HOWARD’S END
A Tribute to Mr. Zinn
“
The Emperor is back with a brand new disease so get down on your knees while I flow with ease. It’ll be real simple this time without too manifold of meaning or astounding being. I’m the dictator, your the dick taker. You bust sea monkeys, I bust sea men. I’m a philosopher king, philosoraptor, you others is full of sulfur yellow and smelly, I’m thinking ‘bout what I eat so you won’t go in my belly but I’ll still eat you alive and puke you back up ten times so it don’t matter if you got nine lives. Then I’ll make you go read Immanuel Kant like a manuel cunt, but I’ma stay right here smoking a blunt, so I can get stupid enough to relate to you Christians, Muslims, and Jews. I’m the new prophet so get ready to hear it and convert your heart the rest of your worship has been like throwing darts in the dark. I astral travel with spirits of the dead accelerating so fast I end up puking in bed. All while the rest are asleep I stay wide awake, my mental activity leaves a wake upon land and water, into minds for intellectual slaughter, yea my body looks good but my soul is hotter. Climb Diotima’s ladder and speak with the gods, or fuck with what’s Over man if you like the odds. Insane, hyperborean, no cocaine it’s triptamines up in my membrane. Yea I smoke DMT, nobody in the world gets higher than me. Well, maybe a little cocaine.
”
-The Emperor
Doc. 114-L. Mobile, AL (2:03) Scene 1: The anchor room of a local TV news station. Two newscasters sit at the desk with an array of papers before them. Newscaster 1, an overweight and jovial middle-aged black woman: Well just in time for St. Patrick's Day crowds are coming by the dozens to get an up-close view of what some say is a piece I-Irish (stutter) folklore. Newscaster 2, a middle-aged white man: Some people in the Crichton area of Mobile say a leprechaun (leans in, Newscaster 1 raises hands palm up, whispers "what") has taken up residence in their neighborhood. A leprechaun (Newscaster 1 laughs, smiles). NBC 15's Brian Johnson has more. Scene 2: A street at night. Parked cars on either side of the road, a bright, ashing light in the distance. People walking towards the light. Narrator: Curiosity leads to large crowds in Mobile's Crichton community, many of whom bring binoculars (close up of large black woman with binoculars), camcoders (young black man holding camcorder), even camera phones to take pictures (shot pans from crowd up to bejeweled hand holding cell phone in the air). Subject 1, a young black man in a sky-blue baseball cap worn sideways, adorned with gold teeth, earrings, and a crucix necklace: To me, it look like a leprechaun to me. All y'all gotta do is look up in the tree. Who else seen the leprechaun say yeah! (Subject 1 turns to crowd behind him, crowd triumphantly cheers yeah! Subject 1 smiles and shrugs). Narrator: Witnesses (shot of two women conversing) say the leprechaun only comes out at night (bright headlights). If you shine a light in its direction, it suddenly disappears. (An amateur sketch [g. 1] depicting a face reminiscent of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appears. The face has eyes but no nose, mouth, or ears, and is wearing a bowler hat with a buckle.) This amateur sketch resembles what many of you say the leprechaun looks like. (Cut to crowd scene) Others nd it hard to believe and have come up with their own theories (close-up of young female with hoop earrings and diamond rings taking pictures with disposable camera) and explanations for the image. Subject 2, a middle-aged black man with graying hair and beard wearing a slate gray polo: My theory is it's casting a shadow from the other limb (puts one index nger to the other, indicating counting). Scene 3: Daytime, neighborhood street. Subject 3, a middle-aged black woman in a car, most likely an American luxury sedan, wearing a textured sweater: Could be a crackhead that got hold to the wrong stuff. And it told him to get up in the tree and play a leprechaun. Subject 4, a middle-aged black man of large build, wearing sunglasses, camoage, and fatigue overalls, standing in front of a white house and a "Dead End" sign: We're gonna get down to the bottom of this. (A white sedan passes, Subject 4 addresses the car) Yea it's still on their guy, don't be afraid. (Subject raises his voice) Don't be afraid man. (In the background of the shot, an American ag can be seen, as well as two additional black men).
Narrator: This guy, helping to direct trafc says he's prepared for his encounter with the leprechaun. (Frontal shot of Subject 4 approaching camera, tossing an object gently up and town in his hands. A bush with pink owers in the background). He's suited up from head to toe. (Shot pans to Subject 4's midsection). Subject 4: This wards off smells right here (pointing to area on torso). This is a special leprechaun ute (shot pants to Subject 4's hand, holding ute). This has been passed down from thousands of years ago from my great-great grandfather who was Irish. And I just came to help out.
Scene 4: The tree where the leprechaun has been seen.
g. 1
Narrator: (Cut to tree trunk) Others just came to get lucky, in hopes a pot of gold may be buried under this tree (Cut to tree-top, zoom in on branches). Subject 5, a young black man in white tee-shirt and sunglasses, with short dreadlocks, facing away from the camera: I'm a run a backhoe and uproot under that tree. I wanna know where the gold at. I want the gold. Give me the gold. I want the gold. Narrator: This is Brian Johnson, NBC 15 News. Scene 5: Fade back into news room. Newscaster 1: People will do anything for a pot of gold (putting hand on desk, lowering head, Newscaster 2 chuckles).
Newscaster 2 (shufing papers): You know what I like, I like the amateur sketch of the leprechaun (turning to
Newscaster 1, who says "yeah, yeah"). It looked like somebody got a really good look at it and got that good drawing out there. Newscaster 1: Who did that, I wanna know who sketched that. Newscaster 2: I dunno, maybe Brian sketched it (Newscasters 1 and 2 laugh). Newscaster 1(gesturing a pen and paper with hands, laughing): Doodled it. End. //
Response to Feldman's Intersection 2 by David Kanaga A computer programmer and game designer who I can't recall once claimed that musical notation was the greatest invention of the last thousand years. More than electricity? More than the computer? universities? -- Let's remember, as I've barely done, that this computer programmer is interested in systems, and that musical notation is a system of thought. It is a blueprint for organizing sounds
--vibrations--in time. Computer programmers like systems of thought, and so do composers. Now, I said this computer programmer was also a game designer, and though I'm not so sure that he was, game designers like systems, too; and more importantly, game designers like (or should like) play, meaning free movement within those systems. Composers like play, too. Organizing vibrations--sounds--in time, this is the play of the composer. But we
don't think of playing music as composing--we think of playing music as being the duty of the instrumentalist. But does the instrumentalist
truly play? Free movement within the systems of rigid composition and instrument seems to be more restrictive than that within the system of musical notation itself. But some are open, in that they allow for a greater amount of freedom, of play, on the part of the performer, play within the composition, and play within the instrumental boundaries. Consider improvisation in jazz, which is open; or the different ways you can play a game, which is open; or the possible interactions everyone might have at a a party, which is open. Morton Feldman is an American composer who, in the 1950s and beyond, produced
pioneering work which re-imagined that greatest invention of the last thousand years, and he did this by opening the score for more freedom in play. The above gure is an excerpt from a piece of his for solo piano, Intersection 2 (1951). Key excerpts from the performance notes are as follows:
free to choose any dynamic and to make any rhythmic entrance on or within given situation. Sustained sounds once played must be held to the end of the notated duration..." So, the play here, the freedom, as expressed by Feldman, is in the dynamics, and in the timing. The number of notes to be played must be precise, which may or may not be a ridiculous constraint, as far as the intended effect of the piece is concerned. In the bottom gure, I have transcribed the rst fty beats of the piece, using yet another system of notation, which seeks to emphasize
"Each box is equal to MM.158 [158 boxes per minute]... Each system is notated vertically as
a more general density of the number of keys being pressed, as opposed to (what I would consider) an unnecessarily rigid precision. My transcription is also written on graph paper, with each horizontal box equal to MM.158. Vertically, each box represents two keys; meaning, if a event is 2.5 boxes tall, ve keys should be pressed. In addition to abstracting the number of keys being pressed, my transcription seems
regards pitch: high, middle, low. The numbers mean how many keys one plays... The player is
also to have had the unintended effect of abstracting the original score's precise
rhythmic structures. At twenty boxes tall, it's much more difcult to keep precise time in all three registers of mine than it is in Feldman's original, which uses only one box per. This, however, should be considered a aw only if my transcription is somehow intended to be an unequivocal improvement on the original, which it's not. Instead, it's response; a nonverbal criticism; a subjective improvement in some ways, perhaps, but an objective destruction in others. I look at Feldman's score as a kind of interface, and my transcription as a response to that interface, playing with its potential for expressivity, revealing what I believe to be its center or intended effect--revealing these things through systems, Feldman's own expressive language. This is what interests me: the composer who composes for the player--the play-er--and how we can evaluate the expressivity of the rigid structure whose primary goal should be to allow for uid expressivity. Or should that be the primary goal? How much control? // Across: 1: Mythical chocolate animal of the Highlands? 15: Double-life 16: HW helper for freshmen 17: Soft drink developed in 1905 18: Lacks cleanliness 20: Permitted 21: He is often chosen 22: Midwest Sprint Car Series, Abbr. 23: When repeated, a baby noise 24: Where most of us were before here, Abbr. 25: Rampaging ex-supermodel 31: My old RA, Christopher 33: 2007 indie-rock album recorded in a church 34: Interested noise 35: Lacedaemon 37: Whatz in between Boyz and Men, translated to real English? 38: 1994 agreement, Abbr. 40: “Back in ___” 41: Magical __ Mistoffelees 43: Prince, according to a Purple Rain song 44: Han Solo’s sandwich cookie friends? 49: Unit of measurement used for human arms 50: “___ the Dog” 51: Morsel left after a meal 52: Org. independent of Gov. 53: Country-wide Latin test, Abbr. 54: Overused 55: Antony 56: With X, male chromosomes 57: With “ey”, a yiddish exclamation 58: See 34 Down
by Kevin Klein 60: Measurement, Abbr. 61: Toyota type 62: Underground vertical shoots 63: Hall and Oates, Sonny and Cher, or Peaches and Herb 64: Spookie 65: Words that come at the beginning of titles, often 66: Hotel Down: 1: Pre-pressed compact discs, Abbr. 2: Finn and Hound 3: Source of 1 Across, on its head 4: Spiky shelled water Pokemon 5: North owing river 6: “Que ____ tiene?” 7: Spanish pronoun 8: “___ _ ___ off the top, Roger!” 9: Mt. made famous by Twin Peaks 10: University of Arkansas alternative to Whitman’s “Quack” system? 11: Backwards attention, Abbr. 12: Coordinates Itunes and Ipod, Abbr. 13: Jacob’s Bible brother
14: What Elin Nordgren smelled on November 25th, 2009 19: Canadian responses 23: Some have the gift of it 26: Barbie on her head? 27: DNA with more oxygen 28: With 35 Down, an icy Yeti? 29: Not the American Leage, Abbr. 30: Fish Called Wanda’s stutterer 31: Completely enjoyable 32: With 58 Across, Han Solo’s nougat friend? 33: A parent right after a child is born, maybe 34: Frequently 35: See 28 Down 36: Immobilize 39: “__ if!” 42: Clenches again 45: doof s’odiF? 46: Enrique Iglesias, upside down, to some 47: “Well, way back in __ Seven...” 48: Someone might knock yours off 55: Kiss sound 59: Electronic Benets Transfer, Abbr. 63: Lady __