Dean Drummond – Congressional Record
Dean Drummond – 1949-2013.
This clip was recorded at the University of Washington in 2012.
John Cage and Merce Cunningham Interview
John Cage and Merce Cunningham discuss their practice in this 1981 Walker Art Center Interview
Finnegans Wake FAQ
In 1996, Charles Cave put together a Finnegans Wake FAQ. Since then, the expansion of the web has not only made much more research and textual work available, but also delivered a very broad array of films, readings, and art directly related to the Wake. As a result, I thought it made sense to dust off and update the original FAQ. The premise remains that Joyce meant the Wake to be read and enjoyed. Updates will be made in that spirit. The FAQ is available here.
Suggestions may be made using this form or by email to fwfaq@bendofbay.org
John Cage
This American Masters film was made near the end of John Cage’s life. Posted here on what would have been his 100th Birthday.
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Michael Chabon – What to Make of Finnegans Wake
Michael Chabon discusses his relationship with Joyce and opines on Finnegans Wake in this piece from the July 12, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books.
” The limits of language are not the stopping point, says the Wake; they are the point at which we must begin to tell the tale.”
- Michael Chabon
James Joyce and Copyright
The work of James Joyce is leaving copyright, an event much anticipated by scholars and those who believe the Joyce Estate’s interpretation of fair use and its support for creative endeavors is as enlightened as The Walt Disney Company’s. A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled or set dancing on the topic. You can read this blog post from The New Yorker as an illustration. For now, a word of caution is in order. No doubt the Estate will remain on the lookout for rogue readers, singers, actors, and artists. Watch out for knock offs of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Stick with the Random House or Gabler texts for Ulysses. A new edition of Finnegans Wake is also expected, followed no doubt by a dust-up over edits mirroring that of the Gabler / Kidd “scandal of Ulysses” episode in the late 1980s.
Speaking of Finnegans Wake, we have our own reasons to celebrate the expiration of copyright. We plan to relaunch of a more ambitious version of PROJECT: Finnegans Wake. If you wish to participate, go here. Also, many years ago, the idea of performing 26 Songs From Finnegans Wake never got off the ground as the Estate objected. If you wish to set up a performance, the score along with our first preparation is available here. Let us know your plans!
Occupy Ulysses!
On February 2, 2012, Frank Delaney will celebrate James Joyce’s birthday and the release of Ulysses from copyright. He will be reading in Madison Square Park, NYC. More details here. If you can’t make it, we also recommend his weekly podcast, where he presents a close reading from the text.
Steve Reich – A New Musical Language (1987)
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This broadcast includes extensive interviews with Steve Reich as well as performance clips. It covers the period through The Desert Music.
Memorize Poetry
Memorizing poetry gives you a feel for the language, exercises the brain, entertains when your iPod is dead, and carries on a tradition that predates writing. If you just memorize two lines a day you will have a good collection in a month or two.
Kyle Gann on John Cage’s 4’33″
Kyle Gann is a composer and musicologist who has written extensively on new music. In the following clip he discusses Cage’s 4’33″ on location where it was premiered. Kyle Gann’s short book, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33″ (Icons of America)
Kyle Gann on John Cage’s 4’33″ from cambiz a. khosravi on Vimeo.
Film Stock
Pamela kept going along, going along, then hit on something, tore or cut it out of her notebook, and put it on the wall. A few days later she came back to see if it stuck. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t, and other times it needed a word added here, a word added there, a word moved from one place to another. Sometimes this applied to phrases and sentences. Sometimes too this didn’t stick, and she found it on the floor. She left it where it where it fell, letting it lie to collect boot prints and protect the industrial loft’s floor. Over time a carpet formed, ever changing as the open window or draft from the shaft way let in the breeze to shuffle things around, boot prints and stains forming ever changing patterns. She liked it this way. She photographed it, photographed the floor, noting the time and date on the back of each Polaroid print. This she continued to do until the Polaroid Corporation stopped manufacturing film stock for her camera and her supply was exhausted and the cost of acquiring what little stock remained became prohibitive. At this point she collected the prints, arranged them chronologically, and installed them on the wall. She called the installation The Floor, sent out fliers, bought some beer, wine, and cheese, and invited people to come and see.
On the day of the opening she thought of collecting the deleterious from the floor, some of which had decayed and become soil or very much like it. She examined the floor carefully to see if anything was growing there but nothing was. So she left it as it was.
The opening was a success. Critics raved, took photographs, called her a genius, asked her all sorts of questions about its making and many lucrative commissions followed. “Come and do my house, come and do mine.” Two collectors offered to buy her apartment lock, stock, and barrel and install it, Cloisters style, in their own homes. She found this amusing, then depressing, because they did not quite get the point, had missed the point all together. They would be better off making their own. And she decided to tell them this, nicely, politely, sending them notes, each one personalized with something she remembered about them, thanking them for coming and for the praise and interest and describing in detail how they could make a piece like hers of their own.
The only problem, she said, was the camera and film. They would need to buy or manufacture their own.
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Patti Smith on “Kids Are People Too”
A rather rare interview and performance of “You Light Up My Life.” “Kids Are People Too” was a news and variety show that aired between 1978 and 1982.
