philip.sherburne on SONAR


[philip.sherburne on SONAR]

++ There was a moment, standing in front of the speakers, when it all became clear to me. Embarrassingly, I can't recall now who was playing ’Äî it was nighttime, I was surrounded by thousands of people, and the overhead beams, driven by insistent motors, strafed through the crowd like searchlights across the prison yard. (And yet no one was running to escape, this much is certain.) The sound unfurled and hauled us all in, twitching fish caught in a net of bass. I scrambled for my notebook ’Äî something I did all too seldom this year, admittedly ’Äî and scrawled in a barely legible, subwoofer-shaken hand:

"This is a kind of religion for me."

Funny thing is, I saw this scrawled in his notebook. It was scrawled in the kind of writing written in darkness, in the unapproachable light of a revelation, & when that revelation is of the intangible sonic nothingness that pulses from body to body. I had sat down beside him during the Sonar Day; he was somewhat quiet that day. I felt a bit uncomfortable. I like Philip, and had been drawn to him..perhaps somewhat as a writer. Perhaps you don't know who I am talking about yet--I'll let it be for a moment. Philip's column is somewhat of a blog. People read it, but it retains a kind of inner-circle circulation that allows its words to speak at a more personal level. The closer (re)mix. He'd already hit the ceiling, he'd said-- & that worried me, for where he pushes at that glass ceiling is indeed where I'd like to be. Perhaps now no longer. Or at least something to look up to, even if we both glance through the refracted glass. He'd told me that he hadn't wished to read my last take on Mutek on Dusted until he had finished writing his own. Last year, we had written such similar conclusions to the Sunday that it was as if we had seen each other's notes. But we hadn't: we were just rotating similar wavelengths in the growing light of an electrofied dawn. In homage, then, to Philip Sherburne. A writer grasping the edge of the shattered ceiling with Needledrops.

posted. Tue - July 8, 2003 @ 04:20 PM           |

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