Wine and dust: Purposeless memory scraps [and some of their consequences] of a passionate drifter / An essay by Francisco López, who performs March 24 and 25 as part of the Floating Points program.
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Wine is such a wondrous discovery… I am flying over Mongolia and I can see frozen rivers while I drink Chilean wine and listen to “Blue Rondo a la Turk”. What is the final outcome of all of this? Wine has the answer: it is an enhancer of the soul; it makes me realize instantly that what is driving my perception is actually the broad-band sound matter of the plane itself. It contains all the sounds and none of them at the same time. It is a moving micro-environment of normality in an immense sea of raging invisible weather wilderness.
The trip is thus a flowing transfiguration of time and matter, and not just a way of moving from one place to another. A very similar kind of transfiguration to that of the close-up profound listening of all the rivers, seas, mountains, forests, buildings, trains, machines… that preceded this very moment for me. That is, a solipsistic morphing of the potential of “reality,” that – irrelevant? – chimeric environment. And so the plane, the wind, the large masses of crackling ice, the slow water below, becomes the same thing: immaterial ephemeral power that can only be exerted by oneself over oneself; the kind of power that moves me the most and also the most frightening of all.
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New York City, after an intense sonic immersion inside mechanical and boiler rooms in office buildings, two killer cocktails: vodka with plum wine, caipirinha with sake. That fine touch of a thin slice of cucumber floating in the clean atmosphere of the glass. Like the high-pitch crispy sounds that swing around the space, freed from the speakers, as I carefully move the EQ faders to create them during the performance. To give them birth from that ‘primordial soup’ that is the broad-band sonic universe. They are born and dead in seconds; they have an ephemeral virtual immaterial life; they are flow, not repetition. And for those who have the innate capability of listening with the spirit, these sounds – as all sounds, for that matter – easily overcome any possible status as signifiers or carriers, becoming beings. Immaterial beings, ungraspable; ghosts of themselves. Creatures that merge in our perception and travel deep inside us with a precious load of confusing beauty, passion, peacefulness, horror, and other vital elements. Open enhancers of our souls and not just mere servants of language and purpose.
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Near Havana, diving in an underwater cave, I no longer remember about the oxygen tank I’m effortlessly carrying with me. No loads or objects to take care of. Instead of that, the overwhelming presence of my breathing; myself as my own environment. Free in the dense slow flight. After the dive, a huge “Montecristo A” cigar. Powerful, refined, with a presence formed by many layers of taste and smoke. Not simply a very pleasant thing, but, much more importantly, another wondrous discovery in the ancient human quest for richness, detail, delicacy, carefulness and relevance. And all of it slowly vanishing before my eyes; I feel amazed by this.
Like the unexpected sudden clash of melting memories from the sonic density and richness of Tokyo and Patagonia, of crowds and wind. Quickly vanishing and morphing in the weak hands of my memory. But firmly reshaping and invigorating my soul with ‘belle confusion’.
For a number of reasons – most of them unkown to me – I dislike possessing material things; their physical presence troubles me in different ways, sometimes in an obsessive manner. The more I like an object, the more I want it to be possessed by someone else. Someone with the courage and skills I lack for keeping material things alive and healthy.
That is, I think, where an important part of my fascination for the work with sound comes from. I have an endless amazement and a profound sense of satisfaction for that intrinsic immateriality of sound “matter.”
The final materialization of sound dramatically depends upon the sound system used and the actual space into which the sounds are projected. This seems obvious but its consequences at a phenomenological level are rarely acknowleged. Melody, rhythm and words are corrosive agents of phenomenological substance in music. We can recognize the same melody played over a small radio receiver, a huge sound system or simply whistled. But the question is to what extent we give importance to the fact that we are listening to different things.
To me, the beauty and strength of the substane of these ‘things’ lies upon their vivid physical presence, their potential for mutation and transformation, and their ungraspable ephemeral immateriality. Both a subtle whispering rumor and an overwhelming wall of sound can be created starting from the same encoded sonic information. And both are wonderfully weightless.
‘Blank’ phenomenological substance is an amazing catalizer for irrational transcendece; to forcefully move away from meaning and purpose. Sonic substance has this potential, and its immateriality is an added virtue for our voyage through the strange path of profound listening. If we want to do such a journey.
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In Dakar the trash is just dust. Like a kind of thin dry dirt. Anything more consistent than that is used in some way or another. Computers are five times as expensive as in the “first” world, and they have to be covered to be protected from the red dust that quickly impregnates everything.
While I keep recording through the maze of unnamed streets of the large poor suburb of Pikine Icotaf, I admire the ability of the people here to simultaneously keep everything running with almost nothing and to maintain an intuitive joyful spirit towards the cacophony that is being created by all of them. Exacty as I experienced it during other hidden-recording wandering walks in similar places, like the ‘medina’ of Fes or the ‘favela’ suburbs in Brasilia.
A couple of weeks later I was in Basse Cassamance, observing the dead body of a monkey completely filled with worms. The whole savannah grassland around me was on fire and I was surrounded by an astonishing mass of crackling sounds from the burning grass. And once again I felt the complex beauty and strength of non-bucolic nature.
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I am laying down on the wet floor of the rain forest in Sarapiquí, Costa Rica. Alone, in complete darkness. Following the activities of the leaf-cutter ants and recording the endless flow of the sonic environment. And I feel like a creator; not because I am recording or because I might later be “composing” something with these sounds, but simply because I am listening to them with dedication and passion.
- Francisco López
