Dear Edgar:
Happening what here is: I was thinking I would go to San Louis Obisbo,
Cal Poly, as I may have mentioned. This was because I hear many things
interesting about students engineering there doing. But now I have changed
my mind. Now I will apply to UCSD because they have a good (strange) music
program there, you know: experimental music. So perhaps
Computer engineering plus some auxiliary music
classes (a minor - maybe). Well this is what I think now. Still the same
goals: an album and
to design musical instruments.
“How is the album?”
“Oh how surprising you should ask!”
“Well,” he said, in a self-induced state of conversation,
“It is not done!”
“I see.”
“But it should have been, but it is not. I have worked
much on it and have about 22 or 23 minutes of finished, mixed tracks. Three
tracks. They are Mystic Journey
which is really very pretty and slow with sounds and things happening.
Then I have Ascension
which makes you tap your foot as it has a more consistent beat - it starts
with a low strange sound then bum bum bohm bohm boom boom boom boom as a chik type
of sound that goes left left right right middle middle middle middle very steadily and so
throughout the song, with variations of course but always with perfect
computer sequenced timing. On top of this a more loosely timed melody and
then an Asian or middle-eastern type of voice then wails and bends about
with the other points. (Whether one perceives it as mid-eastern or Japanese
depends on one’s nationality. Japanese people say it sounds middle-eastern
and the other way about for the opposite situation.) Probably you would see
it as more middle-eastern, but that is not to say that I feel you are
Japanese!”
“No- of course not.”
“Any way I believe that you would perceive it as I do -
as whimsical and amusing, but with a high degree of composition. Intriguing
phrases appear from time to time, sweeping left to right or front to back
or up to down, a little left, thing quickly right and back. Eventually you
bounce as if off a trampoline when the music stops for a tiny short space
and then ten thousand glass violins appear, which are soon joined by a very
soft beautiful undercurrent and slowly play a sequence of contemplative
harmony which very gradually fades out over three minutes, making you feel
as if you are floating up higher higher into a blue blue sky Ascension.”
“Well it sounds wonderful - I can just hear it exactly.”
“Ah... yes. Well, you know what they say about reading
words written about music? It is that it is no different from a painting
about a smell or a photograph of sound or a sculpture about taste.”
“I see.”
“Yes, well now then,I can describe that one very nicely
and I am fully confident that you will hear it some day and it will not be
as I described it but your description might run as follows: ‘I was in a
market in Marrakesh when I suddenly found myself melting into a sort of
soup which then slowly rotated and it was blue.’ Now, my friends Tom Dick
and Harry, whom I just stopped on the street might say: ‘It didn’t make any
sense and there weren’t any words or singing. I furthermore believe that
you should keep the day job.’ ‘It was really weird but I liked it though I
can’t say why.’ ‘I really liked it a lot. Last time I was here your music
was two-dimensional but now it is three. It is a sort of quantum leap you
have taken.’
“Actually, that last remark was what Saeid said when he
heard Mystic Journey. Being from the middle east, he saw Ascension as
sounding Japanese. Anyway, I will not try to describe Mystic for you. The
next finished song is Seduction.
It is very very rhythmic very very strong
melodies that just grab you and won’t let go. It begins with a sort of wind
or surf or general noisy strangeness from which a motif arises which is
oddly and erratically modulated as it transforms itself into the theme
which is very nice and classical-like, but does not appear so in this
context. Suddenly these bell like very fast things appear on the left and
sweep to the middle where they shatter as a very nice contrapuntal
everysynth going through every possibly type of contortion whirlwind
sixteen-bar frenzy occurs with quantized filtersweeps and other effects
I’ve made up, never before heard by anyone. Also beginning at this point
and continuing throughout the work every single sequence has
it’s own pattern through with it moves in space,
unique from the other sounds - a pattern that develops variations as well.
Then the theme returns almost
controllable but just starts to groove too much. Weird extremely fast vocal
like dohickeys appear and bounce across the stereo field in a bubbly
manner. Gradually this slows down and a really neat variation of the theme
comes in- kind of Latin type of groovy syncopation and sooo funky yes. A
huge bigger than the planet earth bass warps in and out of the fourth
dimension somewhere around here as well. This development is interspersed
with sudden full stops as lovely strings and bells dance around your head
without the full yikeso! accompaniment. Anyway this brings you to about
three minutes and there are seven or so all together.
“New developments in
the field of composition include the location aspect of a sound becoming an
integral part of horizontal phrase development (By horizontal I mean along
time). It is interesting to discover that by keeping everything uniquely
moving in some sort of pattern, the amount of information you can
encode/transmit is much much greater. Things that before were
incomprehensible mush now become extremely complex music. Now not only is
there a melodic pattern, a harmonic pattern, a dynamic pattern (brightness
or volume or what have you), a tempo pattern, a rhythm pattern-but now I
have a location pattern, filtering patterns- pitch displacement patterns-
all sorts of weird and crazy things that we’d be better off if there were
names for but there aren’t so I have to make them up just to facilitate my
talking to myself and keeping notes. I don’t think that many people have
any more idea what I’m talking about than people do when Matthew chooses to
phrase his ideas in Messian or Karish or any of those other languages he
has invented sixty-thousand word dictionaries for as well as grammars
(books on grammer). Speaking of Matthew- his brother Justin spent some time
this summer at the studio (Transdimensional Multiphonic Studio Services,
inglomerated -what you knew as the room with the one synthesizer. Now there
are many many. It is where people leave their synthesizers when they are
not using them which makes me happy.) He first said “Music is my hobby. I’m
not fooling myself by thinking I could be a professional. Maybe I’ll be a
politician.” I just left him alone for the most part to record some of his
songs. One month later, after many recording sessions, he said, “I’ve
decided that I’m going to become a sessionist for the major artists.” A
strange anecdote! Justin writes mainly pop tunes stylistically. He has a
good talent for assembling timbres together for a pleasing, top ten like
effect. I prefer to assemble timbre so that people think “What is that?
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever heard! It sounds like two planets
colliding!” I’m not at the planets colliding level yet (As Jean-Michel
Jarre has long been.) but I am at the “Wow those bells are so weird and
neat the way than flush out your ears from the pressure change. I feel like
I’m falling off a cliff!”
Nevertheless, here the linear algebra is good, but the
teacher is poor. It turns out that this is n-dimensional math, which I’ve
been wondering where they were keeping. I knew there had to be classes
about this! Well, the teacher is J. W. who is really obnoxious- he
spends very little time teaching and a whole lot insulting the woman and
Hispanic guy in the class and bitching about the administration.
The other
classes are fine but I am really loaded! Never before have I not been able
to keep up with all of my classes even if I don’t goof off at all and spend
all my time studying. So- I do have a limited capability it seems. I can’t
do anything I want- not all at the same time but maybe a few at a time in
sequence. I don’t want to admit it’s possible. I’d like to say “Well, I
took 489 units of experimental math and abstract physics and Columbian
basketweaving and scubadiving 14 hours a week and then I dub in at the
clinic at weekends and take care of my nineteen kids,” but I can’t. I’m not
like those people I hear about on T.V., or see on those shows or read about
in the letters that say “Mr. Scott- wouldn’t you like to make $100,000 a
week without lifting a finger? Then you could do all those other things!”
But it’s all a fantasy.
In big big exciting stuff right now I’ve been toying with
the grand unificationed field theorem. I’ve actually come up with some
stuff!! It’s really fun. I keep feeling I’m on the edge of being able to
predict something new or unpredictable at any moment but not yet. I might
need to know more about what I’m talking about. My main focus has been in
trying to decipher the structure of the nucleus and how that might define
the four+ dimensional orbits of electrons which might then tell me quite a
bit. I can almost predict which isotopes of what will be radioactive, but
not quite. Also I’ve found out about this new weird mathematical object
found in hologrammes and which is the basic component of memory in animals
from Fletcher. Apparently this has been a development that just came up
within the past few months. Fletch’s dad works in artificial intelligence
research. You remember Fletch? The blond guy who makes graphics engines? So
I of course strongly suspect that this object is the basic shape of
subatomic particles and my research(?) has centered on how these ‘legos’
can fit together and to what extent they extend into the fourth and fifth
dimensions. Well at this point it all becomes a matter of knowing I’m on to
something but wondering where to go next. I can deal with simple
atoms but the bigger ones- I need to develop some theories in combinatorics
(is that the word for how things can fit together in different ways?) and
multidimensional rotations and other fruity wholesome stuff. Any ideas?
We’ll have to talk - I can’t even describe this stuff because once again I
don’t have names or words to describe it!
Well- there’s also the new instrument. I’ve decided to
call it [confidential name deleted]. It will basically be able to easily determine the position
and velocity of each of your fingers in open space by [confidential technical details deleted].
Any way, these and other things all get mapped through various definable algorithms to any sort of
aspect of musical expression you might feel like. Basically you have
something that takes a while to define, but once you do you have a
completely unique instrument. Probably definitions could be available on
cards or whatever for the average guy. You could easily have it work like a
sitar with moveable frets and dynamic tuning/scaling or you could set it up
where you wave your arms about theremin style and incredibly complex music
is produced in 456 part polyphony or to any level or ridiculousness. I’ll
send you the manual when it’s written. I have a sort of object I’m carving
for the shape of this and a program that kind of uses a regular keyboard to
simulate some aspects of this to see just what I’m getting into. Eventually
I think this instrument will be the next thing. It will unify all styles of
music from every culture. It will allow any one to play music. It is
completely rubbery or plastic (the concept): people can define it to be
anything they want. Eventually this will be using neural networks and AI
algorithms so that the newuser just waves their arms about and hints at
what they expect to happen from those movements and the instrument
configures itself to what it thinks the user might mean automatically,then
interactively. But that will wait on the technology to appear. In the
meantime I hope to have a vector space controllable instrument and be able
to play ragas or technopop or make it feel like playing an invisible skin
headed drum very easily. This I don’t see as being too hard. It’s all
pretty straight forward, I know how to do it, etc. I’ve just got to do it.
Well! Lot’s of ideas! But will I manage to finish any of this stuff in my
lifetime? Maybe not, in which case I’m hoping to get this all out of my
head in a concise easy to understand manner and on paper. This will also
help clarify what is done and what needs to be done next.
The Grand Unification is primarily for my intellectual
amusement - If I figure it out I get the Nobel prize in Physics and maybe
Chemistry too and we definitely (If it’s the way I think it is) we have
virtually nopower antigravity generators - hyperspace teleportation to
other places, universes, etc. (At which point I think we’ll really be in
conceptual trouble- if anyone can basically go to a perfectly real universe
that suits them, rather than solve their problems.) If this happens,
probably the end of this existence, this universe for all of us (Or maybe
just me-it’s a philosophical question) So it’s really a question of
reality. If I prove nothing is real or anything you want is real- then
maybe we’ve found out a little too much about the Universe!
The [confidential name deleted] is fun. I will create it. It’s because I want to
play it and see how much fun it is and also to see what would happen to
music in the world if I can produce this very cheaply (The only real
problem. How much will it cost? If it’s a million dollars to produce then
probably not too many people will have one.) Of course I will also want to
make it so easy to use that anyone can pick it up and compose a fantastic
piece of music by going with what feels right to them. This is difficult,
but well within the confines of technological possibilities. It is simply a
matter of designing the proper user interface- something that is a very
delicate art. I mean, how long and how many clever people does it take to
write a computer program that is very very easy to use but can do A LOT of
things while hardly thinking about it. Well, I’ve seen a few. So it’s a
delicate art- probably a lot of time in a state of mania and one clever
person who really wants to do it and knows just what easy to use really
means.
I got your letter! And the postcard! That letter got from
Moscow to me in three days!!! I could NOT believe it. The timing must have
just been just right at every stage in the process. Usually I get your
letters three weeks or so after they are dated. It sounds like you are
really having fun. It sounds very exciting to get behind the scenes and
know those things that very few people know about how things really may or
may not work. Good luck with all that. Sounds like you have lots of ideas
about what you want to do when you finish. I hope it all works out. Anyway
over here I am doing well as is [name of old flame deleted]. I do have a problem in studying
because I will read one paragraph or do 1/2 problem and then a fantastic
idea will occur to me, something that will take six hours just to define.
And when it happens, this conversation occurs:
"1+1=3. 1+1=3. What do they mean by that? Wait! I see how
the field alignments can rotate and appear perpendicular but still really
be parallel if you just do a 4-D rotation in 5-D! Yes! Wait! I don’t have
it now. I’ve got to draw a picture of this if I can . . . hmm.”
“Wait- you’re three weeks behind in this class. This is
your last chance to study before tomorrow’s test.”
“Ohhhh! Ohhhhh! But I’m going to lose it!”
“The test!”
“Okay we’ll look at this logically. Should I study for
test or should I try to redefine the basis (n.pun.int.) of contemporary
everything? Well- looks like abstract pontification wins everytime.”
P.S. None of these multi-D meanderings were inspired by
the L.A. class, in case it seems that way. These are theories I have had
for a long time but which I am just spending more time thinking about. The
L.A. class goes very slow and we are nowhere near where I need it to be to
be any help.
Some days I just feel like screaming. It’s because of how
far behind I am in Physics (class). Well, it’s very difficult because the
book is badly written. When I have time, I read the parallels in Feynman’s
Lectures which always lift me up by explaining that it’s all actually
extremely simple to understand. It is logically and intuitively explained
at once. He tells it as it really is because he invented x,y,z and it’s his
oldest friend rather than the ‘university physicists’ who never learned how
to write or present things in a logical manner and who many times can be
shown to not understand at all the point of what they are talking about but
it is usually buried in muck so deep it takes a day to realize how wrong
they are.
Of course much of my writing here makes no sense but this
is strictly for yours and mines amusement and it doesn’t have to be a work
of art or always even make sense. Of course I hope that if I need to I can
explain things as well as Feynman. I have also noticed that you have this
gift of being so clear it’s astonishing. You have made it a sort of art it
seems. I remember always being amazed by ways I would hear you explain
things to your tutees. It was really good! I always say wow! So keep up
that good work- or at least don’t jump into the academic pit of muddled
reasoning. I don’t think you could though. I believe that the ones who are
so muddy have always been- it’s how they fake their way along- but I have
heard that many universities really twist your arm to explain things in
their special “no-sense don’t really know what I’m talking about but I can
make it sound impressive, can’t I” language so popular among lawyers,
doctors, all the people that had to go through “the mill”.
Well I hope you get a kick out of reading these stream of
consciousness letters. I hope that some day I will take some time to
explain some of these things to you and it will be concise, logical, make
sense and possibly be right!
Not entirely in sync with this space,
X.J.S.
P.S.
The ‘Russian Joke’, just so you know—is funny because it
reminds me of the proverb: “The spirit is strong but the body
is weak.” This was put through a “Does it all super duper language
translation algorithm” on one of these fancy computers and came out “The
vodka is good, but the meat is spoiled.”
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