Are you Hearing Voices? From the always reliable Onion News Network In The Know, Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?:

Dear Nor’easters,

If you wanna good dose of coordinated noise-phonic instrumental rock-guitar symphonies, catch Kinski (Sub-Pop artist and my frens) on their East Coast dates:

11.28.07 Velvet Lounge, Washington, D.C., w/ Clockcleaner & Kohoutek

11.29.07 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PN w/ Alasehir (members of Bardo Pond)

11.30.07 Club Europa, Brooklyn, NY. EARLY SHOW! 7 pm w/ Oneida & White Hills

12.01.07 Middle East, Boston, MA, w/ Oneida & Cul de Sac

12.05 thru 12.08 Scoring a live dance performance for robbinschilds called C.L.U.E in NYC. We’d recommend getting tickets in advance. More info at PS 122.

Kinski, Airs Above Your Station, “Semaphore” (6:06 mp3):

Audio artist & HV-fren Susan Stone got a Untied States Artists USA Fellow award, along with its whopping $50K. Congrats to one of radio’s innovators. Check out this SStone concoction from an audio cookbook, “Pineapple Boat” (1:15 mp3)

Last year HV collaborator Dmae Roberts also won one of these godsends.

Artist Gennie DeWeese died yesterday. Anyone in the arts who ever crept thru our community (s.w. MT) was affected by her aesthetics. Her scrolls (like “Montana May” to the right; © Gennie DeWeese) were inspired. As was the period she put away her paintbrushes and painted instead with cattle markers, bought at ranch supply stores.

She and husband Bob were immortalized in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which Pirsig wrote after he, like the DeWeeses, taught here at Montana State U. Some excerpts from the book:

From where the deck disappears around the corner of the house, suddenly comes Gennie DeWeese with a tray of beer cans. She is a painter too and, I’m suddenly aware, a quick comprehender and already there’s a shared smile over the artistic economy of grabbing a can of beer instead of her hand, while she says, “Some neighbors just came over with a mess of trout for dinner. I’m so pleased.”

[and from a later conversation at the DeWeeses …]

“Did I ever talk about an individual named Phædrus?”

“No.”

“Who was he?” Gennie asks.

“He was an ancient Greek — a rhetorician — a `composition major’ of his time. He was one of those present when reason was being invented.”

“You never talked about that, I don’t think.”

“That must have come later. The rhetoricians of ancient Greece were the first teachers in the history of the Western world. Plato vilified them in all his works to grind an axe of his own and since what we know about them is almost entirely from Plato they’re unique in that they’ve stood condemned throughout history without ever having their side of the story told. The Church of Reason that I talked about was founded on their graves. It’s supported today by their graves. And when you dig deep into its foundations you come across ghosts.”

I look at my watch. It’s after two. “It’s a long story,” I say.

“You should write all this down,” Gennie says.

I nod in agreement. “I’m thinking about a series of lecture-essays…a sort of Chautauqua. I’ve been trying to work them out in my mind as we rode out here — which is probably why I sound so primed on all this stuff. It’s all so huge and difficult. Like trying to travel through these mountains on foot.

“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.”

“You should do it anyway,” Gennie says. “Without trying to get it perfect.”

“I suppose,” I say.

[more conversation…]

“Well, it isn’t just art and technology. It’s a kind of a noncoalescence between reason and feeling. What’s wrong with technology is that it’s not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. People haven’t paid much attention to this before because the big concern has been with food, clothing and shelter for everyone and technology has provided these.

“But now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed more and more and people are asking if we must always suffer spiritually and esthetically in order to satisfy material needs. Lately it’s become almost a national crisis…antipollution drives, antitechnological communes and styles of life, and all that.”

Both [Bob] DeWeese and Gennie have understood all this for so long there’s no need for comment.
–© Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Many of us remember the DeWeese gallery which showcased dozens of Montana’s finest artists. Best wishes to Gen & Bob’s ridiculously talented family. Boatloads of us here in Bozeman are gonna miss ya, Gen.

© Gennie DeWeese, Waiting for Tina,
Oil Bar Scroll, 52 x 68 inches, 1993

A participatory sound project, “ItSpace pages feature everyday household objects. Each page has a photo of the object, a description, and most importantly, a 1-minute piece of music composed of recordings of the object being struck and resonated in various.” Here’s an example, some rhythms made from stair “Banisters” (1:02 mp3):

Peter Traub’s ItSpace is a 2007 commission Networked Music Review of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (who produced the 1990’s sound-breaking series New American Radio).

via Lu Olkowski.

Play the FreeRice vocabulary game and for each word you get right, they donate rice “through the United Nations to help end world hunger.” The words get progresively harder as you proceed: “WARNING: This game may make you smarter.” Ad revenues fund the food donations. The virally marketed charity started with 830 grains of rice donated the day it launched, Oct 7 2007. Nov 1 total was 59,167,790 grains. Yesterday 140,585,040.

In this week’s HV cast we have our own Middle Eastern summit— Students visiting America from across the Arabic-speaking world share their perspectives on the misunderstandings between their home nations and the United States. A story by Barrett Golding (9:11 mp3):

Just when you think the web is a crass commerical lowest common devolutionary ticket to viral idiocracy… you stop and realize, it’s actually much worse than that. But, hey, Jesus’ b-day approacheth, so go Elf Yourself.

(My wife and sis-in-law elfed.)