Upon my first attempt to actually listen to this in its five-hour entirety, I surprised myself by actually completing — and enjoying — the process. It put me in a state of both deep listening and deep thought. I thought about the nature of music, the nature of listening and hearing, and of the mind's ability to process sound and ideas in part and totality. I was at work, working a rather dull project at a legal office in New York City which usually left me in a near-dream state by itself. Not only did I find myself alert and quite awake, I felt energized and calm in a way I've rarely known.
Several weeks later, leaving an after-party for a friend's play in TriBeCa, someone pointed out a quirky flyer posted to the door of the apartment building next door. It read, “Dream House: A light and sound installation, Thursdays and Saturdays 2 - midnight. Ring bell for #3.” I knew Young lived in New York, and I knew that he kept an apartment and art space in lower Manhattan. But here it was. The Dream House.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked/demanded of the woman who pointed out the flyer. I continued without any amount of shame (and a healthy amount of alcohol) to regale her with long, rambling vocal essays of Young's brilliance. Well, Young's brilliance isn't for everybody, but a couple of us did attend the Dream House installation on the following Saturday afternoon.
In total, the title of the installation, with sound by Young and light by his wife Marian Zazeela, is "The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time When Centered above and below The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261 in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including 288 Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224 within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with The Addition of 119." More succinctly, it is described as “a periodic composite sound waveform environment created from sine wave components generated digitally in real time on a custom-designed Rayna interval synthesizer.” From what I can tell after experiencing it, that pretty much means that there are sine waves being produced at intervals based on prime numbers from four well-placed speakers at opposite corners of the room. It goes on forever, or at least 10 hours at a time, and it never really changes.
Article comments
1 - zingzing
HEY LOOK! first one since july or something. anybody even read this thing yet? sigh...
2 - Mark Saleski
will you relax! i have it printed out and will comment tonight. sheesh!!! ;-)
(cool topic, by the way)
3 - Pico
Sorry, I don't remember anyone who's been AWOL from here for six months or more.
Pretty damned fine article, stranger, but I'm surprised you didn't mention that La Monte played with Don Cherry and Billy Higgins while in high school.
4 - zingzing
yeah, and i didn't mention his blues work either, mostly because i've never heard it. he went to some very famous (for its music program) high school... but i can't be bothered to remember the name right now. i believe he started out on saxophone...
besides, there's enough jazz writing on this site without me going and pooping in the pool.
anyway, he released some blues work as well, or what he decides to call blues, back in the 80s. that's been impossible to track down so far. as for how much his blues and jazz work influenced his minimalism, i won't claim to know. some of his writings (and some samples i think) are up at ubu web, so maybe there might be a clue there.
as for the not writing thing... well... i took some time off to do other things. and other things sometimes take a while. plus blogcritics was rather unhappy with safari for a while.
5 - Jeannie Danna
So, you have only published 8 articles in how many years here? All of them music reviews and none in politics, then you come over to my thread and leave a nasty little insinuation about who? Me or Cindy? This is America and I was under the impression that I was a writer here the same as you. This is an inquiry.
6 - zingzing
the hell are you talking about? i didn't leave any nasty insinuation about anyone, unless it was justoneman... and as far as i know i haven't left any comments on any of your writings...
and what does the fact that i like to write about music rather than politics have to do with anything...
you've jumped a gun here, jeannie.
7 - zingzing
jeannie. ha. yeah. "the ugly girl in a game of spin the bottle?" that was for justoneman. i was saying his presence on the website, which i'm sure he reads (since he was commenting before the editors swooped in), is an eyesore. not you.
it's my fault for commenting on the one better left ignored and forgotten, aka jom. i just wanted to play.
see? no need to get worked up.