville: lectures on Composition & Advanced Topics in Computer Music
APR 7: University of Louisville: performance at Bird Hall
APR 8: Louisville KY @ Museum of Modern Art
APR 9: ?
APR 10: Dayton OH @ Blind Bob's
APR 11: Pittsburgh PA @ TBA
APR 14: Brooklyn NY @ Douglass Street Music Collective w/ Reuben Radding, bass & Andrew Drury, drums)
The hometown tour kickoff was a great time. I asked my friend Chris Seeds to share the bill with me. He writes songs & music for contemporary dance and played a fantastic, risky, new performance this night that came off almost as an experimental film, reading excerpts from his old diaries over cassette tape artefacts intermingled with two delicate songs. Attentive, mostly young crowd for both sets. With only a few exceptions, older, more established musicians in Ithaca have been, as a group, shamefully unsupportive of new and experimental music and venues in the past year. It's tiring and makes the city feel extremely insular. It also makes their great music seem a little less great, because a lack of curiosity is tedious wherever it appears. Anyway, some young (college-age) people were out and it was a fun night. I have been practicing hyper-obsessively, hours a day, hoping that the myriad technical problems that inevitably arise from using vintage and cheap gear won't fuck up my performances. It felt good on Culture Shock's little stage.
SET LIST 3/22
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Strike the Sun (w/ Ryan Zawel on trombone)
Strange Lands
Mouths Running Might (instrumental)
A Bloodletting
MAR 22: Ithaca NY @ Culture Shock
MAR 23: Montreal QC @ Animal House
MAR 24: Toronto ON @ Sun Room Gallery
MAR 25: Guelph ON @ The Schoolhouse
MAR 26: Toronto ON @ Earthship
MAR 27: London ON @ Marigold Studios
MAR 28: Toronto ON @ Somewhere There w/ Aaron Lumley, bass & Joe Sorbara, drums)
MAR 29: Guelph ON @ University of Guelph (teaching Dodging Bullets to Joe Sorbara's improvisation students)
MAR 30: Detroit MI @ 2739 Edwin
MAR 31: Toledo OH @ Robinwood Concert House
APR 1: Ypsilanti MI @ Pleasuredome
APR 2: day off in Chicago
APR 3: Champaign IL @ Dan Aykroyd's House
APR 4: St Louis MO @ Cranky Yellow
APR 5: day off in Louisville KY
APR 6: Louisville @ University of Louisville: lectures on Composition & Advanced Topics in Computer Music
APR 7: University of Louisville: performance at Bird Hall
APR 8: Louisville KY @ Museum of Modern Art
APR 9: ?
APR 10: Dayton OH @ Blind Bob's
APR 11: Pittsburgh PA @ TBA
APR 14: Brooklyn NY @ Douglass Street Music Collective w/ Reuben Radding, bass & Andrew Drury, drums)
The hometown tour kickoff was a great time. I asked my friend Chris Seeds to share the bill with me. He writes songs & music for contemporary dance and played a fantastic, risky, new performance this night that came off almost as an experimental film, reading excerpts from his old diaries over cassette tape artefacts intermingled with two delicate songs. Attentive, mostly young crowd for both sets. With only a few exceptions, older, more established musicians in Ithaca have been, as a group, shamefully unsupportive of new and experimental music and venues in the past year. It's tiring and makes the city feel extremely insular. It also makes their great music seem a little less great, because a lack of curiosity is tedious wherever it appears. Anyway, some young (college-age) people were out and it was a fun night. I have been practicing hyper-obsessively, hours a day, hoping that the myriad technical problems that inevitably arise from using vintage and cheap gear won't fuck up my performances. It felt good on Culture Shock's little stage.
SET LIST 3/22
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
Strike the Sun (w/ Ryan Zawel on trombone)
Strange Lands
Mouths Running Might (instrumental)
A Bloodletting
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Message from America
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM AMERICA, TO ITS POLITICIANS:
If you deny our state workers' unions the right to collective bargaining,
we will occupy state capitols.
And if you savage the economies of Latin America for a century,
we will re-elect you.
If you cut funding for education,
we will organize school walk-outs.
And if you grind children into dust in Afghanistan for nine years running,
we will re-elect you.
If a gallon of gas costs more than $4,
we will scream bloody murder.
And if you sell out our pristine wilderness to oil & gas companies,
we will re-elect you.
If you threaten to defund Planned Parenthood,
we will organize & we will protest.
And if our soldiers abroad make a habit of raping people under occupation,
we will re-elect you.
If your sexual indiscretions are made public,
we will shame you in our corporate media.
And if your torture regime is made public,
we will re-elect you.
If people on the other side of the world risk their lives for self-determination under authoritarian rule,
we will demand you support their struggle.
And if you tighten your authoritarian grip here at home,
we will re-elect you.
If you deny our state workers' unions the right to collective bargaining,
we will occupy state capitols.
And if you savage the economies of Latin America for a century,
we will re-elect you.
If you cut funding for education,
we will organize school walk-outs.
And if you grind children into dust in Afghanistan for nine years running,
we will re-elect you.
If a gallon of gas costs more than $4,
we will scream bloody murder.
And if you sell out our pristine wilderness to oil & gas companies,
we will re-elect you.
If you threaten to defund Planned Parenthood,
we will organize & we will protest.
And if our soldiers abroad make a habit of raping people under occupation,
we will re-elect you.
If your sexual indiscretions are made public,
we will shame you in our corporate media.
And if your torture regime is made public,
we will re-elect you.
If people on the other side of the world risk their lives for self-determination under authoritarian rule,
we will demand you support their struggle.
And if you tighten your authoritarian grip here at home,
we will re-elect you.
A Piece On/Of Propaganda
All of this is true, that you are being lied to. Fooled, tricked, misled. You are being deluded, hoodwinked, cheated, defrauded, disenfranchised. You are being conned, duped, influenced, brainwashed. Your arms are twisted. Your hands are tied. Your back is against the wall. You are cornered, trapped, caged, coerced. Patted down, beat up, worked over. Deceived, manipulated. Your thoughts are controlled, your ideas are not your ideas. What you know about the world and how it works is false, dangerously so, fatally so.
As sure as privacy is a thing of the past, you will learn to unremember independent thought. Groupthink is a reality and your thoughts are it. You are a party to mass delusion. There are entities that will not abide ideas that they themselves did not source. You have never had a dangerous thought in your life. Your speech betrays your long conditioning by a despicable cadre of public relations experts.
When you have information you can trust, you can navigate it to form your own opinions and map out a way of being in the world. When you plot a course based on lies and deceptions, your steps are unsure, your movements irrational, your trajectory a farce.
You are bombarded with loaded information at every turn. Your life is utterly mediated. In print. On screen. Across radio waves. In classrooms. On billboards. At the office water cooler. People are even hired to walk around and nonchalantly extol products, films, brands. They are paid to subvert personal taste and desire merely by being overheard. You know the names of 100 poisonous products that you voluntarily put in and on your body each day, but cannot name the songbird singing outside your window, or the tree he is sitting in. And this according to plan.
Is it okay? Are you comfortable with it?
*
Into the struggle to scale down America's rampant militarism strides the propaganda of the Pentagon. Into the struggle to heal the hurts of industrial civilization stride million dollar corporate greenwash campaigns. Into the struggle to know our selves, our desires, our needs, step unscrupulous public relations firms.
We are meant to feel like inadequate, unattractive outsiders unless we buy the right future junk. We are meant to feel contempt for science, for facts, for recognizing the consequences of our actions: all is right in the world the white font on a bright green background happily declares. We are meant to believe that security and peace come through the prosecution of endless war and the long, righteous arms of American imperialism.
This is really happening. Is it a conspiracy? How do we negotiate our daily lives when such juggernauts of influence bear down on us so consistently, so forcefully, without reproach of conscience?
*
Propaganda, from the Latin word that means "to propagate", didn't always carry a negative connotation. Propaganda is the targeting of receivers' emotions for the purpose of disseminating ideas and promoting specified actions. It differs from rational discourse in that it appeals to feelings and not reason. It is selective information, yes, but it doesn't have to be bad, or dishonest. Just like not all violence is evil--think of a lioness killing an antelope to feed her pride--not all influence is wrong. Bertolt Brecht, a playwright of conscience who lived in times of aggression and deceit not unlike our own, was a type of propagandist in his extraordinary work. So was George Orwell. So was Emma Goldman. Heroes, all, and we can name our contemporary analogues.
Now, however, power structures of incalculable evil stretch over the entire planet and out into space. We live at a time when interconnected sociopathic oligarchies actively and explicitly threaten the existence of our species, and that of many others. And yet these contemptible few constitute such a small part of the population that their authority can be toppled by an informed movement of dedicated individuals. (Witness the fact that a mere ten percent of the population of Egypt ousted the dictator Hosni Mubarak last month.) In order to maintain the global authoritarian order of industrial civilization, it is necessary for the majority to believe that all is well. Join the imperial army to bring about peace. Pay the companies that make you feel inadequate, that poison you, to make you feel better. The only kind of environmentalism that will be tolerated must be ineffectual. (The kind of environmental activism that actually works is deemed "eco-terrorism", and you're not a terrorist, are you? Are you?)
We are beaten down, prodded, invaded, demeaned, pushed around, infected with and waterboarded by propaganda aimed at breaking our will to challenge it. Is it a conspiracy? Is it okay? Is this really happening?
To echo Noam Chomsky, whose Manufacturing Consent (written with Edward S. Herman) is an essential text in the comprehension of contemporary media propaganda, consciousness raising is the first step in lifting oneself out of oppression. The biggest challenge to overcoming propaganda may be the failure of its targets to recognize themselves as such. The propaganda of the Pentagon, of profit-driven greenwashers, of the PR firms, is the brittle, easily overcome ammunition of a cowardly, paranoid, hate-driven authoritarian minority. Recognize it for what it is and the tide begins to turn.
I am a propagandist. Proudly. I am not fair. I am not balanced. I am not neutral. Because all this is really happening. Enlist.
*
[Written for The Ithaca Post to publicize an event sponsored by the Park School of Independent Media at Ithaca College that featured investigative writer John Stauber and civil rights advocate Lisa Graves speaking on PR and the Pentagon. Stauber and Graves are the founder and current director of the Center for Media and Democracy based in Madison, Wisconsin.]
As sure as privacy is a thing of the past, you will learn to unremember independent thought. Groupthink is a reality and your thoughts are it. You are a party to mass delusion. There are entities that will not abide ideas that they themselves did not source. You have never had a dangerous thought in your life. Your speech betrays your long conditioning by a despicable cadre of public relations experts.
When you have information you can trust, you can navigate it to form your own opinions and map out a way of being in the world. When you plot a course based on lies and deceptions, your steps are unsure, your movements irrational, your trajectory a farce.
You are bombarded with loaded information at every turn. Your life is utterly mediated. In print. On screen. Across radio waves. In classrooms. On billboards. At the office water cooler. People are even hired to walk around and nonchalantly extol products, films, brands. They are paid to subvert personal taste and desire merely by being overheard. You know the names of 100 poisonous products that you voluntarily put in and on your body each day, but cannot name the songbird singing outside your window, or the tree he is sitting in. And this according to plan.
Is it okay? Are you comfortable with it?
*
Into the struggle to scale down America's rampant militarism strides the propaganda of the Pentagon. Into the struggle to heal the hurts of industrial civilization stride million dollar corporate greenwash campaigns. Into the struggle to know our selves, our desires, our needs, step unscrupulous public relations firms.
We are meant to feel like inadequate, unattractive outsiders unless we buy the right future junk. We are meant to feel contempt for science, for facts, for recognizing the consequences of our actions: all is right in the world the white font on a bright green background happily declares. We are meant to believe that security and peace come through the prosecution of endless war and the long, righteous arms of American imperialism.
This is really happening. Is it a conspiracy? How do we negotiate our daily lives when such juggernauts of influence bear down on us so consistently, so forcefully, without reproach of conscience?
*
Propaganda, from the Latin word that means "to propagate", didn't always carry a negative connotation. Propaganda is the targeting of receivers' emotions for the purpose of disseminating ideas and promoting specified actions. It differs from rational discourse in that it appeals to feelings and not reason. It is selective information, yes, but it doesn't have to be bad, or dishonest. Just like not all violence is evil--think of a lioness killing an antelope to feed her pride--not all influence is wrong. Bertolt Brecht, a playwright of conscience who lived in times of aggression and deceit not unlike our own, was a type of propagandist in his extraordinary work. So was George Orwell. So was Emma Goldman. Heroes, all, and we can name our contemporary analogues.
Now, however, power structures of incalculable evil stretch over the entire planet and out into space. We live at a time when interconnected sociopathic oligarchies actively and explicitly threaten the existence of our species, and that of many others. And yet these contemptible few constitute such a small part of the population that their authority can be toppled by an informed movement of dedicated individuals. (Witness the fact that a mere ten percent of the population of Egypt ousted the dictator Hosni Mubarak last month.) In order to maintain the global authoritarian order of industrial civilization, it is necessary for the majority to believe that all is well. Join the imperial army to bring about peace. Pay the companies that make you feel inadequate, that poison you, to make you feel better. The only kind of environmentalism that will be tolerated must be ineffectual. (The kind of environmental activism that actually works is deemed "eco-terrorism", and you're not a terrorist, are you? Are you?)
We are beaten down, prodded, invaded, demeaned, pushed around, infected with and waterboarded by propaganda aimed at breaking our will to challenge it. Is it a conspiracy? Is it okay? Is this really happening?
To echo Noam Chomsky, whose Manufacturing Consent (written with Edward S. Herman) is an essential text in the comprehension of contemporary media propaganda, consciousness raising is the first step in lifting oneself out of oppression. The biggest challenge to overcoming propaganda may be the failure of its targets to recognize themselves as such. The propaganda of the Pentagon, of profit-driven greenwashers, of the PR firms, is the brittle, easily overcome ammunition of a cowardly, paranoid, hate-driven authoritarian minority. Recognize it for what it is and the tide begins to turn.
I am a propagandist. Proudly. I am not fair. I am not balanced. I am not neutral. Because all this is really happening. Enlist.
*
[Written for The Ithaca Post to publicize an event sponsored by the Park School of Independent Media at Ithaca College that featured investigative writer John Stauber and civil rights advocate Lisa Graves speaking on PR and the Pentagon. Stauber and Graves are the founder and current director of the Center for Media and Democracy based in Madison, Wisconsin.]
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