Complete change of direction: Music Improvisation Company (the name alone stark fluorescent light) and the Braxton/Bailey duets. Unignorable. Subtle yet radical. The uncountable Arkestra concerts I attended and whatever other extremes of electronic, no wave or industrial music could never eradicate the dry, deconstructed existential bone that this music cut to. This was a guide the way the overturned urinal was. It made you move unflinchingly through the crowds of conformist confusion. Zen but not cagean more immediate without sighs or signs. It grabbed such ways feet contuse a metal. I also never thought it was necessary to like or dislike: offering a new kind of freedom, not freedom from but a freedom for some but maybe to. What? Process. I think he gave one of the best and worst performances I ever attended and yet there was a way you saw it. You master (performance) are abject. You abject (performance) have yet an essential trait. What they share makes them special, not the other way around. Meeting parallel ethos again in Derek’s dance partner Tanaka Min. Art was not neccsessary to make works. Be farmer. Only work is necessary. And perhaps the retrograde historical forces underpinning this “work ethic” are not necessary? This separates the kind of post-modernism of the seventies. One had to stance. Risk. It was not expected to permit market to rule conscience. Derek’s question: “What do you look at when you listen to a record, the speakers?” Two levels split: you don’t need records/you maybe should not look. On the other hand: love records to hell with. That. But reject what then records offer as model. You must break it. And when the Derek comes through the fingers the desire to break the fingers. Put the guitar down. Spend years in percussion and philosophy. Spin the records backward, slow them down, route speaker wire through voltage converter then to a light-bulb: silent crackly pulsations. There is material for music everywhere in everything. It was once possible to keep different. It is still possible to die trying.

whoa. i just found out about 20 minutes ago. the spooky thing is that i overdubbed some drumming on his solo guitar vol. 1 record the day of . . . yikes.

ww