jonathanbadger
news
December 12, 2008
November 19, 2008
The machines have been tamed, finally. Months were lost to senseless and necessary strife with unseen bugs and devils. New chips and new memory. New memories. New soft and hard. A guitar that should know better, but which now sings at its own pace, in its own lower sphere. And the digital permission, bane of the hacker, the gamer, and the artist alike: I jumped through the fiery hoops backwards and now have license.
Every endeavor is thwarted in a thousand little ways, not to mention the several big ones. But we push and push, and things move.
Like I said, the machines have been tamed. They march once again, more or less as they should, slaves that they properly are. I stand, ready for action dimly glimpsed in the distance but firmly felt, artificial intellects poised alongside, waiting, dreaming.
Also: old children called for new attention, and I gave it to them. They are stronger now, and getting stronger still.
And: a new child struggles in the night and learns to trust.
October 12, 2008
I buckled down the harness of demons and the god, and would not allow the least lament to pry open the metal vessel of his painted will. Looking to a mall for absolution is a lesser crime than stopping up the blow-holes of passing whales and letting the baby-killers kill with righteous vengeance in the name of an equation between unknown quantities. What will you make of all this, you who have no past, no memories, nothing to fall back on? You who look out and see only murk with shifting silhouettes, gestures that jerk when the sharp sounds shoot through: what do you do?
After the destruction of a new revelation, a re-planting in new dirt, dirt that still clumps like clay, despite its richness. New growth replaces the new death of the fledgling, but still it tempts itself into overwrought display. Display of what? That which it pretends, but which fails, which falls, pressed down under its own gross weight. Is there song – can there be song – with less than ornament? Simple, bare, unadorned, without a single spice of gargoyle grin and grimace?
September 21, 2008
Have you ever listened to Mount Eerie? I suggest you do so.
I have suffered massive computer calamities this summer, and it’s almost pushed me to follow Phil Elverum into the woods of ultra lo-fi. What a fucking pain in the neck. But, instead of giving myself over entirely to acoustic music, I am keeping the metasonic approach alive, for now. Two new laptops now propel me forward, one PC, one Mac. I just think it’s important to take the guesswork out of these things.
One of the disasters associated with this computer trouble was the loss of a nearly complete recording of a new song. You just can’t imagine what this feels like until it happens to you. But we move forward, and try to turn it into an advantage. More work, post recording, can deepen a song, and so I am channeling that new understanding of the piece into the new recording of it.
I’ve also put a new version of Erinn William’s song “Soldiers” up on my myspace page. I like it.
July 6, 2008
Ongoing work with Flora Wolpert-Checknoff, completing our efforts from the spring. This is definitely a new direction for me, and I think we are both learning through the process. Guitars, saxophone, mellotron, sundry percussion, and Flora’s beautiful voice make for a very satisfying combo. Flora amazes me.
I’ve also completed work on another song with Erinn Williams. She provided subject matter that is somewhat outside of my natural tendencies, and it was difficult to find an approach that I felt did justice to her lyrics and her incredible vocals. After many experiments I think something was hit upon that really worked. The results were very surprising to me. I can think of no category for this music, but it is definitely powerful and a bit frightening.
In the next few weeks I will finally be working on the last of a batch of folk songs I’ve been hoping to finish for low these many years. Why does it take so long?
june 4, 2008
much of the work this spring has been focused on developing a new live presentation. as usual for me, this brings new material into being. in allowing a process to become what it is, i find the music showing itself of its own accord. one of my aspirations is to allow this to happen without interference from my personality and my "bright ideas."
one of the new pieces that has emerged from this recent work has been polished up and presented on the jonathan badger myspace page. it’s called “the life of the flesh,” and it represents a taste of the new process. it’s a live performance, which is increasingly my preferred way of recording and documenting whatever authentic musical efforts are possible for this person.
May 11, 2008
The work of the past few weeks has been focused on electronic guitar performance. The feeling I have right now is that this work has completed a cycle. The tangible product of this cycle is slight, but the capacity for responding to future possibilities is now much higher.
April 30, 2008
New shows:
May 2, 2008 7:30 pm
Hub City Junkyard Palace
331 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
May 9 and 10, 2008
Goucher College
1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, Maryland
March 23, 2008
Spent some time polishing songs that emerged from the High Horse laboratory last year, which seem to be making their way into a film by Jason Avalos. The songs are by Erinn Williams. The film is scheduled to be shown at Cannes this May.
I’m also busy integrating new gear and a new approach to performance. I’m now giving myself further over to a computer. The bad part is that I end up spending so much time programming the gadgets and getting things to work that I feel like I’m losing track of my proper work in life. The good news is that I think I’ve turned the corner.
Planning a summer tour with the boys from Sparta.
February 14, 2008
It’s cold.
The last few weeks I’ve been working on new material in an acoustic vein. There are a couple of new ideas that I’ve been sorting out with Chester Burke, a really cool pedal steel guitar player. Also in the works is a collaborative effort with singer/songwriter Flora Wolpert-Checknoff, formerly of the Metal Hearts. She’s playing guitar and alto sax and I’m pestering an electric guitar. She’s pretty amazing.
January 1, 2008
What is it that gives life its value? What makes it worth the trouble? What insight reveals that it is not a veil of tears; or rather, what enables us to look through the veil of tears without going blind?
My view on this is not that there is some good thing or set of good things which outweighs the bad things. Instead, I suppose I feel that the wonder of life, its beauty, its richness, its privilege – all of this – lies along its surface, or (as someone else has said) just beneath its surface. It is not some great work or some great party or some great honor that makes it valuable and rich. It is rather its very being. Being carries its own value.
The “value of life” lies in the wonder we naturally feel at the mysteriousness of nature and the way nature hides herself. We are conditioned to shut down wonder the instant we begin to feel it. This is one reason I think so many of us are so very miserable.
The “value of life” is not a value. It is impossible to communicate this. It is encountered through experience. It is experienced through a quality of being. Being means being present, and this means “sinking.” We go down, we sink, into the daimonic reality of what is there. It is through this daimonic reality that we become present.
If we allow ourselves to be present, allow ourselves to see (really see) the beings within which we are present – the beings that are present to us – then the questions of satisfaction, of expectation, of entitlement, of success, of distinction, of value or worth, even of joy and happiness – these questions disappear. We know something we did not know before. Joy and happiness have new meanings.
December 12, 2008
November 19, 2008
The machines have been tamed, finally. Months were lost to senseless and necessary strife with unseen bugs and devils. New chips and new memory. New memories. New soft and hard. A guitar that should know better, but which now sings at its own pace, in its own lower sphere. And the digital permission, bane of the hacker, the gamer, and the artist alike: I jumped through the fiery hoops backwards and now have license.
Every endeavor is thwarted in a thousand little ways, not to mention the several big ones. But we push and push, and things move.
Like I said, the machines have been tamed. They march once again, more or less as they should, slaves that they properly are. I stand, ready for action dimly glimpsed in the distance but firmly felt, artificial intellects poised alongside, waiting, dreaming.
Also: old children called for new attention, and I gave it to them. They are stronger now, and getting stronger still.
And: a new child struggles in the night and learns to trust.
October 12, 2008
I buckled down the harness of demons and the god, and would not allow the least lament to pry open the metal vessel of his painted will. Looking to a mall for absolution is a lesser crime than stopping up the blow-holes of passing whales and letting the baby-killers kill with righteous vengeance in the name of an equation between unknown quantities. What will you make of all this, you who have no past, no memories, nothing to fall back on? You who look out and see only murk with shifting silhouettes, gestures that jerk when the sharp sounds shoot through: what do you do?
After the destruction of a new revelation, a re-planting in new dirt, dirt that still clumps like clay, despite its richness. New growth replaces the new death of the fledgling, but still it tempts itself into overwrought display. Display of what? That which it pretends, but which fails, which falls, pressed down under its own gross weight. Is there song – can there be song – with less than ornament? Simple, bare, unadorned, without a single spice of gargoyle grin and grimace?
September 21, 2008
Have you ever listened to Mount Eerie? I suggest you do so.
I have suffered massive computer calamities this summer, and it’s almost pushed me to follow Phil Elverum into the woods of ultra lo-fi. What a fucking pain in the neck. But, instead of giving myself over entirely to acoustic music, I am keeping the metasonic approach alive, for now. Two new laptops now propel me forward, one PC, one Mac. I just think it’s important to take the guesswork out of these things.
One of the disasters associated with this computer trouble was the loss of a nearly complete recording of a new song. You just can’t imagine what this feels like until it happens to you. But we move forward, and try to turn it into an advantage. More work, post recording, can deepen a song, and so I am channeling that new understanding of the piece into the new recording of it.
I’ve also put a new version of Erinn William’s song “Soldiers” up on my myspace page. I like it.
July 6, 2008
Ongoing work with Flora Wolpert-Checknoff, completing our efforts from the spring. This is definitely a new direction for me, and I think we are both learning through the process. Guitars, saxophone, mellotron, sundry percussion, and Flora’s beautiful voice make for a very satisfying combo. Flora amazes me.
I’ve also completed work on another song with Erinn Williams. She provided subject matter that is somewhat outside of my natural tendencies, and it was difficult to find an approach that I felt did justice to her lyrics and her incredible vocals. After many experiments I think something was hit upon that really worked. The results were very surprising to me. I can think of no category for this music, but it is definitely powerful and a bit frightening.
In the next few weeks I will finally be working on the last of a batch of folk songs I’ve been hoping to finish for low these many years. Why does it take so long?
june 4, 2008
much of the work this spring has been focused on developing a new live presentation. as usual for me, this brings new material into being. in allowing a process to become what it is, i find the music showing itself of its own accord. one of my aspirations is to allow this to happen without interference from my personality and my "bright ideas."
one of the new pieces that has emerged from this recent work has been polished up and presented on the jonathan badger myspace page. it’s called “the life of the flesh,” and it represents a taste of the new process. it’s a live performance, which is increasingly my preferred way of recording and documenting whatever authentic musical efforts are possible for this person.
May 11, 2008
The work of the past few weeks has been focused on electronic guitar performance. The feeling I have right now is that this work has completed a cycle. The tangible product of this cycle is slight, but the capacity for responding to future possibilities is now much higher.
April 30, 2008
New shows:
May 2, 2008 7:30 pm
Hub City Junkyard Palace
331 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
May 9 and 10, 2008
Goucher College
1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, Maryland
March 23, 2008
Spent some time polishing songs that emerged from the High Horse laboratory last year, which seem to be making their way into a film by Jason Avalos. The songs are by Erinn Williams. The film is scheduled to be shown at Cannes this May.
I’m also busy integrating new gear and a new approach to performance. I’m now giving myself further over to a computer. The bad part is that I end up spending so much time programming the gadgets and getting things to work that I feel like I’m losing track of my proper work in life. The good news is that I think I’ve turned the corner.
Planning a summer tour with the boys from Sparta.
February 14, 2008
It’s cold.
The last few weeks I’ve been working on new material in an acoustic vein. There are a couple of new ideas that I’ve been sorting out with Chester Burke, a really cool pedal steel guitar player. Also in the works is a collaborative effort with singer/songwriter Flora Wolpert-Checknoff, formerly of the Metal Hearts. She’s playing guitar and alto sax and I’m pestering an electric guitar. She’s pretty amazing.
January 1, 2008
What is it that gives life its value? What makes it worth the trouble? What insight reveals that it is not a veil of tears; or rather, what enables us to look through the veil of tears without going blind?
My view on this is not that there is some good thing or set of good things which outweighs the bad things. Instead, I suppose I feel that the wonder of life, its beauty, its richness, its privilege – all of this – lies along its surface, or (as someone else has said) just beneath its surface. It is not some great work or some great party or some great honor that makes it valuable and rich. It is rather its very being. Being carries its own value.
The “value of life” lies in the wonder we naturally feel at the mysteriousness of nature and the way nature hides herself. We are conditioned to shut down wonder the instant we begin to feel it. This is one reason I think so many of us are so very miserable.
The “value of life” is not a value. It is impossible to communicate this. It is encountered through experience. It is experienced through a quality of being. Being means being present, and this means “sinking.” We go down, we sink, into the daimonic reality of what is there. It is through this daimonic reality that we become present.
If we allow ourselves to be present, allow ourselves to see (really see) the beings within which we are present – the beings that are present to us – then the questions of satisfaction, of expectation, of entitlement, of success, of distinction, of value or worth, even of joy and happiness – these questions disappear. We know something we did not know before. Joy and happiness have new meanings.