EYES:OPEN

Written in 2018 for fixed media (9 minutes)  

EYES: OPEN is a sort of collage written at the end of my master’s degree at BGSU and uses recordings of all the acoustic pieces I wrote while at BGSU as the only source material. Taking a step back, I wanted to reflect on another side of my creative impulse; the majority of my acoustic music is slow, contemplative, and involves a kaleidoscopic approach to material, but here, I wanted to explore the opposite. I wanted to be loud, and express the beauty that I find in the distorted, crumpled, and broken which so often escapes me in acoustic composition. Of course, I don’t think any sort of dynamic is better or worse than another, but taking my delicate music and throwing it on its head was a fantastic way to end my time in Ohio. In the end, I find that this piece is beautiful and delicate as well, it just has thorns.

This one made me pretty self-conscious for quite a while about how dedicated I was to a specific aesthetic: or, how questioning how dedicated I should be. Because this piece is superficially louder, a little bit gnarlier, and a little bit noisier, I would find myself extremely anxious about how this piece compared to other works in my catalog. Eventually, and after having a handful of lessons with electronic composers I really respect, I learned that I don't need to worry about that, and I realized that this is part of that larger body of work, and my voice is still in there because I’m the one that made it.

I hate to rehash other notes here, but I think it’s relevant to discuss this. As I said in my notes for for Dad’s White Pontiac: In general, I have a soft spot for tape music, but unfortunately, sometimes I think the writing is kind of on the wall with the genre. So much of this music is limited to academic spaces exclusively and I’m somewhat hard-pressed to say that the folks that go to these academic conferences particularly enjoy listening to this music. I don’t really know if I’ve ever been particularly good at making it, but I love the process, and I love the experience listening to this music in a real space or even on headphones in the dark.

Perhaps even more- I have an absolutely affinity for first-generation tape pieces from way back in the day. I love the ingenuity, the process, the crazy experiments that folks would do back then, and I don’t think that music gets enough love. I’ve made a few programs of this music, and put together a few programs of early tape music by women that absolutely blew my mind. So for me, I’d love to keep the genre alive, I think I just have aesthetic interests that don’t work so well for most of the scene.

Perhaps my perspective is too limited. I’m just one guy in the US- I know there are festivals and scenes that do some great things outside of the US. Maybe more focused curation is needed? Less focus on academics? More diversity for sure, but especially diversity of style and aesthetic… I don’t think I’ll solve this issue in a short essay for my cruddy website, but I think it’s something worth thinking about. What is the space for fixed media, and what can be done to make it better and more meaningful. Too often, these concerts can become a space for final projects from Music Technology II to be shown. That can be a great experience, and nobody should devalue that, but where else can these pieces go? Are we completely limited to gate-kept spaces of high-end gear? I don’t think so, and I’d like to find more ways around this myself!