Manafonistas

The link is a person – Bill Tilton.

In 1976 I got a job working the overnight shift at Minnesota Public Radio. I worked from 10pm until 6am. My job was to monitor the broadcast feed in the St. Paul studio, dub tapes, make cassettes of news programs, and do some tape editing. All the nighttime classical music programming came from a different station in the Minnesota Public Radio network, located in Collegeville, Minnesota. I worked alone and had the station in downtown St. Paul to myself. It was a wonderful time, and I enjoyed being up all night listening to classical music while I did my various tasks. The solitude of the station seemed to be an appropriate place to listen to the overnight classical music programming; the music having been created in the solitude of a composer’s mind. I remember well one early morning at 3AM being struck by the sound of Debussy’s “Nocturnes” echoing through the empty radio station. I just had to stop what I was doing and listen. It was beautiful to be awake and and alone and working at that hour, right in the center of a major metropolitan city.

Just about the only visitors to the station at night were the station engineer and Bill Tilton.

Bill had been convicted and imprisoned for destroying draft records during the famous “Minnesota Eight” trial, and had spent some time in a federal penitentiary. When Bill got out of prison he worked painting houses, and then volunteered for the Wounded Knee Defense Committee. The Wounded Knee Defense Committee was a group of lawyers and volunteers who banded together to defend the American Indians connected with the uprising at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Bill worked as a driver for the famous lawyer William Kunstler and watched the trial unfold. He became smitten by the possibilities of being a lawyer. He decided to study law at the University of Minnesota. Eventually he became the only convicted felon in the state of Minnesota to have a license to practice law. (Bill is now the head of a very successful law firm.)

When I met him he was producing a series of public policy programs at Minnesota Public Radio. Bill found it most relaxing to work during the night at the radio station. It was very quiet at the station, and he had easy access to the big Ampex tape recorders he liked to edit on. He could edit away to his heart’s content. He would come in around 2AM, and we’d talk occasionally during the night. I learned a lot from talking to him; about his time in prison, his politics, and the things he wanted to do with his life.

We would usually sit and talk during my “lunch” hour, between 3 and 4AM. One night Bill told me that when he was in prison and very depressed he made the firm decision that when he got out, he would travel everywhere and meet as many women as possible. I nodded my head in agreement. I wanted to do the same thing. He said, “Women and traveling is all you think about when you can’t go anywhere and never see a woman.”

(He actually said he wanted to “go everywhere and fuck as many women as possible”, but you might not be able to phrase it that way in your program.)

I asked him for stories about where he’d been, and he started bringing photos to the station he’d taken in his travels. He told me story after story of the places he had been since he’d been released from prison. He showed me one picture he had taken at a border crossing between Ghana and Upper Volta. There was a sign at the border crossing that said, “No photo”, so naturally Bill got out of the taxi he was in, crouched down, and snapped one shot. I looked at the photo and said, “I’m going to use this picture on an album cover someday.” As I was flipping through his photos I told him that I was going to start sending him postcards from places he’d never been. He challenged me, saying, “Well, good. Good luck. I’ll look for your postcards. Where are you going to go first that I haven’t been?” I said “Nepal,” without thinking. (The drummer from my high-school band went there in 1972. Nepal was the only place I could think of on short notice.) I decided later I would indeed go there first, and that I’d go many other places, and send him postcards from everywhere.

So that’s what I did. I used the picture he took at the border crossing for the cover of “Safe Journey.” I went to Nepal in 1985, sent him postcards, and my Nepal experience ended up as the storyline behind the music that makes up “Big Map.” From my job working for The Naropa Institute’s Study Abroad Program in Nepal I got another job with their program in Bali, and that ended up being the basis for the drumming and gong cycles in “The Fall of Us All.” During the years between 1985 and 1992 I didn’t really live anywhere. All my belongings fit in two small boxes that I left at my studio or at a friend’s house. I traveled through Europe, Nepal, Sikkim, all over India, Tibet, and many places in in Southeast Asia. I took every travel opportunity I could. There were girlfriends, there was marriage, divorce, pregnancy, miscarriage, death, humiliation, redemption, spiritual ecstasy, sickness, hell, heaven, thousands of miles of travel, and many postcards addressed to Bill.

Here we are, drinking beer on his porch just two nights ago, May 13, 2013.

Here’s the end of the Tibet epistle. Part 9.

You may remember the cliff-hanger ending to the last episode. We were heading into the mountains above Tsetang for our last hike, the dreaded 6-hour slog to the famous Crystal Cave. Would we make it?

We started at about 6AM, using our headlamps to light what passed for a trail. I had read that there was a village about a quarter of the way up where you could hire a guy and his tractor and ride in the wagon behind it. I suggested we try to do that if the opportunity arose. We were all very tired at this point in the trip, and feeling our age. After about an hour of hiking we heard “vroom-vroom” up ahead of us. From the little bit of sun at that hour we could see that a group of Tibetans ahead of us had found the guy, rented the tractor, and were riding up the rutted trail. They weren’t going that fast, and at a certain point when the trail got too steep and narrow the tractor stopped and dropped them off. We walked up past them and saw that they were unloading something wrapped in burlap that looked vaguely familiar. Trish nudged me and said, “Corpse.” I realized I’d seen a picture somewhere of this.

When someone dies and they decide to carry the corpse to a sky-burial site they bind the corpse so its arms are wrapped around itself, hands on shoulders, with the legs up against the torso. Then they wrap the body in burlap and rope it to someone who carries it up into the mountains. That’s what was happening. As we passed the wagon a big Tibetan man swung the burlap-wrapped corpse out of the wagon and up onto his shoulders just like some 20-year-old Madison Hut crew member swings one of those 100-pound packs onto their backs. We passed by without comment and continued on. They stopped what they were doing to watch us walk by. It was a complete funeral party: family, a monk, and two butchers wearing leather aprons. More on that later.

The sun ascended and the path got steeper. In the first picture you can see a small white dot to the right of my left shoulder. That’s the stupa where the sky burial would take place. To the right of that, underneath the prayer flags farther back you can see a small rectangular building. That’s where we rested before making the final ascent to the cave. The cave is up and to the right where the white building is. In the second photo you can see the white building just below the cave and the trail up to it.

After another hour or so we got to the stupa. We took a break and watched the funeral party approach from behind us. They came to the area in front of the stupa and started unwrapping the corpse. Two men, probably relatives, walked towards us and made shooing motions with their hands. Shoo! Shoo! They didn’t want us there. We got up and walked away slowly, turning back frequently to see what they were doing. When we crested a ridge we lost sight of them.

After a few more hours we got to a small building that housed a shrine, a cat, and a caretaker. We made offerings to the shrine and Trish and I sat on the steps of the building to wait for Joanne and Miki. A cat jumped on my lap. The caretaker laughed and said (I think), “A nice home in the human realm.”

And then … and then … surprise, surprise, we made it. The last part of the climb was tough, but we did it. We hung out in the cave, and enjoyed our time there. We did some practice, read a few things out loud, and generally felt pretty good.

Here’s an aerial view of where I was sitting with the cat. In The cave is up and to the right, festooned with prayer flags.

In my mind there was still a bit of confusion concerning the various caves in the area. The cave I’d really wanted to get to was the “Lotus Crystal Cave.” That was the cave where the great Indian / Pakistani saint Padmasambhava had hidden his life story as a “revealed” text (a “terma”). According to my research, there were caves called “Pema Shelphuk”, “Sheldrake” and “Shelphuk.” All three have the Tibetan words for “lotus” or “crystal” in them. The three guidebooks we had with us weren’t much help. On the way out I had a short conversation with three monks who had just walked up. I asked if this was the location of the actual Crystal Cave, Pema Shelphuk. One monk said, “No, that one is a long walk from here.” I asked, “How long?” and he paused and said, “For us, one day. For you, two days.” His friend said, “No, this is the real Crystal Cave. The floor is black crystal. Didn’t you see it?” (We had noticed the black, glossy, crystal-like floor. You can see a bit of it in the picture with the four of us.) The third monk waved his hand and said, “It doesn’t matter.” I went with the third monk’s assessment.

On the way down we stopped at the sky burial site. It was deserted. There were tools jammed in the ground and an area where tsampa (roasted barley) had been sprinkled. Apparently the sky burial itself had happened while were were over the ridge and in the cave. In a sky burial ceremony the corpse is carefully cut up and separated into piles of bones, muscle, and organs. Everything is chopped up. While this is happening vultures circle lazily overhead. When the humans withdraw a bit they drop down like a big black sheet and quickly clean the area of anything edible. Then they fly away. Thus: “sky burial.” Our guide told us that since this burial site was somewhat close to a large Chinese city (Tsetang), a group of Chinese soldiers had come up to the site several years ago, set out meat, and then shot all the vultures. Since that time the remaining vultures do not land if there are humans in sight, anywhere. That might be why some of the men in the funeral party were shooing us away.

I couldn’t believe that we’d missed the vultures, and wondered if anything had actually happened there. Maybe there weren’t any vultures. Tendzin, our guide, helpfully pointed to some axes and knives and the bits of flesh stuck to them. I’ll spare you those photos, but I have them, if you want them. In the photos enclosed you can see an axe stuck in a log next to the stupa, and a bunch of other knives, saws, and axes that are used and then left at the site. The beige powder is the barley flour that’s sprinkled over everything when the vultures have left and the humans come back out of hiding to bless the area before leaving.

We continued down and rolled into town at sunset. It had been a long day. The next morning we headed back to Lhasa, stopping at Mindroling Monastery on the way. It was nice to get back to a hot shower. Lhamo found us, and we all went shopping. I saw four westerners standing around a motorcycle with a sidecar and took a picture of it for a friend in Minneapolis who collects odd motorcycles. He told me later what it was (a British Enfield, I think).

Lhamo and I wandered around the market buying little trinkets for the kids and Joanie. We walked past the Potala, and happened on a photo shoot for a Chinese couple getting married. Tibet is like the wild west for the Chinese, and if they want to do something totally crazy and unhinged (in their world) they take the train to Lhasa, get married, and have pictures taken of themselves in full wedding regalia in front of the Potala. It would be as though Joanie and I had gone to the Black Hills, dressed up in Lakota Garb, and had our picture taken under Mt. Rushmore. Something like that. Anyway, the Tibetans don’t look too kindly on this, and there was a knot of cackling old Tibetan ladies behind us hurling curses and hooting with laughter while spinning prayer wheels held in their right hands. I asked Lhamo what they were saying and she said, “Quiet Steve, quiet, too hard to translate.” After some prodding, she told me they were shouting variations on “A dog wouldn’t eat your corpse because then he would have to shit you out.” Something like that. The photographers and the newly betrothed remained nonplussed.

We walked back to the hotel and found Miki, Joanne, and Trish. We all went out and ate at a wonderful vegetarian restaurant for hours. A feast. We were tired, but satisfied. We ate and ate. We went back to our rooms and packed, and then took a last stroll down to the plaza in front of the Potala Palace. The plaza was in full swing, with people milling about, patriotic anthems blasting, and the ever-popular dancing waters dancing. See movie, enclosed. I wouldn’t be surprised if some day Tibet’s Chinese overlords choreograph a laser light show to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and project it on the side of the Potala Palace.

The End.

All for now,

Steve

“Chi può non perda, ancora stasera a Moncalieri e domani a Bologna, il concerto di Theo Teardo con il frontman degli Einsturzende Neubauten Blixa Bargel. Insieme, i due artisti hanno scritto e inciso da poco fra Roma e Berlino, con il Balanesku Quartet, un cello, un violino, e lo stesso Teardo al basso alla chitarra e a quasi tutto il resto, Bargel alla voce e all’Hammond e quant’altro, un disco fulminante dal titolo “Still Smiling”, che affascina per la profondità e insieme la lievità della sua concezione. Dodici canzoni in italiano, tedesco, inglese, dove la voce di Blixa ti rapisce al primo istante con “Mi scusi” e il suo italiano quasi perfetto, mentre discetta appunto sulla propria pronuncia (“Facevo latino a scuola, a un livello cavernicolo”), come si avventurasse in una sceneggiatura misteriosa dalla quale non si riuscirà a uscire. Teardo è autore di colonne cinematografiche di Salvatores o Sorrentino, Blixa è in libera uscita dalla carismatica band tedesca, dopo aver incontrato Teardo e i Balanescu in uno spettacolo teatrale. L’alchimia fra i due è evidente. Il rimando fra testo, musica, interpretazione, crea atmosfere irrequiete e sognanti, ironiche e misteriose, colte ma coinvolgenti, con fughe punk ed elettroniche. Un bellissimo, sorprendente ascolto.” (Marinella Venegoni)
 
 
 

 

Ich sass heute, als die Sonne rauskam, unter einer japanischen Zierkirsche, die so alt ist, dass das eigene Gesicht, für Aussenstehende, älter und immer älter wirken musste, als wär der Geruhsam-Verweilende auf ewig mit dem bejahrten Wurzelwerk verbandelt. Die rosa Kirschblüten verblassten dieweil, und einen weiteren Baum erblickte ich, als ich den Literaturteil der Süddeutschen Zeitung las, eine Seite, die mir so viel Spannendes zu erzählen hatte, wie sonst in einem ganzen Monat nicht. Mitch Epstein fotografierte Bäume in New York (“New York Arbor”, Steidl Verlag). Riesige Bäume, spukige Bäume, Dinosaurierbäume. Die Amerikanische Ulme auf dem Foto wirkt noch weitaus seltsamer, als meine japanische Zierkirsche, das muss ich zugeben, so herrlich suchen die dicken Äste nach unmöglichen Drehungen. Das Buch scheint so angelegt, als würden die Bäume die Hauptrolle spielen in einem verschwiegenen, allenfalls windumrauschten Stadtbild. Kennen Sie den berühmten Tulpenbaum im Alley Pond Park in Queens, ich nicht. Oder die “Henkersulme”, wo man während des amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieges Verräter aufgehängt haben soll? Natürlich sind die Bilder Schwarzweissfotografien, wie sonst will man die Schwingungen einer uralten Zeit mitbekommen. Manafonista Henning mag auf seinem letzten New York-Trip einigen von ihnen begegnet sein. In ein altes Amerika entführt auch die Besprechung des Romans “Dunkle Gewässer” von Joe R. Landsdale, doch der liebe Rezensent macht nach verheissungsvollen ersten Sätzen zwei grobe Fehler: er erzählt zuviel von der Geschichte, und zu wenig von den Betriebsgeheimnissen des Romans. Der Rezensent wird zur Plaudertasche, und nennt den Roman schliesslich “wohl das Beste, was Lansdale je verfasst hat.” Falsch, der gute Joe hat etliche brilliante Romane verfasst, die genauso brilliant Pulp-Elemente mit film noir-Fragmenten mischen, wunderbar gesponnenes Garn, das ohne postmodernen Schnickschnack alte Erzählkunst in reinster Form darbietet. Und als drittes Buch fiel mir auf dieser Seite eins von Franz Hessel ins Auge: “Der Kramladen des Glücks”; da wird viel geschwebt und flaniert, und man weiss gar nicht, bemerkt Herr Rüdenauer zu diesem Empfindsamkeitsschmöker aus dem Jahr 1912, “wo die Melancholie beginnt und die Unbeschwertheit endet.” Der Protagonist des Buches, Franz Berendt, mischt sich unter die Münchner Boheme und bleibt ein Beobachter, der sich wenig traut und ganz gewiss einen an der Waffel hat, aber auf sympathische Weise. Den Alltag wie einen Traum zu beobachten, ist schliesslich auch eine Kunst, aber von fraglichem Wert, wenn man zwischendurch nicht mal vorübergehend wach wird. Ich erwachte zum Glück unter der Zierkirsche, als ein kühler Wind aufkam und meine diffusen Tagtraumbilder zerstreute, in denen eine Silberpappel, ein altes Kino in Schwabing und ein reissender Fluss vorkamen.

The Popocatepetl Volcano, Mexico’s second highest peak just 55 km southeast of Mexico City, is seen from Santiago Xalitxintla, in Puebla, on May 14, 2013 spewing a cloud of ash and smoke. The National Disaster Prevention Centre (CENAPRED) raised the alert level on Sunday to “yellow phase three.”

Listen to: Zawinul/Lava (on Brian Eno’s masterpiece “Another Green World”)

Alle Männer beginnen eine Art Gesang: “Sada sada sada sada sada sada sada sada”. Zwei Männer setzen die Hähne ab und lassen sie laufen. Sie fliegen gegeneinander, ein Gestöber von Flügeln und Federn, übereinander, stop, senkrecht gegeneinander, ihr Nackengefieder ist aufgerichtet, sie fliegen wieder ineinander, wieder und wieder; schliesslich hat einer eine Klinge in seiner Gurgel. “Ahhhh”, rufen die Männer. Blut spritzt, Wetten gewonnen, Bhutakalas, böse Dämonen steigen aus der Erde. Der Dinosaurier, der verloren hat, wird von seinem traurigen Besitzer aufgelesen und einem alten Mann am Rande der Menge, noch lebend, überreicht. Er nimmt ein Messer und den Hahn – er legt den Hahn auf ein Stück Bambus, schneidet den Fuss mit der Klinge ab, und dann durchbohrt die Klinge, an welcher der Fuss noch hängt, das Herz des Hahns. Der Hahn gurgelt und blutet. Blut ist verspritzt worden, die Dämonen kommen heraus, aber sie werden später in der Nacht wieder verscheucht werden, wenn die Jungs ihre Töpfe schlagen.

(Aus den asiatischen Tagebüchern von Steve Tibbetts)

” … a gripping soundscape that fluctuates from primal rage and caustic guitars on the industrial sizzlers to ambient ear massages on acoustic interludes. The Fall never falls short of exhilarating.” – USA Today on THE FALL OF US ALL

When the rains came they found the girl’s face. Just her face. At least that was how it appeared … On a perfect summer evening in 1954, sixteen-year-old Nancy Denton walked into the woods of her hometown of Whytesburg, Mississippi. She was never seen again. Two decades on, Sheriff John Gaines witnesses a harrowing discovery. A young woman has been unearthed from the riverbank, her body perfectly preserved, yet she bears evidence of a brutal ritualistic killing. Nancy has come home at last, but her return does not bring closure to her family, nor to the townsfolk of Whytesburg. Already haunted by his experiences in Vietnam, Gaines must now stretch his abilities to the limit, pushing himself ever closer to breaking point. What really happened to the beautiful and vivacious Nancy? And why do her friends refuse to talk? As Gaines closes in on the truth, he is forced to not only confront his own demons, but to unearth secrets that have long remained hidden. And that truth, so much darker than he could ever have imagined, may be the one thing that finally destroys him. Intense, gripping and hauntingly atmospheric, The Devil and the River is the stunning new thriller from bestselling author R.J. Ellory.

In our, boxed, on-demand world where accessibility and recallability rule we can often forget the importance of the unpredictable or the joy of true discovery. Our lives are increasingly shaped by systems and patterns; downloaded, linked, and stored, that help us live, tell us when to go outside and what we will find when we get there. The mystery of our every day slowly seeps out of our lives like photograph bled of its color by the sun. There are fewer questions and too many answers.

The Endless Change Of Colour exists somewhere between our future and the mistakes and accidents we’ve made along the way. It is a celebration of both the system and the unexpected. Marsen Jules’ latest work is a generative music piece upon a single phrase of an old jazz record split into three audio streams. These streams are transformed into loops which break the original instrumentation down into sound resembling pure waves, harmonics and overtones.These loops play to different time signatures to create phasing patterns that continuously move and dance around each other in a constantly-evolving lattice of sound. Despite it being based on a very strict and limited set of rules the music could, in theory, be endless and ever-changing.

Here, the listener’s discovery is a quiet and engaged one. Ripples and pulses set within a field of color that sometimes feels like water, sometimes like air and sometimes like glass. Electronic tones hum with warmth and the softness of slumber. The patterns are there, familiar to our modern ears, but they’re not always what they seem. The wandering mind steers this one along more than the generative grid on which it was based and The Endless Change Of Colour becomes exactly as its title suggests.

12 K Records

So, lieber Michael

auch nach wirklich stundenlangem Suchen, kein Erfolg, gerade das Heft
bleibt verschollen. Aber es gibt einen Trost: Ich habe den englischen Text
gefunden, den du mir damals zugeschickt hast, jeweils meinen Teil und deinen Teil,
also den ganzen Text. Dann habe ich noch meine Übersetzung gefunden, so, wie
ich ihn dir zugeschickt habe. Jetzt gehe ich in den Copyshop, dann zur Post und du
hast hoffentlich morgen den fetten Brief mit dem englischen Gesamt-Text und meinen
übersetzten Teil. Ich hoffe dir dennoch geholfen zu haben und freue mich auf die Tibbetts-Sendung.

Liebe Grüße
Gregor

“It’s a big meal all around, easy to choke on. The best way to listen to it: You’ve got a fine new driveaway car with a top-notch stereo system. You’re traveling cross-country from Ohio to California. It’s 1:30 am and you’ve just finished your greasy dinner at a truck stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. You drive off. You’ve got a large, weak, and extremely hot coffee positioned between your legs, and you listen to the album between Kearney, Nebraska, and Sterling, Colorado. It needs that kind of captive audience”(Steve Tibbetts)

Milestones – Klassiker der Jazzgeschichte – Steve Tibbetts: Safe Journey / Big Map Idea / The Fall Of Us All, live (!!!) mit Michael Engelbrecht am 18. Mai, 4.05 Uhr morgens in der Radionacht des Deutschlandfunks