Through a process of listening and speaking, African Feedback documents an exchange between artist Alessandro Bosetti and residents of villages throughout West Africa. Playing music by various experimental and avant-garde composers to people met in villages, Bosetti records their responses, asking them what they are hearing, and how they relate to the music and sounds. Composing their responses, with field recordings made throughout his travels, African Feedback is a musical portrait of cultural translations, misunderstandings, different voices and languages. Including an audio CD and the transcriptions of the listening sessions, along with an introduction by the artist, African Feedback is a beautiful and beguiling work cutting across the ongoing questions of cultural difference.

Alessandro Bosetti was born in Milan, Italy in 1973. He is a composer and sound artist working on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication, producing text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcasts and published recordings. In his work he moves across the line between sound anthropology and composition, often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews build the basis for abstract compositions, along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies, trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations.

and the Dworak’s are off to Brussels for the weekend for Milena’s daughter Karla’s baptism.

in the midst of Frieder’s piles of books and papers to-be-dealt-with (meticulously organized, to be sure), is a copy of Mark’s new book on MIT Press, meta/data. a remix auto-biography of his last 15 years or so.

comparing/contrasting to my own traces is a strange flux of feelings. where practice is sampled (how, what, and into what form) and translated (re-mediated) into another form. it is only the form of the mediation that determines the relative fed-back social efficacy of the individual (or social sustainability of the individual’s praxis). the books points to, alludes to, hints at, expands upon, posits, and invents a praxis, part of which is the reflexive re-creation of a praxis. but does it engage in an authentic praxis that is not about pragmatism and social role-playing?

it is clear that it is the choice of propagation channels that ultimately determines how the Self is or is not rewarded by the larger social system. it is also clear that these choices will also have a profound affect on the human relationships that ensue.

how to select those forms? Mark’s book and documented practice seems optimized, pragmatic, and formal (that is, formed to optimally integrate into an existing social reward system). the question of form returns again and again. along with the embedded-ness within a social system that has strictly limited pathways for reward and punishment.

I understand the principle, but choose to engage in the praxis which supersedes the documentation of the praxis. although I continue to write, make images, sound and video works, and so on — none of which garner any attention whatsoever.

the presence of the personal network of a handful of deep supporters is the only plus to the path of the praxis. otherwise, might as well be living on the streets. or simply finished off with the whole thing.

interview passes smoothly, no need for the pre-tension of notes. great pressure to articulate in brief the complex topics of life-practices. the results will be known in a week already. fast and efficient compared to the debacle of the other recent US university interaction. it will be a tough choice if there is an affirmative. there is a deeply-felt distance from everything I know in the world, being here. settling into yet another life here. finding a place. Sydney is urban, though with a slick easiness of calm inner relaxation. huh? words can’t circumscribe it yet. at all. haven’t made any photographs yet either. a few audio samples, but nothing definitive. walking home after sunset, the skyline of downtown is silhouetted against a singularly sharp sky.

Life is impossible at high temperatures. That’s why I have reached the conclusion that anguished people, whose inner dynamism is so intense that it reaches paroxysm, and who cannot accept normal temperatures, are doomed to fall. The destruction of those who live unusual lives is an aspect of life’s demonism, but it is also an aspect of its insufficiency, which explains why life is the privilege of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life’s normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life. — E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

Chris mentioned that old-and-very-possibly ex-friend George Saunders just had a MacArthur Fellowship bestowed on hissef. well, dang, George, congrats! I had to chuckle when I went to his fan site and saw it had been hacked by a Turkish Armenian freedom fighter — complete with a waving flag and anthem. it’s back up now…

George’s latest short story collection, In Persuasion Nation gets qualified critical acclaim as is likely with a collection of stories. I haven’t read it yet. I’m waiting for a 600+ page novel to wield baseball-bat-to-torso, outlining in bruised flesh the practice, not of resistance to the contemporary cultural brutality, but of a thoughtlessly new way-of-going. potential’s there, but somehow mundaneity clogs the sweat pores. put a hold at the local library on Nation, review forthcoming.

Following his superb story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) and Pastoralia (1999), as well as last year’s novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Saunders reaffirms his sharp, surreal vision of contemporary, media-saturated life, but keeps most of the elements within his familiar bandwidth. In the sweetly acerbic “My Flamboyant Grandson,” a family trip through Times Square is overwhelmed by pop-up advertisements. In “Jon,” orphans get sold to a market research firm and become famous as “Tastemakers & Trendsetters” (complete with trading cards). “CommComm” concerns an air force PR flunky living with the restless souls of his parents while covering for a spiraling crisis at work. The more conventionally grounded stories are the most compelling: one lingers over a bad Christmas among Chicago working stiffs, another follows a pair of old Russian-Jewish women haunted by memories of persecution. Others collapse under the weight of too much wit (the title story especially), and a few are little more than exercises in patience (“93990,” “My Amendment”). But Saunders’ vital theme — the persistence of humanity in a vacuous, nefarious marketing culture of its own creation — comes through with subtlety and fresh turns. — Publishers Weekly

Look Homeward, Angel burns a swath through my horizontal days, speaking, drilling truth-of-being in an elemental and fearful way through reading eyes into soul. mmmmm. nice to adsorb this re-presentation that speaks so in dissonant harmony.

O God! O God! We have been in exile in another land and a stranger in our own. The mountains were our masters: they went home to our eye and our heart before we came to five. Whatever we can do or say must be forever hillbound. Our senses have been fed by our terrific land; our blood has learned to run to the imperial pulse of America which, leaving, we can never lose and never forget. We walked along a road in Cumberland, and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned — the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and that makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go. — Thomas Wolfe

finally got around to reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, an overview of the New Physics. it’s somewhat dated, but still carries a nice historical narrative with observations on the uncertainty of the whole thing that is being dealt with. watching a video (produced in Japan), on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. speaking with the Dalai Lama and others. all of whom were dying. phone call from Nick. catching up. possible travel plans to Missouri; also talked to Greg, possible travel to Seattle and BC or Moab. proposals off to NIFCA for a curators position. and waiting on the doctoral proposal. reading more than I have in the last years, on average. wider, and deeper. note-taking. resonating with stylistic text forms across academia, science, philosophy, technology, engineering, and esoterica. but unemployed at the same time. dog-sitting, using the riding-mower to cut some of the lawn, joined the YMCA since the college pool is closed now. getting used to a different regimen. lifting in the cybex room. sore today. getting my sunglasses replaced finally, ebay for a pair of artcraft round gold frames since they no longer make them. gotta call Kate at IBM to see about her open source connection. what else? weeding. and many emails to Europe for a fall tour. and the need to get back out to the desert on the moonless nights.

paint-by-number. reminds me of summers at Aunt Mary’s house, she loved doing paint-by-number kits. now she is an excellent painter, starting to free-style after retiring to Florida.

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A man without a name is nobody. A man’s name can become more important that his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless. — Edward Abbey

plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, after years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” seems dated, depressing, even dark. so much of the landscape that he passed through is evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the face of the land. the forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions dotting the land with Hummers in every five-car garage. although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale — meaning the easily visible — local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. but with any consideration of scientific data on atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, hydrologic systems are being irretrievably altered. what of the domination of a species which will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live shortly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to viral celebration in the host of hosts. definitely, catch it while you can. take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. and the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.

at any rate, this IS a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). but note the incredible coloration. the green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. the pinkish blush of the feldspars in the granite. there were four of them literally stuck to a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. this particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, s/he was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. the other three were literally glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. so, this one had to do. the beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

parallel to everything else, a close read of “Book of the Hopi” by Frank Waters, along with Truth of a Hopi prepares me for the return to Arizona. springtime and rioting wild flowers. need to get to some petroglyphs to read some located media. with a sonic environment generated from nasa tv, Alan Watts, and raudio @ park.nl, along with helicopters flying over.

reading “Basin and Range” by John McFee again, and being out in some fine places just a mile from the house. Mint Wash, full of crystal clear water running through the granodioritic roots of a massive batholith.

what to be said. reading Science (main publication from the AAAS), and The Lucifer Principle, by Howard Bloom. thinking, but not writing.

finally broke down and bought a copy of Geert’s book and was pleased with his working of the New Media Education chapter. trying to ready new material for the Overgaden Sound Festival which I am co-curating with Björn, though I haven’t been too busy. at least with that, more, all the other things coming up in the immediate future — RAM6 in Vilnius, the residency in Akureyri, the Matchmaking Festival workshop in Trondheim, several video festivals to submit the new dvd to, logistics, spring schedules beginning to be made, taxes to be finished, some texts to write, and all the other stuff that is always hanging there, like this web space. as it creeps toward its ten-year anniversary.

reading IEEE Spectrum, NSPE, Science, and all that stuff. The old Encyclopedia Britannica, playing chess with Loki using the old Japanese ivory chess set. Finally he beats me. twice. I made him work for it, but he came through with not too much complaining. and ends up beating me all the time thereafter. monsoon season maybe did start up today. actually got wet, but it evaporated within an hour. the respite from sun was welcome, clouds are okay, too, nights warmer for the insulating effect, but highs are lowering. mountain biking today, and swimming, that’s good. necessary. gotta do a longer ride tomorrow.

the “P” on the side of the mountain south of town has been changed from all white(wash) to stripes of red, white, and blue. this area of Arizona has many veterans who started migrating to the area following World War 1, seeking a dry climate for health reasons. the Veterans Administration established a hospital in Prescott on the site of Fort Whipple, an early outpost for US military control of the native American ‘situation’ in the region. the Yavapai Indian Reservation abuts the Fort, and extends in a rhombohedral shape that sticks into the middle of the east side of town. between that and the “World’s Oldest Rodeo,” it’s cowboys and indians here.

no thing has changed. all conditions change. tired of language. stopping to consume from the archive. the database that, if I did not have, in its massively material form, it would free me to live in the moment. digitizing is no answer because that process does not remove the weight of that past. only complete transformation (by fire) would accomplish that. burnt offering to the present, to presence. if a practice was subsequently developed.

actually approaching the limb of the eighth year of this journal. meanwhile reading, or rather adsorbing, David Abram’s book “The Spell of the Sensuous,” (recommended by a mutual friend, Eric Fisher) which confirms obliquely several crucial practices that I had not yet been able to firmly frame in my worldview. pleasing and stimulating. but reasons for characterizing drift into stretches where only poetics are meaningless for navigation of the now. discrete, concrete, miscreant. mechanical words, stripped of any life leave traces that mar what is left behind the wave of hand, brush of hair, shadow of hand on the back of the head. what is the be-ing-ness of Light?

flying times. didgeridoo player at Whole Foods, in the aromatherapy aisle. reminds me of the pseudo-bluegrass band playing at the Pharmacy in the Newton, New Jersey ShopRite. something about Nero and Rome burning. here in Boulder, however, it’s different. food samples being offered everywhere, so people come to the store to get a meal. word gets around. even Boulder can’t insulate itself by the cloak of liberal caring diffidence. society out of touch. schisms, chasms opening wide. John Brunner’s book The Sheep Look Up crosses my path again after 25 years. and it is more accurate, with the exception of missing the cyber-developments (like the “Neuromancer” caught), in its prognostications of a world ruled and consequently destroyed by technocrats and technological implementations in the service of consumers. so it goes. a travelers notes might well continue here in this immobile condition. as the social matrix around is foreign, and re-mark-able. and in the complex sliding process of multi-phased decay and degeneration. I had forgotten that much of the action in Brunner’s book takes place in Colorado, for whatever reasons. ending with Denver under martial law, and the dominoes had started toppling.

contact with Campbell! at least 15 years later, friendships are strong measures of sympathetic energies. great to meet the whole family. Jake, Lily, and Helen. on a short stop in their epic voyage from more than a thousand miles south of the border back to Vancouver and Hornby Island in British Colombia where they have laboriously constructed a true home over the last years. Lily leaves me with a beautiful and generous gift she made in Mexico — a little painting of angels.

and in between reflections on this, I began reading Paolo Friere again (found it in my text-collection here at the folks’ house). Loki and MB leave tomorrow for NYC and then Iceland, I will follow in a week or so, Nancy and Casey come south from SF on Friday, and I have to work on the RV that Jim and Janet loaned us as we had an unfortunate encounter with a deer on the way through the Mojave over the weekend.

the first full day in Amurika with Loki, here at Ellen, Gary, and Sarah’s house in central Pennsylvania. flying in yesterday, a delayed flight, a lost mind. and where am I? intensive thunderstorm hit on the drive north from the airport last night. Loki stays awake the whole drive, theorizing on poetic descriptions of thunder and Lightning. the Edda jumped out at me before we left the airport in Keflavík.