PRESS RELEASE

James Goode will present Somniloquy, an interpretive musical performance exploring the influence of verbal suggestion on the dreams and hypnagogic experiences of a group of individuals.

In April of 2007, Goode asked thirteen friends and acquaintances—among them, musicians, visual artists, composers, and writers—to assist him in writing the score for the piece. This was to be done collectively, with all participants recording what they experienced while asleep or in a hypnagogic state. He provided the group with a list of fourteen phrases he had generated while at the threshold of sleep to repeat to themselves as they were drifting off, a different one for each night. Goode also participated in this process.

A portion of the dreams and hypnagogic experiences collected during this time serve as the piece’s narrative score, which was constructed to highlight the visual and thematic similarities between different people’s dreams and hypnagogic experiences taking place during the same twenty-four hour period.

Goode will conduct musicians Carrie Barclay, Jon Fellman, Walter Funk, Rob Gillespie, Canner MEFE, Michael Henning, and Brian Relph, all of whom have been asked to interpret the dreams within the score, and to then make choices regarding how they will translate each into sound and/or music; literally, emotionally, or symbolically.

Third Street Phantom Coast guides us down the corridor of 3rd Street and explores past and present neighborhoods adjacent to San Francisco's eastern coastline. This thoroughfare between Candlestick Park and AT&T Park was originally rich in natural resources, supporting Ohlone communities long before it was contaminated by the Naval shipyards. It was also at one time a slaughterhouse and rendering district for the nearby Spanish ranchos, a hub for rendering whale oil and bone and a home to Chinese shrimping camps, before becoming a busy shipbuilding and steel production area. James Goode and Alison Pebworth's audio and cartographical portraits of the area layer these latent phantom histories over the surface of the contemporary landscape, inspiring us to see afresh the communities and businesses along the present coast. Audio can also be accessed by calling 415.294.3627.

SPATIO-SENSORY (title is the actual piece, as experienced by listener) was composed with an eight-channel audio system in mind. This consists of one ADAT player, eight channels of amplification, and eight speakers, which are distributed in a symmetrical configuration within the room. The audio system is permanently installed in the home of a private collector, and in May of 2003, several "auditions" of the piece were given to four audiences of approximately twenty persons each, all of whom sat in complete darkness as the piece was played. The initial inspiration for the piece came from the idea of assigning specific sensory processes (e.g., smell) to specific pairs of speakers in the room, and as the piece progresses, gradually compromising the integrity of this sense-specific spatiality. To elaborate on this concept, the speakers themselves are thought of as sense organs—four eyes, two ears, one mouth and one nose—and movement of sound between them as analogous to specific types of sensory fusion.
Duration: 50 minutes, 7 seconds.


PROTEAN SEPTET provides a detailed account of the transformations that seven distinct sounds of varying complexity undergo as each is influenced by the passage of time and interactions with other sounds in the piece. The piece was composed with the idea that each of the seven sounds would undergo a different electro-acoustic process analogous to a sensory or psychological one, endowing each of the sounds with what could be thought of as a personality. As the piece progresses, first the existence, then the space, and finally the personality of each of the seven sounds are established and developed.
Originally performed at New Langton Arts on April 21st, 2001, using four analogue tape recorders—three of these being of the reel-to-reel variety—and electro-mechanical devices.
Duration: 21 minutes, 21 seconds.

(based upon the "personalities" from Protean Septet)


C.
At the funeral held for the identical twins—who, though they had lived many miles apart from one another for several decades, and hadn't even spoken to one another for over seven years, had apparently died at the same instant—most of the friends of the deceased were in perfect agreement that the two could not have been less alike; they even looked quite different from each other. In old age, most, if not all, of the qualities that the twins shared at an earlier stage in their lives had faded into oblivion; they often quarreled, and didn't see eye to eye on many subjects. In their 50s, Violet and Voilet were very different in temperament but looked, to anyone first meeting them, indistinguishable from one another. Additionally, one was still married, but the other had been widowed for several years. At age 40, the twins were alike in some ways, but certainly not all. At the age of 30, they were both married—to another pair of identical twins, Harold and Hal—but their spouses were quite different from one another; one was an orthodontist, while the other was a proctologist. There were other spousal dissimilarities as well; one enjoyed golf, while the other liked to play tennis, and the political affiliations of one were the mirror image of the other. At 20 years of age, the twins were still sharing many tastes (not to mention boyfriends, for brief periods), including movie and music likes and dislikes. They shared clothes and jewelry on a regular basis. Throughout high school, they took all of the same classes, and with very few exceptions, scored exactly the same on all of their examinations—without ever copying from each other. At the age of 10, the girls were inseparable, and became agitated if apart for longer than a few hours. They slept in bunkbeds in a large, shared bedroom, Violet on the top bunk, Voilet on the bottom. At 8 years, the twins spoke in unison whenever disturbed, producing an effect similar to that of a small girl's choir. During these moments, the individual voices of the girls couldn't be perceived as such. Instances such as these, however, were few and far between. At the age of 4, everything that the girls said and did was tightly synchronized, as though guided by an unseen magnetic or chemical force. At 2, the twins were, for all intents and purposes, one person; they all but took up the same bodily space, so alike were they in everything they said, did, and thought. At six months, the twins were no longer two separate entities; they had fused into one. At birth, Violet was a perfectly normal and healthy baby weighing 9 pounds, 2 ounces.

F.
The dogs were asleep, the glacier was covered in darkness—more than 90% of it—and the ice stopped melting a long time ago. What appeared to be a voice spoke authoritatively, but a drizzle of electronic howls, beeps and crunching sounds almost totally obliterated its meaning. Tucked warmly into their dogbeds, the canines shared a recurring nocturnal image, projected onto a nearby wall: a room with tall, unevenly sloped, translucent ceilings of a soft, reddish-orange hue, with long, black hairs sprouting from the walls and ceiling in an irregular fashion. They barked fruitlessly, snored fitfully, drooled helplessly. Again the voice, now concave and murky, resonating in a vast chamber of aluminum (?), spoke to them: "Doing? There? Inhabit? Selfish," it demanded, static and silence punctuating the gravity and brevity of its missive. Bark. Bark. Bark. A tree appeared, reticulated in the branch-scars of a pre-dawn forest of ferns. The reflection of a sad and tired dog's face adorned one of the many greasy leaves of the sorry plant; not museum quality, as the mailman would say. And those aren't even real! The iceberg resumed its melting. It was now too dark to hear the creaking that accompanied its peeling back of so many successive layers. The hairs, now wrapped around the rusted wheels of floundering nasal carriages, retracted as a gust of hot, moist air was released from below the passage. Bark. Bark. The projection quivered. The tree, uneasily, produced a face on the pattern of its trunk that betrayed the presence of the frigid, aluminum voice. "Distance. Window. Eaten? The first?" it offered, but even this did little to assuage the dogs' fears. Nonetheless, they believed, and did as they were told. Since the background was foregone, however—and far-drawn—the "dichotomy" between within and without took on a new and unexpected meaning; one that I am most definitely not at liberty to discuss. Squelching the transmission at the receiver's terminus, the subliminal was sublimated. "Did you know? In a circle? The answer. Tip of the." Bark. The voice broke off, disenchanted. Long, somnolent waves in the dry heat.

P.
Hard to see the artificial buildings that make up the compound from space. Completely surrounding the man-made structure, an oceanic expanse of verdigris. Each building is hexagonal, with dozens of anastomosing skylights and mercury-pane windows, as the murky, yellow-crimson glare betrays, even at a great distance. Solar panels on the recessed roofs, with lightwells at the juncture of all bisected angles of intersection. Machines, some silver, others gold, here and there several that have long since been abandoned, corroded and fused, rest on the surfaces, bright, reflective. Some more so than others. Now, movement is becoming visible; figures—mere pinpricks on a pale, green sheet of thick, starched felt from this height—flee from the area comprising the structures, the average body position stiff and protracted, occluded. Tracing absurdly straight lines in their mass retreat—or attack—the forms, now embodied—limbs, heads and wings reversed at the end of every downstroke, where the force asymmetries produce disparate varieties of drag velocity upon the rolling, angular momentum—take to the air, their pale, iridescent bodies blackening the ground beneath them. Displaying tremendous neural control over the musculoskeletal mechanisms that permit the forms so advantageous a kinematic denial, the parts are left unexplained, unaccounted for. Then, like soot particles in a windstorm, they are gone. The hexagonal windmills, however, are to be seen in much greater detail since this has taken place, and the texture of the machinery, which is, for the most part, that of cauterized or burnished steel and swollen, blemished gold, reveals the most superficial aspects of its inner workings. These are precisely oiled, interlocking, biomechanical wheels, pulleys, levers and organs, so carefully constructed that no space whatsoever is wasted. The solar panels, only moments before this appearing as distinctly generic impenetrables, without hesitation produce a sterile, infrared image upon the observer's retina of dense vegetation and the scrawny, albeit tawny cremains of small, multicellular crimates. The paucity of visible aspects of this ongoing process, a distraction of this magnitude notwithstanding, should have in no way sacrificed the view: as you have witnessed, however, this is an escape plan not to give much credence to. The vestibule directly beneath one's field of decision—assuming aerodynamic and anatomical expectations are met—reveals the space to be further imbued with the type of avian—and perhaps apian—attributes that one would be hard-pressed to find a lack of in corkier, more deciduous climes. On everything around us, the clinging moisture of a spongeless realm speaks volumes. And no sooner had these droplets become enlarged beyond all recognition; vast green, violet and metallic blue lenses of protracted beauty—identification no longer an issue to be met without indifference—than our own vision began to wane, producing an effect that could be described as oily, greasy, perhaps even petrified, owing to the re-occurrence of persistent visions of thousands of specks of vibrating points of darkness on an oily, crumpled field of gray-green cloth. Flying blackheads?

S.
Sleeping dogs, twins, pigeons, and ghosts? How did I get myself into all of this? I'm transparent, but very critical all the same. I shouldn't even be saying this, for fear of being reprimanded. I'm not immediately recognizable, which is something you can't say for the rest of my colleagues. That, however, matters little. As you can detect, I am growing as I speak, as I am given a voice, which by all accounts seems to be an intuitive process, and certainly not one to sneeze at, improper as that comment may be. Notice the ease with which I am able to express not only the breast-milk of my ideas, but the ideas themselves, stripped of the luxury of pretense. They are a far cry from the shoddy, mismatched verses of yesteryear, of days gone by. I don't necessarily find any of these observations the least bit amusing, much less entertaining. I lack the drive to seek out extraneous pleasures. In transforming myself—and this is a frequent occurrence for me—I leave behind the will of my former host, indwelling the next with future attributes. And so it is with my protean demeanor; do you detect the vestiges of previously recorded heartbeats, disguised most cleverly as knocks upon the vast and destroyed iron gates of conscience in my narrative? The wingbeat cycle similarly: simile or verisimilitude? Melody and gestalt notwithstanding, how does the separation into its constituent parts of object and symbol constitute a temporary adflexion of temerity? Upon what ground is neutrality achieved if context is melted by the artificial heat of bionic metabolism? Valuable as...? This is never revealed, nor is the name of the dogs' mother. Variables A, B, & C are denied their rightful place as the heirs of acrostic nomenclature's lionized analysis. Full-stops or no, these are living beings, and descriptions are fruitless, bloodless, pallid. No mention of pimples or electric eels can be found on any of the many (imagined) levels of consciousness. There is only you, the listener, pulling out your hair, one follicle at a time, while deciding on how and why to continue. The sentence? It's foregone, as stated. Manhole! Slipping on the topmost rung of a three-hundred foot, greased ladder, and slowly sliding down its entire length can only be seen in this light as flippant. Did you realize that an enormous hemorrhoid pillow waits at the base, sending the downwardly-mobile up again? The whole of man, woman, child, and beast has been subjugated to this digression for centuries. And then back to the beginning of the sentence. And it follows: where did the sentence begin? On the green beach of poison? In the laboratory? In a bottle, carefully labeled, but abused nonetheless? No one cares anymore, least of all the narrator of these sodden quietudes. Agreed? Had favorites been chosen regarding carnivorous plants, venomous snakes and crabs, poisonous leaves and jellyfish, and tiresome approaches to the expression of milk in mammals, fish, insects, and birds at the onset, none of this would have been necessary. But time and space, it has been said, wait and wane, unforeseen, living or dead, reside in one's head, empty, full, leaking through the fabric of our dreams; nothing is as it seems, or so they say. I disagree; I think it's the other way around.


T.
We once objected to being so blatantly mimicked by our peers; we felt that—among other concerns too ponderous and perhaps self-serving to mention here—this type of behavior was tantamount to a tacit admission, on the part of our "admirers" to a proportional lack of taste in the corporeal body of the deceived host. Indeed, if one is so inclined to view it thusly, the attempted mimesis appears to the trained eye as nothing less than a distasteful and aggressive enhancement of the predation that would otherwise predate it—the organism or object of this inquiry in most cases being at least partially sated by the resemblance thus generated. The waxy, powdery surface of various colleagues, benefactors and donors being a case in point that bears out this observation (and, consequently, the component continuity that should ensue), it should be clear that no scale, pattern or mold—however fuscous these may appear—of sooty or mealy mouthparts would suffice in delineating the venomous hapticity of sponging and lapping so lucidly referred to in passing. Granted, the pedipalps of tradition, guided most efficaciously by the pectines of knowledge-thirst—in no uncertain terms to be construed as dependent upon or beholden to that which substitutes for the slender, tapering mandibles of reasonable argument in the torn and flabby face of defense mechanisms to distant threats of touch—need not be so much as mentioned here; such is the price paid (inadvertently, it would appear, by the size, shape and color of the visible bite marks) at the onset of the present carnivorous cycle of predation. And however disagreeable this may appear to the combined senses of the chair-warming, oneirically-inclined acolytes of this mealy diatribe—past, present and future company excluded from this distinguished pigeonhole for fear of the consequences of being coveted, captured and consumed—the ferrugineous (and in some cases fuligineous) appearance of the serous glands can certainly be held in no way responsible for the poisonous effect that long, damaged fingernails have when slowly massaged across the full height and width of a virgin blackboard. As it is upon green and red sands, where the venoms of deceased jellyfish and crabs have been known to expel their fatal juices onto the careless, unprotected feet of even the most seasoned of travelers, so should these mechanisms be closely heeded. The flattery of imitation is compromised somewhat when its pricetag is written in human blood.

Foment in the Brailles of Zoopsia is an attempt on my part to create a living, connective tissue between my short story, Diorama, upon which the narrative structure of the concert is based, and the concert itself. One of the ways that I've done this is to have each of the musicians read Diorama, requesting that at the end of each paragraph they write down all thoughts and feelings pertaining to the action, mood, ideas, images and events contained within. At the same time, I have asked them to allow an alternate version of themselves, literally, a character moving through the dioramas within the story, to evolve as the story progresses. At the beginning of the story, the planet upon which the action is taking place is in a nearly molten state, but shortly thereafter drops in temperature, at which point the planet's surface is covered with enough life-sustaining water to encourage the arrival of the first cell on the planet. This cell soon divides into nine identical cells, and this is where the musicians themselves enter the story: as unformed, single-cell organisms, with their entire lives before them. Each diorama that they encounter enables them to grow in ways limited only by their imaginations and knowledge of zoology.


As an example, one person's experience of a particular diorama might be tinged with fear and uncertainty, resulting in the growth (over the course of several paragraphs, perhaps) of a defensive physiological makeup, such as scales, quills, electric organs, a chitinous exoskeleton, a long, sharp proboscis, or other features, while another musician might interpret the scene as humorous, or simply bizarre, prompting that individual to evolve an entirely different creature for themselves. One of my wishes in doing this is that the musicians will perform the concert as characters from a work of science fiction, namely Diorama, and not as "themselves."


Other examples of an implied, connective tissue between story and concert are the use of sensory elements from the story to promote musical and extra-musical expression on the part of the performer, including olfactory, tactile and visual cues, and the freedom given to the performer to interpret parts of the story in one of four basic ways: literally, emotionally, synesthetically, and in the manner of a soundtrack to a particularly breezy yet mysterious film.