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| Bickleton's Market Street Cafe & Grocery |
"Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again."
Herman Melville, from "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale."
Texts
Recorded
April 19, 2025
It's Not Right But It's Okay - Whitney Houston [from My Love Is Your Love]
kalimba 2 + 2
shown to underlie the shifting funk
it says its piece
then dances it out
Psalm 133 (take 2) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center, May 17, 2005]
words strung through a thicket
Migrate (feat. T-Pain) - Mariah Carey [from E=MC2]
we'll sound like money
surrounding the body
dancing
Banned Rehearsal 839 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 24, 2013]
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| Bickleton, WA |
donning nervous armor
does not make less visible
or
nervousness/discomfort
less apparent
take copious amounts of time
for listening
sessions
in rooms
are a different experience
than their
recorded playback artifacts
social aspects
and aural aspects
microphones
are the ears of a mechanism
that isn't us
a mess of it
can best be mended
by stepping aside
to let it
go
Doorway - Black Dresses [from WasteIsolation]
clearly heard
well presented
Banned Telepath 100 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 10, 2023]
toy piano
rolls around
with a ping pong ball
in a can
we think about this can we are in
keep its can-ness
in our
thoughts
the diphthong
of a guiro's ratcheting
is in the shape of its
body
blatant ruralist vowels
on the tiny speaker
a social space
in which to listen collectively
and
individualistically
and openly
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| Bickleton's Market Street Cafe & Grocery |
Madrigals, Book IV: Anima dolorosa che vivendo - Claudio Monteverdi - Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini
wracked by unbidden sobs
half subdued
Herzlich lieb ich dich, O Herr, SWV 387 - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
choral voices/choral persons
stand in for
congregational
voices/congregational persons
we
are to identify
with
them
Ich dank dir schon durch deinen Sohn, BuxWV 195 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
the attitude of prayer
is a feat of imagination
enacted
the
public face
of one's own closet
and
as imagined
from
above
God's-eye-view
Premier Ordre (sol) - Les Nonetes: Les Blondes, Les Brunes - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
ornaments have mass
that must be accommodated
within the meter
Du sollt Gott deinen Herren, lieben, BWV 77 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Gächinger Kantorei, Helmut Rilling, Helen Donath, Arleen Auger, Julia Hamri, Carolyn Watkinson, Adalbert Kraus, Aldo Baldin, Wolfgang Schone, Phillippe Huttenstocher, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart
the world proclaims with one accord
the soul responds one by one
Sonata in C Major, Kk. 271 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
flirtatious
Symphony in G minor, K550(550) "Grosse g-moll" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood
troubles crowd in
we worry again
resolve to work harder
axis
to the one
axis
to the two
weight shifts
from above the toes
first movement
protects the second
from profane ears
three places
for one to be
sneaks into a fugueish texture
and must traverse the fugue
to get
out of these keys
Die Schöpfung, Der Vierte Tag - Franz Joseph Haydn - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir, Sylvia McNair, Donna Brown, Michael Schade, Gerald Finley, Rodney Gilfry
spectacle reenactment
from within
cyclics within cyclics
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| Bickleton's Market Street Cafe & Grocery |
Kinderszenen, Op. 15 - Robert Schumann - Alfred Cortot
a dot
can be a fermata
advanced agogics
irregularities welcome regularities among them
one size fits none
a key
can be a forming feel
fully dynamic
Symphony in E minor, Op. 95 - Antonín Dvořák - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Paavo Järvi
of course there's nothing uniquely new
about the new world
timp sounds great!
thuggish
familiarity
comes down
to listening ahead
hearing ahead of
the sound
what appealed to me
as a kid
its harmonic solidity
melodic
directness
fairy-tale dramatics
its ample spaces
all those
still appeal
but
as a depiction of the Americas
it is
altogether
too dreamy to be believable
and
as any kind of
prescription
for American Music
it turned out a bust
happy haven
for the suffering masses
of the old countries
an
ad
flyers
posted
on poles and walls
folk music Nationalist craze
of the late 19th Century
precursor
to the Primitivism
of the early Modernists
see
Le Sacre
fewer than 30 years after this
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| Bickleton, WA |
fling confetti
catch it falling
The Old Hen Cackles and The Rooster's Gonna Crow - Fiddlin' John Carson [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
robust intervals
you can still smell the cat in the gut
Old Dog Blue - Jim Jackson [from Anthology of American Folk Music]
Blue was mighty true
a good old dog
dug his grave
with a
silver spade
The Very Thought of You - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]
voice in the booth
piano
is the rest of the diner's clatter and
dance
rhythm section
are the seats
winds
are our
response
Sonata No. 2 for Piano (1938): Concord, Mass., Hawthorne (excerpt) - Charles Ives - Charles Ives [from Charles Ives Plays Charles Ives]
a few seconds of gauze
Sonatas and Interludes: Sonata IX - John Cage - Adam Tendler
toy orchestra
toy piano
prepared piano
prepared
orchestra
preparation:
a technical fix
to disguise ones pride
as
humility
preparations
chosen for their coloration
of the pitch resonance
color
as a pitch decays
it splits
into its self
and
our
immediate memory of itself
overlapping
All Too Soon - Duke Ellington [from Piano Reflections]
magic tune
float mote weight
mono invents its own space
Young and Foolish - Bill Evans [from Everybody Digs Bill Evans]
some parts of these harmonies
resolve this direction
some that
we make do
Repleti Sunt - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [April 16, 1963]
not a bad go at it
considering where and when this was
You're Telling Me Lies - ? and The Mysterians [from The Best of ? and The Mysterians]
gaslighting one o'one
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| Bickleton, WA |
aspirational idealism
in a prophylactic space
every story
goes around
at least once
be pretty
fade out
Where Pathways Meet - Sun Ra [from Languidity]
urban busy
crowd in
crowd out
lobby
elevator
hall
cubicle
crowd in
crowd out
task in
task out
Side 1 - Pink Floyd [from The Final Cut]
Thatcheritic I presume
all the ghosts live
all of them
something about the various voices
that alternate as vocal line
is
Bowie-ish
cinematic tone poem
Improvisation for Organ and Guitar, Part 3 - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [from Wake - Yu Feng - Improvisation]
cycles provisionally
find the resonance point
and dig in
wallow till you're warm
Neelan Shrestha, Nepal [from The World Sings Goodnight]
the sound of an unfamiliar language sung
Banned Rehearsal 500 (Part 2) - Isaac E, John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Holden K, Kia M, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 27, 1998]
anagrams
continue
to please
two hundred forty something
center field
on the first pitch
of the inning
what might it draw?
draw ma!
darn erasable hen
bann edrehear sal
slan derbeanh air
rehe
arsal end ban
please list them
please list ten
please listen
April 23, 2025
Tense Black Keys - Steve Kennedy [from State's Exhibit]
hip notion
ocean
hip gnotic
quiet tide
Zither Film 13 - Keith Eisenbrey [April 5, 2008]
shuffling the deck
into ever smaller cards
ever more finely sliced
thin
imagine
a fogbound harbor
foghorn stations
at four+ distinct
locations
around it
each foghorn station
with a full
carillon of horns
of diverse pitch expression
one could signal
station A
by the hearing of a horn
from stations B
etc.
and the rhythm
of the whole
would be determined
by the
physical distances
station to station
and the location
among
them
of the audient
a geodetic rhythm
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| Bickleton, WA |
industry produces cool gadgets
to be used
in the manufacture of
music
along industry approved lines
all parts fit
because
unfitting parts
can't be made
with industry gadgets
Banned Telepath 61 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
the vibe is hushed
puttering in the wee smalls
so as
not to
wake the sleepers
sotto voce kitchen rattles
agenda A
passes through agendi B C . . .
before picking up
where it had been
after so passing
within our experiential bubble
sounds affect each other's musical
meaning
sounds affecting the social meanings of sounds
events/moments of such social meaning
its meaning
to us
one can construct musics
of brutal obviousness
or of extreme
subtlety
bricks
or geometries
or village doings
or spiritual inquiry
Winter Into Spring - Ensemble Unnamable [from Fourth Floor]
a piano is luxuriating
in drifting dyads
and there is moving about
of a body
or several
might be dance
seems likely
Chinaman's Blues - Erskine Tate's Vendome Orhcestra [from That Devilin' Tune]
play the plainest things
with attitude
fancy it up on the sly
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| Bickleton, WA |
now I think there needs to be a mic
upon every surface
to be
amplified live
putting truth and untruth together
Shem was a sham
and a low
sham
ear land's split little pea
having buried a hatchet
dirty seventh among thieves
recital of the rigmarole
Doggin' Around - Count Basie [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
the band
is an act among themselves
orchestrational choreography
Don't Smoke In Bed - Peggy Lee [from Rendezvous with Peggy Lee]
noirissimo
black and white
and harsh contrasts
and angles of
shadow
The G---- - Louis Armstrong [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
words notwithstanding
that's some singing and trumpet playing there
Like Someone In Love - Blossom Dearie [from Give Him The Ooh-La-La]
gazing at stars
hearing guitars
she takes great care
to sing every bit of the song
fully
Skylark - Aretha Franklin [from Laughing On The Outside]
spotlighted track sequestration
swank
Raise Four - Thelonious Monk [form Underground]
unerring together
in diverse times
You Are The Sunshine of My Life - Morgana King [from New Beginnings]
from the social music
that wasn't rock and roll
Vegas style night
club act
stage spectacular
In Love - Prince [from For You]
it says its piece
then fades away
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| Bickleton's Market Street Cafe & Grocery |
approach fearfully
could get messy
so many ins out there
colliding carefully
full chordal nudity
the whole
neighborhood
is howling now
all circling their cots now
cyclic activity
some fang and growl
we part in peace
April 24, 2025
Forever Young - Bob Dylan and The Band [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's A Miscellaneous Miscellany]
big bright neon pointer
at the hook
can't miss it
Banned Rehearsal 346 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 7, 1993]
fill ears with synthetic sound
sustaining without effort
shrill
fill
J pounds back and forth (ritual)
once a sound gets involved with a figure
it loses its immediate
sense
uh oh
we made J cry
prevented from some dangerous or damaging
activity no doubt
standing on ukuleles
sounds like a siren
the larger room
tempts to shout
and
shriek
to be heard
once the amplified sounds are put away
it settle down
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| Bickleton's Market Street Cafe & Grocery |
negotiating personal strength
from inside and outside
Gradus 45 - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 9, 2003]
a one and a five
[make(s) six
(or five)
(or minus four)
(or point two)]
design a puzzle
not
to be solved
but
to be
experienced
dynamic encryption
(would likely
leave an energy use trace)
encryption
consumes
openness
leaves less trace
declaration of so
doth not create so
cosmic translation
of protocosmic
Candy Shop - Madonna [from Hard Candy]
leaves a hollowness unfilled
at the middle of its sound
as though
there were no space
where this ever was
brick (unsupported)
ancient astrodoodle
tome
time
rocker propelled
woowoo pedal
pitches cannot be reconciled
they are irreducible
but not
eternal
a pitch without instance
and other clever imponderables
2nd & Virginia - Arbor Towers [from Old]
in deep focus
black and white
camera at knee level
drizzle
incessant
protective depression
Banned Rehearsal 1074 - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 10, 2023]
from the various telepaths 100
we
are the wonderful rattle
mixing
is the activity
of adjusting balances
so that
the sounds
talk to each other
in spite of their
non-co-concurrence
tuning in
to the voices
occasions
a chorus of frogs
must be unrelenting
must be
that nearly 10%
of Banned Rehearsals
are constructed
from telepaths
imagine that!
In Session at The Tintinabulary
April 20, 2025
Cambridge - Keith Eisenbrey
April 21, 2025
Banned Rehearsal 1124 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
April 22, 2025
Lament for Sarah - Benjamin Boretz
nailed it
April 24, 2025
O - Benjamin Boretz
this one too
Postscripts
Drops
One of the shining lights of the local music scene during the pandemic lockdown was Nonsequitur's Wayward in Limbo series: 134 commissioned recordings of new work by local musicians. I was honored to be asked for a contribution. The essential intimacy of the clavichord seemed fitting for the occasion, and I offer this series of short improvisations for your enjoyment.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
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