out into the world …
Today was Thurs … on Tuesday I posted my request for stories. Starting almost immediately, I’ve been inundated with responses. Only about 9 responses on the blog as of now, but literally dozens coming to me by email. Now, of course, I need to digest them. And there are a number of things which look like they’ll take a while to actually take shape and get to me. All very interesting to me.
Also interesting is the process of figuring out what it all will mean in terms of the piece. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last couple of days trying to imagine the first segment of the piece, which I’ll need to have for concerts here and in China in October. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve had the task of writing for a computer alone. That part is almost more daunting than the task of making the piece make sense in terms of being about hearing loss, or about other sensory changes. Virtually all of my writing for computers over the last 7 years or so has been about the interaction between instruments or voices and computers. So I need to decide whether I’m continuing to work that way with myself as the performer, or if there’s a new direction for me to follow. Am I going back to playing samples from the keyboard, as I did in the 80s? Or recording and processing myself live playing percussion or speaking?
Also, as I’ve been writing more and more instrumental and vocal things, I’ve developed a very personal process of working out and exploring my musical materials … not sure how I’ll do that working with samples … and not at all sure I want to be working with synthetic sounds, or at least not totally with synth sounds.
And then there are all the story responses I’m getting. While I’m thinking of them mostly in terms of long term structure for the larger piece, maybe I need to start right in with one of the stories, using the words, or some paraphrase … ?
Short ear note: today, for the first time in a while, I forgot to put in the hearing aid. Because I was mostly in the studio, it didn’t make a lot of difference (since I turn it off when I make music, anyway). But when I went out in the street a few times to run some errands, I was shocked at the sound, or lack of sound. Where I normally have very loud distorted sound on my left side, particularly on city streets, I now had silence on the left. Chatted with people on the street, and had to turn my head to hear them with the right ear. On the one hand, it’s a void I can feel, physically. On the other hand, the noise I hear through the hearing aid is so harsh and loud, that it’s kind of peaceful to just hear left-eared silence.
moving on …
I’m back, after about 10 months. Even got a new picture, and expect to have more. Because things change. Many things have changed in 10 months. On the ear front, I’ve accepted that I’m likely to have to deal with hearing with one ear from here on out. I continue to hope for a miraculous change. But I don’t expect it. On the other hand, it’s not exactly true that I only hear with one ear now. That little purple crescent with the little clear bud on the end is my hearing aid. It gets sound into my left ear with enough amplification so that I can hear something.
Unfortunately, the ear itself is still fucked, so everything I hear there sounds like it’s being blasted through a big kazoo. It’s useful for hearing speech in an environment where people will be all around me, and for being aware that there is sound coming from the left (useful when I’m riding my bike in Manhattan traffic). But for any kind of musical listening, or focused quality listening to the environment, it’s just unbearable. Like the whole world is a blown speaker. So in those situations, I turn it off. When I first got the hearing aid, I was distressed at how painful, physically painful, it was to play the piano. Then I discovered that I could turn the hearing aid off, and the piano turns back into something more or less similar to what it was when I had two ears.
What else has happened in the 10 months since my last blog entry? My mother died. My 3rd grandchild, Damon, was born. The CD of The Economic Engine was released, got good reviews including in the NY Times Arts & Leisure Section. I’ve gotten progressively more used to performing with one ear. And I’ve finished up two more big pieces, Faith for piano and computer, and Extended Family for string quartet (and no computer). More about those another time … they’ll both be having a number of performances in the Fall.
The real reason I’m restarting the blog, though, has less to do with what has happened, and more to do with what’s coming up. And that’s work on another big project. This one’s called MONO, and I imagine it’s going to occupy me here for a while.
The most direct way it relates to the blog is that I’m using the blog as a place to collect stories from other people who have suffered some kind of loss or change in one of their five senses. The idea is to use material from these stories to create a narrative to hold together a series of pieces which examine how we perceive beauty and meaning even when we have “lost” some part of the way we perceive.
There’s a blog page set up for people to leave stories: if you’ve suffered some kind of sensory loss or change, please tell me about it here. There’s another page describing the MONO project. I’m about to send out a major email blast to try to get people to share their stories with me. We’ll see how it goes.
