Molly Sheridan

If you’re up for a road trip, can I just point out how delicious this New Albion festival at Bard College looks? Makes me want to camp out under a tree for the duration.

For those whose complexions and gas budgets make attending summer concerts in the middle of the forest prohibitive, the Internet sneaks you in through a backstage entrance without requiring that you exit your living room. Hot tickets include the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. Hours of fresh Elliott Carter await.

Internet musical melodrama gets “1,000 hits per second“. 

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, stereotypes can be evil inhibitors of progress, but we all carry them around with us. In the spirit of intervention, I thought I’d throw a few things I’ve heard lately out into the road (and maybe under the bus).

• People of a certain age think louder music = better performance. This was actually pointed out to me a couple of days ago, and my mouth was half open to object, but then I promptly shut it. After all, I’m the sort of girl who goes to the symphony and wishes those 60 musicians were just so much louder. I think I appreciate subtlety, but I also love music cranked to 11. Did the amp stunt the eardrums of everyone born after 1975?

• Play it again, Mr. Carter. Whether it’s Top 40 radio or an iPod on a constant playlist loop, most ears love the repetition of songs. John Zorn tracks? Not so much, apparently. I had a recent letter from a Counterstream listener: “In the past 8 months, you’ve played the same Zorn track three times between 5 and 6 a.m. Please rotate your programming.” Well, then. When I love a song, I listen to it over and over again. However, I have never done this with a piece of “new music” unless I was reviewing a recording. Like working at the Dairy Queen and ingesting no ice cream, sometimes I think I avoid getting addicted because new music is my job. Secretly, I’ve often wondered if this makes me a fraud.

• Who’s afraid of the Internet? Writers, it seems. First, the freakin’ bloggers were going to take the pros out of the game. Now, the commenters criticize them to the point that they flee from the public persecution. The Internet is a dangerous playground. Not everyone always gets where you’re coming from and the whole scene can get pretty crass. We could all just be Minnesota nice, but is there something to be gained intellectually when you know your fellow readers/writers won’t hesitate to take you down a peg? Is that what a world that types 5 billion words every minute needs?

• The Long Tail might save us from obscurity, but it may hang us first. Chris Anderson gave us hope that even if we didn’t sell a million records up front, our Best of Beethoven albums might come out ahead over a period of many years. Well put that confetti back in the tube, kids. The dude may have had things all wrong.

Over on Flyover, John Stoehr has written a post that asks a question we often contemplate individually about a behavior we never seem to quite challenge collectively: In an age of avant-garde music–by his definition work designed to provoke–how polite should the audience be?

This choice quote from the post got ’em riled around the office today:

During the peak of the avant-garde – during the careers of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt – there was no concern about the audience. Audiences had always been there and would always be there, except when they weren’t anymore. It’s remarkable to imagine composers wondering why no one’s paying attention to them while at the same time their work’s value is measured by how much they can piss people off.

Rather a broad stroke to paint in terms of composerly motivation, I think, but it’s also a strangely popular theme this week. Over on the other side of the pond, there’s a little fistfight going on w/r/t some similar audience frustrations.

I don’t think it’s extremely challenging music that hurts so much as our silent taking of its punches when they clip our jaw. It’s the middle of July, and yet we passive-aggressively hack like consumptives as our sole expression of irritation. Are concert hall audiences too repressed to riot any more? Polite is waiting till it’s over so you don’t ruin the piece for anyone else. But I would feel a cathartic release and leveling of scales no matter what I was subjected to if, when so moved, I felt at liberty to holler a bit at the end. It would be exciting. Maybe the woman next to me loved it. I would know what she thought; she would know what I thought. In an ideal world, maybe we could have drinks and debate it out afterward–and maybe she would be so excited by the music that she would pick up the check.

“Plus, you know, it’d be great ’cause you’re a girl.”

The comment was not atypical.

Sigh. I know where she was coming from. When the diversity call goes out in the new music field–when “just the usual dudes” just won’t do–we often find ourselves playing an awkward affirmative action game. Though honestly, sex, race, creed, income bracket: Know anyone who knows this world and is _______? If it’s not carrying around a Y chromosome and a light skin pigmentation, it often seems hard to find.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I enjoy being a girl. But it can get tiresome when in your head you’re just as smart and capable (if not eminently more so–we are talking about internal dialogue here) as your male counterparts, but you’re the only lily floating around in the pond. How did I get here? And where is everyone else?

Since I’ve been watching new music, the blogosphere–hell, just life in general–I’ve been depressed to note that even while riding this 116th wave of feminism we’re still crashing into breaker walls. Look at the list of bloggers on ArtsJournal. Notice anything missing? Not that I’m a saint here–my blogroll is quite light on the female touch as well. I swear I’m not discriminating, so what’s going on here? Someone else noted recently that women commenters are scarce in blogland as well. I can vouch for that. But why do we keep quiet? Too shy? Too busy? Too depressed?

The re-issue of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville got me thinking again about how far we’ve come, and yet how deceptively far away we remain. And how often it is that when women are most successful, it seems traceable to how well they fit into Guyville, not how well they play a game you can see is definably on their own terms. And it’s particularly dangerous to me because it’s so quiet a problem at this stage. What are women in the 21st century? Can they do anything they want? Or will the best of us just follow the blockbuster lead–play the game as it is already laid down, but this time in stilettos–while the rest sit home and eat yogurt?

Can we declare today Create Something Day? Or how about this week?

I bring it up because I’m feeling inspired, and David Morneau is my flashing beacon. Every day for the past year David has produced a new 60-second composition, and his personal creative marathon is over today! Congrats, David! 

Like the most irritating news reporter, I rode along side him during the home stretch and shouted out some questions from the air-conditioned pace car. Morneau must not have been even slightly winded, because he gave me some of the most thoughtful and inspired answers I’ve heard in a long while. Now I really want to make some art myself. And I think some serious deadline pressure is what it’s going to take to make it happen.

[cue theme music]

Get the Morneau creativity pep talk here and listen to the music here.

Asymmetrical haircuts and ironic clothing just not your thing? If the prostelizations coming out of the Church of How Indie Rock Will Save Concert Music^TM leave you cold, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere.

With faces as straight as Stephen Colbert, the gentlemen of HGP take a few cues from their hometown club scene, slide everything off the table, and throw down. Destined to be the #1 Hot Summer (New Music) Jam of 2008, come on, boyz, shake it up (but watch your language).

Since moving to Charm City, I’ve spent quite a few hours alone in a room with only my computer for company–and it was starting to drive me insane. I hadn’t realized how crazy until today when a friend came over to do her own work in the quiet of the next room. Companionate typing and coffee break conversation is all it took to realign my perspective on the world and improve my mood entirely.

Ever since NPAC, I’ve been unable to shake a comment that was made at my table during one of the group caucus session discussions: The best artists are inherently selfish people by design, only interested in their own goals, and so this whole desire to strategize some kind of collective action plan will never work.

Okay, yes, 15-year-old Molly found herself in love for the first time when Howard Roark laughed, but wasn’t this pronouncement of dedicated self-focus a bit harsh? Then Corey, my sparing partner in cultural thought, jumped in to refocus my view.

One of the things we value in an artist is his or her ability to show us how to look at things in different, unexpected ways. I think that quality is the opposite of selfish, but any time you attempt to widen someone’s perspective, you run the risk that they will feel threatened by that and react against it and call you selfish. I wonder if finessing the way you challenge accepted norms so that it doesn’t threaten people is one of the most important qualities an artist can possess.

In the quiet of our boxes, we fight fiercely to create and communicate, and it can make us unbelievably proud and scare the shit out of us all at the same time, and that’s all even before we show it to our best friend. But we are not isolated figures in that moment. We have begged, borrowed, and stolen our stories and our influences out of our enemies’ cars and our lovers’ mouths, and I think we are speaking as loud as we can, even if the sound is delayed for a little while. And claim what we will, if no one listens when it’s finally truly expressed, I think we feel we have failed, even if a person 50 years down the road hears us as clear as day. So let’s not make excuses and remove ourselves from the challenge of real life connective work. It’s difficult and heavy; and yes, many of us are cynical, which will make it even harder. But I don’t think even the most Dietrich of us seriously wants to be alone.

Just got word that a friend has gone off to fight wars again. He actually speaks the right languages and has an inspiring moral code, so I’m not passing judgment but holding on to a kind of prayer. He introduced me to some of my favorite daily reading; if you’re not following Pearls already, might I recommend a link? Pig is my favorite.