Yo, how’re you doing?! ദ്ദി◝ ⩊ ◜)
I come to you today strengthless, stringy, with a feeble mind… You can’t tell if there are any bones or not, but I assure you they’re inside here somewhere.
What a month this was!! Just crashing and burning and failing and tripping, the whole package, all the way through. On one hand, I sadly don’t have a whole lot to say for this blogpost – on the other hand, I’ve managed to make it out of November alive, AND learned enough to never live a month like this ever again. On my foot, it says “ANDY”, and that’s just the damn way things are.
We have 31 days left in 2025. So far, I’ve managed to uphold my promise to update the website monthly – just one remains. You might not believe it, but there’s still a lot in store for this year. Thanks for sticking with us…
Steve Reich • listen to “Four Organs”
I go out running a few times a week. It’d be disingenuous to claim I do it for fitness reasons (in a way that implies I’m serious about my health) – I’ve clung onto the habit because it’s something that can bear the weight of being the single “productive” thing I’ve done during days where life, work, or some other mysterious force drags me away from the activities I’d rather be doing; thankfully for me, I like running a lot…!
The physical part of it is nice, for sure. I do pretty much the same thing every time, just winding myself up to a point where I can feel the rhythm of it. The same 3 thoughts float over to my head, in order:
- My breathing pattern syncs with my feet in the exact same rhythm and tempo of Kraftwerk’s Tour de France. I laugh a little bit thinking about the suggestive german panting;
- I start feeling discomfort around the 3km mark. I motivate myself to keep going, but the other part of my brain is thinking about how much better it’d be if I could just take off in flight right now;
- By the time I really start getting into the zone, and I’m not thinking and feeling nearly as much as I was just a couple odd minutes back, I start to hear clinking, clacking, feeling moirés under my eyelids and there’s just the strangest silence…
Passing this threshold, I begin listening to Steve Reich’s Drumming in my head.
Steve Reich’s music is very important to me. Falling in love with his compositions was such a steady, continuous process that it’d be impossible to claim any given point in time as a watershed moment for me; things were always changing, phasing… which reminds me of something.
I guess, generally, who isn’t influenced by him? Way before hearing even a single recording from the guy, I already knew all about the Flood I’s of the world, the kosmische musik’s and Beefheart singing “come out to show them”… as a matter of fact, the last 2/3rds of Cornelius’ career too.
What I admire most about Reich’s music is the force behind it. “Four Organs” is a personal favorite of mine. It’s amusing when you realize just how many people can’t stand the thing, dismissing it as just noise, a sound experiment, an indulgence in process… isn’t this how all music works? Even then, I like all those descriptors… I think I take them rather positively.
Obviously, the most significant little tidbit about “Four Organs” was its debut at the disastrous 1973 Carnegie Hall concert – It’s archived on The New York Times and you can read it here. It’s an interesting story.
My favorite part of the article is the description of the audience who “[…] reacted as though red‐hot needles were being inserted under fingernails”. I laugh because I understand how it could elicit a reaction like this… still, I love it so much!! The longer the song goes on, there is a force accumulated that’s so incomprehensibly big, so moving, that by the last chord, it feels as if it could stop the earth from spinning… Reich’s music is filled with these moments. Just like when you stop running and you can feel your soul launch forward with momentum; once it realizes what happened, it springs back to you. This is the music for it, and if it was food, hmm… it’d be a supertask cake.
It is not much different than what life sounds like, to me. I believe these songs are going on at all times, and when I press “play”, all I’m really doing is getting them into focus again. At the end, we temporarily part ways, though sooner or later… I’ll meet them again.
Give it a listen!
I was chatting with my co-worker this last Friday – everyone had gone home already, but we both had to finish some stuff. By the time we were done, there was so much traffic outside that leaving the office was pointless, therefore we decided to pass the time talking about games, life or whatever. He told me something that stuck with me: “You’re still young João, don’t sweat it. 22 is young as hell – well, you don’t look 22, you look beat”, he laughed, “but you’re young”.
It really made me think. I am beat… but I really am young, and hell, I might even be on the right track. I wish I could tell from where I’m standing right now, but the best I can do is just keep going at it.
I stalled up until this point to say this as I was still weighing the pros and cons of wimping out on my internal promises, but I figure I should let you know right now: The project I talked about on the last blogpost will come out on the next update.
Thank you endlessly. I hope this last month of the year provides you with what you need. There’s still a lot I want to do…
I’ll see you next month!
Signed, with love,
noo.dll__〆(￣ー￣ )
see ya!
