Pauline Oliveros. Image courtesy of Daily Lobo
I’ve never thought of myself as musically inclined, and I lay fault at my poor mathematic skills. So it comes as a great surprise to me this sudden interest I have in sound. While I don’t see myself as musically inclined I do think that I’m a good observer and I have a slightly odd way of viewing the world. So maybe it’s not so odd after all to find myself composing soundscapes purely by sight and by emotion. Today, in fact, I’ve been in the studio most of the day composing, and a little while ago it occurred to me that I am editing the spaces in between the sound in the same way I arrange color and form on a canvas: by paying attention and inattention to symmetry. Is composition in music related to composition in painting? I have no teacher except for my own soul. I lay track, I listen, I arrange, I edit, I follow my heart and follow my ear. This is work of composing more fun and more challenging than I’d imagined.
Tomorrow, however, I am going to listen to a master: Pauline Oliveros, a composer and performer whose work over the past 40 years has influenced countless composers of experimental and electronic music like John Cage. Since Oliveros’s work has frequently been compared to ritual and spiritual performance, it will be interesting to see how her work impacts my own work, which also attempts to investigate the same themes.
