live audio essays – Lawrence Abu Hamdan
I don’t know where I picked up this book; probably at a museum (maybe the Camille Norment exhibit a few years ago?). The book is composed of transcriptions of audio artworks.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan has deemed himself a “private ear”, an audio investigator using his knowledge of the sonic world to uncover new information. His work is single-minded, focused primarily on uncovering governmental abuses of power. From what I can tell, he interacts with the governments of the world in a way that few other artists do, testifying in court and using government’s own records to catalogue and broadcast state-sponsored violence. It’s inspiring work; sometimes all I want to do is be that focused, that dogged.
Men have been trained to want to find facts, to know everything about everything. When I read this work I thought constantly about how the works were the best manifestation of that misguided instinct. If you’re going to have a constant fact-finding instinct, you might as well catalogue the amount of times Israeli planes have violated Lebanese airspace. Better than memorizing every basketball player who has ever spent time with a Knicks jersey on (many such cases).
I liked this book very much, but sometimes the narratives were a little too easy, tied up with too nice a bow. Lately I’ve had a lot more suspicion for neat packages. Otherwise, I will be thinking about this work for a while.
PALM WINE – YATTA
I’ve been struggling again to find albums that really hit me hard. This one got me because I was expecting something serious and instead I got a collection of songs that felt like sketches, funny and self-conscious and moving all at the same time. The same song, “MTV”, is included twice, back to back, in slightly different versions. Sometimes I just find music that makes me feel so good about how I never want to really finish a god damn song! I just want to sketch forever! Not that these songs are all really unfinished, but there is no pretense that they need to be shiny perfect constructed miracles. They’re allowed to be messy and catchy at the same time. Not to get too deep on the self-insert (though isn’t that what music is sometimes for?), but I can’t get away from my own mess. No matter how much I button myself up I will always tear myself right back open not long after. This album helps me feel like that trendline towards chaos is ok.
Loved this casual, insightful interview from YATTA.
Some other things I’ve enjoyed recently:
a breath of life 
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