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52:37 by ChristianLeBlanc

I have two favourite poets. One Canadian (actually, he lived a few blocks away from where I grew up), and one American. Alden Nowlan, and then Alden Nowlan's US counterpart (imho), Hayden Carruth (who, I just learned this morning, passed away almost a year ago at age 87. The write-up here serves as a good introduction to him). To be honest, I only have the one book of poetry by him, "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey" (whose title, I'm happy to say, I tried out one time while celebrating with some friends one morning), but it's one I really enjoy, and for the same reasons I enjoy Alden Nowlan's poems.

Carruth's poem "The Brook" is reproduced here in its entirety; just scroll a little bit down until you see it. In it, he's just describing the sounds of a brook and how he likes how unconnected it is from humanity's touch; the sounds it makes, its meaning (or lack thereof); you can just lose yourself in all of it. I always liked thinking of that poem in terms of experimental electronic music, which I guess fits if you start throwing buzz-words like 'organic' around. Here's pretty much most of the poem right here, from the book "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey":

"A music extraordinarily variable.
Each passage of water against its stone
sounding a different pitch and rhythm."

"...syllables
of unknown meaning, notes on an
unknown scale..."

"...Without art, the song was perfectly
artistic. The unmeaning music
and the unknowing listener were one
in the loneliness of those distant
late summer nights in Vermont.
Truly the music meant nothing,
no intimation, which was why
I liked it so much, my brook
murmuring all night in the darkness,
and I meant nothing, and I liked that too."



This week's song just happened all in one session, last night. I've been hanging out with too many creative (CREON) people (scroll down to RoB Patey) lately not to do a little experimenting of my own (experimenting, for me, means paths well-trodden by others...an apology that needs only be made for these styles of music, I think).

The wonkiness is from me playing with the sample and hold LFO on my Voyager, and the organ and other melodies are coming from the Triton. I don't usually play chords, but I got some high 7ths and low 5ths going on (...maybe? I think?).

And while this song is quite long in terms of this project, it's still much shorter than it could have been; I could probably just listen to, and tweak, that sample and hold bit for hours. I really liked the randomness of it, which is why I linked to that Hayden Carruth poem above.

As always, comments are welcomed and invited. Is this tune too self-indulgent? Too melodic? Too sloppy? Too unlistenable? Should I have tried going wonkier with it? Or getting jiggy? A beat of some kind? I'm open to anything, here. Let me know!