20 questions for today

Listening to: Jacob Kirkegaard - 4 Rooms  

1. Why am I seemingly drawn to so many different things?
2. Is it ok to have so many interests?
3. How do these interests feed each other?
4. Symbiosis? 
5. How do you identify distraction?
6. Can distraction be a strength?
7. Where should I focus?
8. How can you let go of envy when you see others succeeding at things perhaps just outside your practice? 
9. What is my practice? 
10. What defines my work?
11. Does your work need a definition?
12. How to define practice?
13. How to define performance?
14. What is the difference between practice and performance?
15. How to create a composition/performance that integrates/requires a practice?
16. Why create?
17. What to create?
18. What is your lineage?
19. Has everything been done?
20. Can you do everything?

LISTEN

Scatter and Scatter

Ok, this one is going to be scattered, a good combination of lack of sleep and thinking. Todays thoughts have been centered on structuralism. This is leading me to connections with my latest improvisation score, ROUNDS. I really don't have anything concrete to say about it, but I am feeling strong relations.  Also, Liz Sexe recently performed it as intended with transparencies and projection, leading me to make the connection all the way back to Plato's cave.  (Heavy sprinkles of Michel Foucault in there too!) Hmm, what to do with this, I am going to have to read a bunch (a tonne) more and report back to you.  

Cheers!

Listen.

Tim

Listening to: St. Germain - Rose Rouge

A thought on Why?

Most of my meditations and stray thoughts lately have been directed at coming to terms with why I create.  What drives my processes? Are there any unifying factors? I feel that figuring this out, even if it is an ever changing entity, will help bring a greater focus and intention to my work. I am not quite sure why I need this or how it will serve me, but we will keep on digging to find this out. One thing that seems to make sense right now is that I want people, including myself, to consider multiple perspectives/possibilites of our reality.  Through this, I hope to empower the individual. As they they come into contact with  perspectives/possibilites beyond their own, they might then consider/reconsider what their ideas are. I am not excluded from this by any means. I am extremely excited when my own perspectives are altered. So perhaps this might be a somewhat selfish endeavor, to impose these wishes on others.   This leads us to another potential desired outcome:  Fostering a greater sense of empathy.  You know, that be a better person/make the world a better place stuff.  

LISTEN

Tim

Listening to: Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg - Je T'aime,...Moi Non Plus

Back in class

It feels so good to get back in the studio, creating sound environments in the Dance class setting.There is something about just firing up the Ableton dance class template and going for it. It is really great that I really don’t know where it is going to take me. Today it started with sine waves and field recordings, which all then came crashing together with some nice gated distortion. The one particular field recording of me walking in the leaves of a Northern Michigan forrest really lended it self to the destruction, you could almost not tell what was the sounds of leaves and what was the distortion! The template has taken me a couple of years to get it honed in to be an open enough starting point that I can really just get listening and creating.I do check back in with it, every six months or so, to re-evaluate, streamline and modify. There is a couple of things that are going to get changed now and I am extremely excited to spend this intensive time with it so I can keep getting more responsive and fluid with it.

Here is where we are now:

Listen.

Tim

Listening to: Myself walking in a forrest

Fight or Flight

After spending 24hrs in transit, the mind is a little cloudy. Sleeping on a plane is always interesting, but I tell you what, the only upside of having insomnia is that jet lag is not such a big deal. It just feels like another day of limited rest. I am excited to hear the sonic difference of Paris. The trains, cars, bells, and people, I can't wait to walk around with my camera and sound recorder. I am also excited to navigate the language barrier. How can we find ways to communicate with each other? How does it feel to be an outsider? How can I be friendly and respectful without being able to talk? How does it feel to be afraid to talk? How does this change our listening?

Listen.

Tim

Listening to: Taku Sugimoto - Bell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUeojq6DrE

A new process

So, as I sit here in SFO, having just finished a weekend of shows and about to embark on a grand journey (more on this later), it has became apparent that this would also be a great time to start a fresh writing practice.It is my intention to write at least a paragraph a day as a way to become more efficient with collecting my thoughts and putting them onto the “page”.Full disclosure: I’m also putting this out there so Y’all can join in the dialogue, keep me in check, and so I can also learn how to use my website a little better. So here is to learning, grand adventures and new processes!

Cheers and as always: LISTEN.

Tim

Listening to:Sofia Gubaidulina - String Quartet No. 1

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoZbFvHq3UU