My "Twitter Machine Eats the Amazon" has been featured on Metapsychosis
Author Michael Eisenberg "gets it"
Twitter Machine Eats the Amazon is a track from my album Guitar Paint. Michael Eisenberg has reviewed the music as part of the Metapsychosis web site. His article is called At the Edge of the Source.
Michael makes a very trenchant observation about the title in relation to the music:
If a piece is composed—or instant composed (such as the featured piece by Oliver), with a specific figurative idea in mind, should the listener stay within that field, allowing their own experience and imagination to be guided in that direction?
His review asserts that forming your own impressions, essentially ignoring the title, is an alternative way to listen. He reads the situation very well: although I give the music an overly-specific and visually evocative title, my intention is to deflect, or throw a visual bomb at the listener. “Twitter Machine” is an obvious reference to the Paul Klee painting.
“Eat the Amazon” is a reference to environmental collapse or degradation.
But the music I spontaneously created was not inspired by any of these images, in fact, no image at all! I simply set up my sound-sculpting electronic music system, and played my 10-string classical guitar into it, experimenting until it was time to hit the record button.
So Michael let’s his imagination go:
Images come and go, holding for a moment before slipping away into the aether. There’s no sense of being lost, only a different kind of orientation, one that isn’t guided from given intentions, but formed in real time. The piece doesn’t lose anything by letting go of its title; if anything, it gains a kind of openness that allows it to move more freely.
Like the surrealists, free-association is the goal. Michael knows how to think creatively while listening. I invite you to do the same.
Here is a link to his article: https://metapsychosis.com/at-the-edge-of-the-source/
And here is a direct link to the album Guitar Paint. Twitter Machine… is track four. I drop the track here:
Happy reading and listening!
John Oliver
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