Re: Looping Laurie Anderson

[KB305@aol.com]

A highly personal thought re this thread:

Music involves both sides of the brain for me.  The right side, intuitive, 
emotional, involving my body... when I get into that side of myself, music 
comes and visits, ideas come easily... I have recordings of things, and 
tunes 
I've written, where I have no idea afterwards what happened, how I played 
what I did, why I chose that chord, etc.

The left side, intellectual, formal... I often use that side to clean up 
and 
organize the stuff I made from the right side.  This is often the side 
that 
deals with technology.  My 'heart' or 'soul' often has problems dealing 
with 
Insert modes, MIDI, milliseconds, etc., or even such basic things as 
intonation.

Not being female, I can't address why women do what they do, or not do, 
but I 
believe both sexes have both sides of the brain, and choose how they live 
in 
each.  (Of course, how they address this is what makes us the sexes we 
are...)  When I get too emotional, I can't easily think about all these 
knobs 
and crap... and I usually end up playing acoustically!

The real key to working with tools (i.e. technology) is to learn to 
address 
them from both hemispheres, or to balance myself so that I can address 
both 
of them inside myself at once.  (And most therapists don't have a clue on 
how 
to approach this, either...)

Think about it another way: Laurie is/was technologically far ahead of the 
curve.  But she does not embody many of the traits that our culture 
regards 
as feminine.  And she has done some gender-bending in her work as well (I 
am 
thinking first of the instances when she has harmonized her voice down to 
a 
masculine pitch...).

Here lies a problem we all keep answering in one way or another -- the one 
of 
using technology to reach a place where technology does not live- a place 
inside us as listeners.  This is the place music wants to go anyway...  
The 
most basic primordial original expression needs no EDP, that's for sure.  
At 
the other extreme, using all the technology we can can easily lead to 
overload, tabula-rasa-block (that sense of paralysis that comes from not 
being able to choose from too many possibilities), or the utterly soulless 
expression, which is rampant.  So how do we account for it?  Your mileage 
may 
vary...

I welcome everyone's thoughts on this...  even if you think me full of 
shite...



Kevin Brunkhorst  <A 
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Red Road the band  <A 
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edroad.iuma.com</A>