Teddy:
Saint Elias appeared before me in a dream
“They have begun marching to the sea, enormous in their approach.”
The Grey-Eyed Goddess followed
explaining resonance and states of matter

Dave: Music, particularly instrumental music, exists in abstraction. It does not refer to
images. It is not figurative. It is expressive in the way that body language communicates
or the way that you may communicate intimately with a touch. It is an art of touch.
The relationship referenced here is worth mentioning. Music, being sound, is
vibration. It travels through the air from the performer or machine that produces it to the
receiver. It is received aurally as a sonic experience and felt as a physical experience. It is
an art form where the product is in physical contact with the receiver. Volume, meaning
actual decibels not dynamics, has an interesting relationship to this idea. It is most
obvious in both the extreme loud and the extreme soft. In the case of extremely loud
music the physical experience or the “touch” is very obvious. In the case of extremely
soft music or even silence, the absence of touch is very important and very powerful. As
a performer this is on my mind during every performance and the questions that it poses
are not yet answered within me. If something is played the same way with the same
dynamics but at two different decibel levels does it express the same thing? Does it touch
in the same way? I do not think that it does. In verbal communication there are times
where it is appropriate to whisper, times where it is appropriate to shout, and all of the in
between.
I would like to get back to the first statement I made, “music exists in
abstraction”. Music’s strength and its weakness is that it is beyond words. A picture
maybe worth a thousand words, a sound is not worth one but it still, for me, seems to get
at something, it still seems to touch. Language is a code used to ease the exchange of
information. Much of our inner dialogue utilizes language and images. Many words are
connected to objects and images that exist in the physical world. Music and sound live in
the world but they communicate strangely.

Teddy: Where do words like love, hate, time, and space fit in to this?

Dave: That is the fringe that we are dealing with.

Teddy: Is that Abstraction?

Dave: It is certainly one of the places that it lives.

Teddy: So language is often not abstract?

Dave: I understand your argument completely but at the moment I often feel that it is not.

Teddy: (slower) She gave graciously, mostly time, standing before a wide riverbed

Dave: Conceptual ideas may help to construct the piece, give it form and context. It may

if mentioned to the listener beforehand effect the listening experience, the feeling of the
touch, but the conceptual idea still lives outside of the piece. It is a footnote. The sonic/
aural experience still lives on its own.
At this moment there are a few things I should explain in more depth. My
thoughts on the conceptual in music are a result of who I am as a listener. I am far more
interested in the product than the process. The process for me as a listener is an after
thought. If I am interested in a piece or in some way attracted to it I will then look for any
conceptual material that pertains to it and/or what the process of writing the piece was.
For example, when I first heard James Tenney’s “August Harp” I enjoyed the piece’s
unadorned and very matter-of-fact character. It was not until later that I discovered that it
was simply Tenney writing out all the various pedal combinations on harp for a four-note
tetrachord. Some may have thought, “Does the process and conceptual idea exist outside
of a piece in cases where the process takes a very authoratitive role, such as
Cage’s ‘Music of Changes’”. Yes I still think the process and conceptual ideas exist
outside. When I hear a piece of music I take it in as a sonic experience, and most of the
time, not all, but most of the time it is nothing more than that. I realize that this may be
different for others and that this may be why I am often not interested in music which is
heavily process oriented.
Again, with any piece I am interested in the final product. What I am looking for,
as a listener, in the final product is emotional resonance. As a composer I am arranging
information in a certain order in the hopes of creating emotional resonance. This is
completely subjective.

Teddy: What about function? Certain types of music have a specific purpose and role
to perform. Dance music is meant for dancing, sacred music is meant for worship. You
made a statement about how you personally listen to music. Is this meant to pertain to all
music? If so, is it fair to listen to different types of music with the same ears knowing that
music functions in different ways and very specific ways?

Dave: I don’t know.

(space)

Teddy: Are you interested in sentiment?

Dave: I wouldn’t go that far. I am interested in narrative though.

Teddy: Telling a story?

Dave: Well, knowing that the piece is moving from the beginning to the end, or if it
doesn’t move forward I still want conscious effort put into the linear movement of the
piece.

Teddy: Do you have to enjoy it?

Dave: That is the best question you have asked yet. Yes, I do.

Teddy:

The wood floor’s changing brown hue is infinite in the grandmother of a house
Boards cut by men’s hands and laid parallel
As I do nightly in joining my body to geometry
your inconsistency is your beauty
as equally beautiful you were in previous forms

a woman, black hair and dark skin
Stood in the afternoon traffic
As the grey-eyed goddess blessed her
to make her awesome before my eyes
quickly we passed

When industry pushes product or raw material through filters
When the fisherman casts tightly woven nets
There is an object wanted which precedes this

I stand in a lake, water midway up my thighs
Childish net in hand
Singing to myself
“Bring me your gold and I will sleep soundly.”