What do you think?
Rate this book
OPEN SPACE POST
A selection of artworks, poems, essays, fiction, & scores from 53 contributors from multiple countries. Many of the contributors are composers and/or musicians involved with the creation of contemporary music.
404 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2024
1 person want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 1, 2025
review of
Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited
OPEN SPACE: POST
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 26 - October 31, 2025
The full review will be available on my "Critic" website once I manage to make a new page for it: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP... .
They did it again. These amazing editors have culled together a broad-minded intellectual tour de force of such unique & inspired depth that I have to wonder: Is this being noticed?! The contributors to OPEN SPACE are sometimes, maybe even often, people whose work I don't encounter elsewhere. I'm fairly widely published &, yet, I rarely meet anyone who's ever read ANYTHING by me - let alone several things in several different sources - say something in OPEN SPACE + RAMPIKE + Experimental Musical Instruments. I'd like to think such readers exist, I know I'm one of them - so why do I not read other publications in wch Craig Pepples & Joshua Banks Mailman publish? Of the many things that cd be read, there are, obviously, many that I'm missing. As I'm fond of saying, I know an enormous amount.. but there's an infinite amount that I don't know. Thank the Holy Ceiling Light to OPEN SPACE for exposing me to much of what I might otherwise miss. Alas, I doubt that I have the energy to make this review as thorough as I'd like.
I'll start off w/ Stuart Saunders Smith. He was a music professor at UMBC, a university I grew up somewhat near. He published scores by Pauline Oliveros, wch I have. I met him, way back when, & told him about the tapes I publish(ed). He expressed an interest in buying them. He didn't. He was reputed to have a fantastic collection of bird calls. He has a poem here called "Regrets, Regards, Return". It ends w/:
"Of course,
the trick
is to die, in a good mood!—" - p 3
To the left of these words is 2 measures of G clef notation w/ rests in them. Smith died in 2024. I hope he died in a good mood.
Many of the contributors & editors of OPEN SPACE are old. It's reasonable to epxect to die sooner rather than later. I'm 72 & even tho I want to break Jeanne Calment's record & make it to 123 I don't really feel like I have the energy to make it much longer than 72. Who will write my memorial? I'm not sure I think anyone is qualified. Benjamin Boretz wrote one about Elaine Barkin, a primary mover of the OPEN SPACE scene & its predecessors who died recently. Boretz is certainly qualified to write about Barkin, a person he shared a deep connection w/ for decades. "After 74 years, the conversation is suddenly quiet." (p 4) Do we ever adjust to death? So many of us put so much energy & passion & inspiration into creating a body of work, into nurturing a like-minded community.. only to reach the anticipated but not necessarily welcome conclusion of seeing it start to decay. "The conversation had no bounds, and was never going to stop, and its reverberations will not subside..." (p 4) One can hope that one's contributions to life will outlive us - thusly giving at least our ideas a greater longevity than we, personally, will experience.
Dorota Czerner & her husband Russell Craig Richardson are the 2 editors I've gotten to know the best - wch isn't to say that I know them anywhere near enuf. Nonetheless, I feel an affection for them. Dorota's "in (on) touch", written on September 3, 2024, is a diary of a train journey. I picked the following excerpt in my review notes:
"What was the first element of those days? – I want to say anxiety, but upon reflection, there was Silence. And if there was one then immediately there must've been two; and the two was birdsong." - p 7
That was a PLUS of quarantine.
"Another way of seeing this:
Peacocks danced on the empty streets of Mumbai." - p 9
I saw a herd of deer on the disc golf field at the local park - much more freely out in the open than they ordinarily wd be, usually they stay protected by the trees. I was the only human there.
As a teenager I was accused by my Conservative Republican Christian mother of being an "idealist". That wasn't intended as a compliment. It was interesting to read Boretz's take:
"Artistic idealism isn't like political idealism because it doesn't imagine itself as a path to a destination. It explicitly eschews knowing where it's going, but fantasizes that its engagement will lead to states of consciousness precisely unable being imagined from any point of entry into the space of the work. Because it is essential to its nature that it doesn't know where it's going." - p 10
As my introductory paragraph perhaps implies, OPEN SPACE seems to've gathered its own cultural nexus. One of the editors, Tildy Bayar, addresses this.
"On Open Space Culture"
[..]
"My idea is that the culture of Open Space is unique: it appeals to two demongraphics located at opposite ends of a continuum: those who naturally gravitate to 'nontraditional' environments because they're not comfortable or are not gonna make it in traditional ones (I count myself among these!), and those who make it just fine in traditional settings but find those settings more or less stifling or uninspiring, and thus are looking elsewhere for something interesting. A space within which both of these demographics can meaningfully contribute has proved mutually beneficial." - p 13
"We want to create a hospitable space for texts and graphics which, in one way or another, might feel somewhat marginal—or too 'under construction'—for other, kindred publications. The people who populate our contributing/ editing/ reading/ listening community are composers (in whatever medium), performers, historians, ethnologists, theorists, critics, philosophers, scholars and seekers of any kind who feel drawn to participate with us in scouting expressive frontiers. We hope you'll want to join this exchange.
"Open Space website, homepage" - p 14
That's clear, isn't it? & I think it's spot-on.
"A thing is a technique of looking. It has rights. A cannibal grammar. Bored. A networked vending machine, ignorance remains as a form of hospitality. To (whatever).
"Chris Mann, and the question. Open Space Magazine, issue 2, page 153. 2000." - p 18
For me, that's considerably less clear.. but still interesting & thought provoking. How can a thing have "rights"? What or who is "Bored"? How can ignorance be a form of hospitality?
Tildy Bayar's piece has its last page begin w/ a quote from the essential J.K. Randall:
"Legend has it that the Fervid Mystic buttonholed.
The Forensic Musician.
Said TFM: The Ultimate is Unknowable.
Replied TFM: True.
Misunderstanding the grounds of this disagreement,
A Bourgeois Rationalist says: The Existence of God
has been Demonstrated.
To which TFM replies: Blasphemy.
And to which TFM relies: Bullshit.
And to which An Existentialist Philosopher adds: God is Dead.
J.K. RANDALL, What Is It about About?. Open Space Magzine, issue 5, page 273. 2003." - p 20
&, then, Scott Gleason, "Thinking through Some Relations":
"I guess the issue is my deep-seated ambivalence about the master-student relationship. My inability to move past that. My desire for it on the one hand (for everything to be revealed), but my profound distrust of leaders and followers, myself very much included. Where, that is, is there independence in this? ˆwant to know what I don't know, and I suppose on some level I assume that others know more or better than I do. But of course, if the whole point is for me to know, then why look to others? For guidance, camaraderie, mutual understanding, friendship, certainly, and certainty. I have my music and my experience of music and my thoughts about music independent of others' thoughts, experiences, and musics. I've worked hard to be comfortable with that knowledge. "Don't tell me who or what to believe." That's an anarchist position, too." - p 21
Indeed, the above-quoted is anarchist philosophizing in action. To my mind, the conundrum of recognizing & appreciating the accomplishments, knowledge, & wisdom of other people need not be one of teacher-in-hierarchy-above-student. If one shares interests & enthusiasm w/ another person, neither person will be the ultimate expert or always in the position of not knowing. People/friends can share what they know that the other person doesn't know. Acknowledging someone as an elder doesn't mean that one has to kiss their ass. If that seems to be what they want then, IMO, they're not friends, so why bother?!
Benjamin Boretz, a composer/theorist/educator/player who goes way back & who founded & edits OPEN SPACE, has made it to his 80s. May we both continue to be as active as Elliott Carter was - all the way to 103. I, personally, doubt that I'll make it that long but I'm sure I'll continue to be productive up to the bitter-sweet end. Ben is still productive in his 80s. Here's an excerpt from his "THE AWARENESS OF CHART" poem (this shd be centered):
the two recorders
in the Sonatina of Gottes Zeit
shimmering seconds
with/against each other
as one but
necessarily in two
but still,
here,
a pianist
alone
initiates the shimmering frisson" - p 23
Pages 26-29 feature what strikes me as Chinese (although written in Japanese) Concrete Poetry even tho, unable to read Japanese, I can't really confirm that.
"(The artwork on the previous pages is by Xingzhou Shen. They are four poems or wordscapes in Japanese, the artist's first attempts at composing in that language, and are entitled Neon, Crow, Fallen Leaves, and Translation). - p 30
Whether the semantic content is reinforced by the visual presentation, as I think it wd if this were Concrete Poetry, I find these poems to visually enrich this issue - once again demonstrating the editors' sensitivity.
Then there's Andrew Zhou's "Inventing Paul Zukofsky". I love Paul Zukosky's violin playing & his repertoire (- as I explain in my review of his father's famous poem "A" (see the unfortunately truncated review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99... ). He's yet-another person I'm sorry to've not met. As such, Zhou's article was of great interest to me:
"I have recently found refuge in bookstores, the only place in a city of strict lockdown ordinances where you can seek free asylum from the dulling comforts of home and the bone-piercing chill of the Pacific Northwest.1"
[..]
"1I began this essay in Seattle, WA, in January 2020, at a time when the city would allow no indoor spaces (restaurants, gyms, museums) to be open to the public for prolonged stay. The essay was completed in Central New York."
[Zhou's memory is faulty here since the QUARANTYRRANY didn't start until March, 2020 - see my bk written as "Amir-ul Kafirs" entitled: Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ]
[..]
"Since the end of 2019, I have been sorting through the legacy of the late American violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky, who passed away in 2017, in Hong Kong,where he spent his final years. The finding aid—"the inventory," as I now call it, with the requisite article—which comprises at least one hundred and thirteen numbered boxes for his personal scores alone, is a listing of items of potential historical importance. Some gems so far harvested" a response from Charles Seeger to PZ's request for the as-of-then-undiscovered violin sonata of Ruth Crawford, Steve Reich's Violin Phase, which PZ recorded, as well as a previously unpublished—I almost think of it as inexistent it has been so scrubbed from the histories—pre-1965 score from Mr. Reich whose provenance I still have yet to ascertain." - p 31
During the QUARANTYRANNY I've become distrustul of the NYT b/c they've so flagrantly lied in service of propaganda - referring, e.g., to a German rally that Robert F. Kennedy spoke to as a nazi one. A friend of mine who attended that & sent me photos from it told me it was more like a Hippie festival, the pictures backing this up. Let's not forget that the NYT attacked Martin Luther King Jr as a 'traitor' when he publicly criticized the US's assault on Vietnam in the 1960s.
"I think of Mark Liberman's apologia of PZ's charm and friendliness, in direct response to Margalit Fox's rather dour New York Times obituary of him, etched with acid and grump. I feel no need to defend a man I never met." - p 34
Defaming someone after their death is something propagandists can get away w/ w/o much likelihood of lawsuit reaction. I fully expect it to happen to me - or, even more, for me to be 'erased' from the internet - the USA's version of disappearing someone. Zhou feels "no need to defend a man [he] never met" but I do: the obvious genius of PZ's violin playing is what truly defines him as a human to me.
"Many writers on life face the hurdle of accessing an archive" [..] "I, by contrast, have a glut of materila from a man who relentlessly occupied himself with misinterpretations of his father's work and yet made no known plans to direct the future of his own. The anxiety of PZ's inventory is not just its material abundance but its neighborliness to and muted exchanges with his father's pseudo-diaristic poetry and prose." - p 39
When I reviewd Louis Zukofsky's ""A"" I was warned by my poet friend, Eddie Watkins, that Paul might take exception to my review - as he, reputedly, had so many times before. I was relieved when he didn't (that I know of) b/c I have high admiration for him & expressed this copiously in the review.
Zhou's essay is followed by Craig Pepples' "The Imaginary Library of Paul Zukofsky":
"(Yuji Takahashi called him "mad scientist" for the range of his imagination with its bias toward the impirical, and...)" - p 40
Here's how my review of ""A"" begins:
"I knew about Paul Zukofsky, Louis' son, before I ever encountered mention of Louis. Paul's a violinist, Paul's probably the 1st violinist I ever started thinking of as a 'great violinist' - probably largely b/c his repertoire was so appealing to me. The 1st records I ever got by him were the double-record set of Ives' "Sonatas for Violin & Piano" - wch I got in early 1975 when I was a mere 21 yr old. I'm listening to that now as I write this. Later that yr I got the excellent Mainstream label's "New Music for Violin and Piano" w/ works on it by George Crumb, Charles Wuorinen, Isang Yun, & John Cage. Both of these publications also feature the piano playing of Gilbert Kalish. Somewhere along the line I heard a record of Zukofsky playing solo violin works by Glass & Scelsi & ? [Reich]. Eventually I picked up the excellent box-set entitled "Music for a 20th Century Violinist" w/ works by Shapey, Riegger, Cage, Crumb, Mennin, Feldman, Sahl, Brant, Wolpe, Piston, Sessions, Babbitt, Berger, & Sollberger - again w/ Kalish. Paul was a man after my own 'heart' - someone largely dedicated to 20th century classical, mostly 'avant-garde'." - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99...
Pepples quotes from PZ's drafted notes re his scores & editions of score:
"marked copies of Feldman, Maceda, Wuorinen; the collection of Messiaen scores (keep even those not marked); Stockhausen, Berio, Cardew, the original Fluxus magazines. And also a permanent collection of books: the initial printing of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science (and Mathematica), Erhard Karkoschka's Notation in New Music, and books that I've learned from: Hindemith's book on ear training, and Nicholas Slonimsky, especially the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and the Lexicon of Musical Invective." - p 43
As a person who loves scores & books & new music the above is drool-material. In fact, I've made a movie using the Lexicon of Musical Invective that the reader may find entertaining:
427. "mmm056: Invecticon!"
- shot at the Who Unit? in Pittsburgh on June 21, 2015, at mm 56
- Featuring tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Ben Opie
- largely inspired by the Nicolas Slonimsky edited "Lexicon of Musical Invective" & its "Invecticon"
- 32:48
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/427.-mmm-...
Dorota Czerner, Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz, Tildy Bayar edited
OPEN SPACE: POST
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 26 - October 31, 2025
The full review will be available on my "Critic" website once I manage to make a new page for it: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP... .
They did it again. These amazing editors have culled together a broad-minded intellectual tour de force of such unique & inspired depth that I have to wonder: Is this being noticed?! The contributors to OPEN SPACE are sometimes, maybe even often, people whose work I don't encounter elsewhere. I'm fairly widely published &, yet, I rarely meet anyone who's ever read ANYTHING by me - let alone several things in several different sources - say something in OPEN SPACE + RAMPIKE + Experimental Musical Instruments. I'd like to think such readers exist, I know I'm one of them - so why do I not read other publications in wch Craig Pepples & Joshua Banks Mailman publish? Of the many things that cd be read, there are, obviously, many that I'm missing. As I'm fond of saying, I know an enormous amount.. but there's an infinite amount that I don't know. Thank the Holy Ceiling Light to OPEN SPACE for exposing me to much of what I might otherwise miss. Alas, I doubt that I have the energy to make this review as thorough as I'd like.
I'll start off w/ Stuart Saunders Smith. He was a music professor at UMBC, a university I grew up somewhat near. He published scores by Pauline Oliveros, wch I have. I met him, way back when, & told him about the tapes I publish(ed). He expressed an interest in buying them. He didn't. He was reputed to have a fantastic collection of bird calls. He has a poem here called "Regrets, Regards, Return". It ends w/:
"Of course,
the trick
is to die, in a good mood!—" - p 3
To the left of these words is 2 measures of G clef notation w/ rests in them. Smith died in 2024. I hope he died in a good mood.
Many of the contributors & editors of OPEN SPACE are old. It's reasonable to epxect to die sooner rather than later. I'm 72 & even tho I want to break Jeanne Calment's record & make it to 123 I don't really feel like I have the energy to make it much longer than 72. Who will write my memorial? I'm not sure I think anyone is qualified. Benjamin Boretz wrote one about Elaine Barkin, a primary mover of the OPEN SPACE scene & its predecessors who died recently. Boretz is certainly qualified to write about Barkin, a person he shared a deep connection w/ for decades. "After 74 years, the conversation is suddenly quiet." (p 4) Do we ever adjust to death? So many of us put so much energy & passion & inspiration into creating a body of work, into nurturing a like-minded community.. only to reach the anticipated but not necessarily welcome conclusion of seeing it start to decay. "The conversation had no bounds, and was never going to stop, and its reverberations will not subside..." (p 4) One can hope that one's contributions to life will outlive us - thusly giving at least our ideas a greater longevity than we, personally, will experience.
Dorota Czerner & her husband Russell Craig Richardson are the 2 editors I've gotten to know the best - wch isn't to say that I know them anywhere near enuf. Nonetheless, I feel an affection for them. Dorota's "in (on) touch", written on September 3, 2024, is a diary of a train journey. I picked the following excerpt in my review notes:
"What was the first element of those days? – I want to say anxiety, but upon reflection, there was Silence. And if there was one then immediately there must've been two; and the two was birdsong." - p 7
That was a PLUS of quarantine.
"Another way of seeing this:
Peacocks danced on the empty streets of Mumbai." - p 9
I saw a herd of deer on the disc golf field at the local park - much more freely out in the open than they ordinarily wd be, usually they stay protected by the trees. I was the only human there.
As a teenager I was accused by my Conservative Republican Christian mother of being an "idealist". That wasn't intended as a compliment. It was interesting to read Boretz's take:
"Artistic idealism isn't like political idealism because it doesn't imagine itself as a path to a destination. It explicitly eschews knowing where it's going, but fantasizes that its engagement will lead to states of consciousness precisely unable being imagined from any point of entry into the space of the work. Because it is essential to its nature that it doesn't know where it's going." - p 10
As my introductory paragraph perhaps implies, OPEN SPACE seems to've gathered its own cultural nexus. One of the editors, Tildy Bayar, addresses this.
"On Open Space Culture"
[..]
"My idea is that the culture of Open Space is unique: it appeals to two demongraphics located at opposite ends of a continuum: those who naturally gravitate to 'nontraditional' environments because they're not comfortable or are not gonna make it in traditional ones (I count myself among these!), and those who make it just fine in traditional settings but find those settings more or less stifling or uninspiring, and thus are looking elsewhere for something interesting. A space within which both of these demographics can meaningfully contribute has proved mutually beneficial." - p 13
"We want to create a hospitable space for texts and graphics which, in one way or another, might feel somewhat marginal—or too 'under construction'—for other, kindred publications. The people who populate our contributing/ editing/ reading/ listening community are composers (in whatever medium), performers, historians, ethnologists, theorists, critics, philosophers, scholars and seekers of any kind who feel drawn to participate with us in scouting expressive frontiers. We hope you'll want to join this exchange.
"Open Space website, homepage" - p 14
That's clear, isn't it? & I think it's spot-on.
"A thing is a technique of looking. It has rights. A cannibal grammar. Bored. A networked vending machine, ignorance remains as a form of hospitality. To (whatever).
"Chris Mann, and the question. Open Space Magazine, issue 2, page 153. 2000." - p 18
For me, that's considerably less clear.. but still interesting & thought provoking. How can a thing have "rights"? What or who is "Bored"? How can ignorance be a form of hospitality?
Tildy Bayar's piece has its last page begin w/ a quote from the essential J.K. Randall:
"Legend has it that the Fervid Mystic buttonholed.
The Forensic Musician.
Said TFM: The Ultimate is Unknowable.
Replied TFM: True.
Misunderstanding the grounds of this disagreement,
A Bourgeois Rationalist says: The Existence of God
has been Demonstrated.
To which TFM replies: Blasphemy.
And to which TFM relies: Bullshit.
And to which An Existentialist Philosopher adds: God is Dead.
J.K. RANDALL, What Is It about About?. Open Space Magzine, issue 5, page 273. 2003." - p 20
&, then, Scott Gleason, "Thinking through Some Relations":
"I guess the issue is my deep-seated ambivalence about the master-student relationship. My inability to move past that. My desire for it on the one hand (for everything to be revealed), but my profound distrust of leaders and followers, myself very much included. Where, that is, is there independence in this? ˆwant to know what I don't know, and I suppose on some level I assume that others know more or better than I do. But of course, if the whole point is for me to know, then why look to others? For guidance, camaraderie, mutual understanding, friendship, certainly, and certainty. I have my music and my experience of music and my thoughts about music independent of others' thoughts, experiences, and musics. I've worked hard to be comfortable with that knowledge. "Don't tell me who or what to believe." That's an anarchist position, too." - p 21
Indeed, the above-quoted is anarchist philosophizing in action. To my mind, the conundrum of recognizing & appreciating the accomplishments, knowledge, & wisdom of other people need not be one of teacher-in-hierarchy-above-student. If one shares interests & enthusiasm w/ another person, neither person will be the ultimate expert or always in the position of not knowing. People/friends can share what they know that the other person doesn't know. Acknowledging someone as an elder doesn't mean that one has to kiss their ass. If that seems to be what they want then, IMO, they're not friends, so why bother?!
Benjamin Boretz, a composer/theorist/educator/player who goes way back & who founded & edits OPEN SPACE, has made it to his 80s. May we both continue to be as active as Elliott Carter was - all the way to 103. I, personally, doubt that I'll make it that long but I'm sure I'll continue to be productive up to the bitter-sweet end. Ben is still productive in his 80s. Here's an excerpt from his "THE AWARENESS OF CHART" poem (this shd be centered):
the two recorders
in the Sonatina of Gottes Zeit
shimmering seconds
with/against each other
as one but
necessarily in two
but still,
here,
a pianist
alone
initiates the shimmering frisson" - p 23
Pages 26-29 feature what strikes me as Chinese (although written in Japanese) Concrete Poetry even tho, unable to read Japanese, I can't really confirm that.
"(The artwork on the previous pages is by Xingzhou Shen. They are four poems or wordscapes in Japanese, the artist's first attempts at composing in that language, and are entitled Neon, Crow, Fallen Leaves, and Translation). - p 30
Whether the semantic content is reinforced by the visual presentation, as I think it wd if this were Concrete Poetry, I find these poems to visually enrich this issue - once again demonstrating the editors' sensitivity.
Then there's Andrew Zhou's "Inventing Paul Zukofsky". I love Paul Zukosky's violin playing & his repertoire (- as I explain in my review of his father's famous poem "A" (see the unfortunately truncated review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99... ). He's yet-another person I'm sorry to've not met. As such, Zhou's article was of great interest to me:
"I have recently found refuge in bookstores, the only place in a city of strict lockdown ordinances where you can seek free asylum from the dulling comforts of home and the bone-piercing chill of the Pacific Northwest.1"
[..]
"1I began this essay in Seattle, WA, in January 2020, at a time when the city would allow no indoor spaces (restaurants, gyms, museums) to be open to the public for prolonged stay. The essay was completed in Central New York."
[Zhou's memory is faulty here since the QUARANTYRRANY didn't start until March, 2020 - see my bk written as "Amir-ul Kafirs" entitled: Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... ]
[..]
"Since the end of 2019, I have been sorting through the legacy of the late American violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky, who passed away in 2017, in Hong Kong,where he spent his final years. The finding aid—"the inventory," as I now call it, with the requisite article—which comprises at least one hundred and thirteen numbered boxes for his personal scores alone, is a listing of items of potential historical importance. Some gems so far harvested" a response from Charles Seeger to PZ's request for the as-of-then-undiscovered violin sonata of Ruth Crawford, Steve Reich's Violin Phase, which PZ recorded, as well as a previously unpublished—I almost think of it as inexistent it has been so scrubbed from the histories—pre-1965 score from Mr. Reich whose provenance I still have yet to ascertain." - p 31
During the QUARANTYRANNY I've become distrustul of the NYT b/c they've so flagrantly lied in service of propaganda - referring, e.g., to a German rally that Robert F. Kennedy spoke to as a nazi one. A friend of mine who attended that & sent me photos from it told me it was more like a Hippie festival, the pictures backing this up. Let's not forget that the NYT attacked Martin Luther King Jr as a 'traitor' when he publicly criticized the US's assault on Vietnam in the 1960s.
"I think of Mark Liberman's apologia of PZ's charm and friendliness, in direct response to Margalit Fox's rather dour New York Times obituary of him, etched with acid and grump. I feel no need to defend a man I never met." - p 34
Defaming someone after their death is something propagandists can get away w/ w/o much likelihood of lawsuit reaction. I fully expect it to happen to me - or, even more, for me to be 'erased' from the internet - the USA's version of disappearing someone. Zhou feels "no need to defend a man [he] never met" but I do: the obvious genius of PZ's violin playing is what truly defines him as a human to me.
"Many writers on life face the hurdle of accessing an archive" [..] "I, by contrast, have a glut of materila from a man who relentlessly occupied himself with misinterpretations of his father's work and yet made no known plans to direct the future of his own. The anxiety of PZ's inventory is not just its material abundance but its neighborliness to and muted exchanges with his father's pseudo-diaristic poetry and prose." - p 39
When I reviewd Louis Zukofsky's ""A"" I was warned by my poet friend, Eddie Watkins, that Paul might take exception to my review - as he, reputedly, had so many times before. I was relieved when he didn't (that I know of) b/c I have high admiration for him & expressed this copiously in the review.
Zhou's essay is followed by Craig Pepples' "The Imaginary Library of Paul Zukofsky":
"(Yuji Takahashi called him "mad scientist" for the range of his imagination with its bias toward the impirical, and...)" - p 40
Here's how my review of ""A"" begins:
"I knew about Paul Zukofsky, Louis' son, before I ever encountered mention of Louis. Paul's a violinist, Paul's probably the 1st violinist I ever started thinking of as a 'great violinist' - probably largely b/c his repertoire was so appealing to me. The 1st records I ever got by him were the double-record set of Ives' "Sonatas for Violin & Piano" - wch I got in early 1975 when I was a mere 21 yr old. I'm listening to that now as I write this. Later that yr I got the excellent Mainstream label's "New Music for Violin and Piano" w/ works on it by George Crumb, Charles Wuorinen, Isang Yun, & John Cage. Both of these publications also feature the piano playing of Gilbert Kalish. Somewhere along the line I heard a record of Zukofsky playing solo violin works by Glass & Scelsi & ? [Reich]. Eventually I picked up the excellent box-set entitled "Music for a 20th Century Violinist" w/ works by Shapey, Riegger, Cage, Crumb, Mennin, Feldman, Sahl, Brant, Wolpe, Piston, Sessions, Babbitt, Berger, & Sollberger - again w/ Kalish. Paul was a man after my own 'heart' - someone largely dedicated to 20th century classical, mostly 'avant-garde'." - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99...
Pepples quotes from PZ's drafted notes re his scores & editions of score:
"marked copies of Feldman, Maceda, Wuorinen; the collection of Messiaen scores (keep even those not marked); Stockhausen, Berio, Cardew, the original Fluxus magazines. And also a permanent collection of books: the initial printing of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science (and Mathematica), Erhard Karkoschka's Notation in New Music, and books that I've learned from: Hindemith's book on ear training, and Nicholas Slonimsky, especially the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and the Lexicon of Musical Invective." - p 43
As a person who loves scores & books & new music the above is drool-material. In fact, I've made a movie using the Lexicon of Musical Invective that the reader may find entertaining:
427. "mmm056: Invecticon!"
- shot at the Who Unit? in Pittsburgh on June 21, 2015, at mm 56
- Featuring tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Ben Opie
- largely inspired by the Nicolas Slonimsky edited "Lexicon of Musical Invective" & its "Invecticon"
- 32:48
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/427.-mmm-...
Displaying 1 of 1 review