Anarchy, the next step in evolution
When anarchy is mentioned people think of violence and destruction.
However, the term has been misinterpreted and misused to such an extent that even its definition has been modified.
Anarchy comes from the greek : an + arkhos, without ruler. 1 , 2
It is not the same with anomie.
Anomie is social instability caused by erosion of standards and values. 3
There is of course the aggressive component of anarchy. People who had enough from their repressive or negligent governments reject it violently from time to time.
This is due to the failure of the government to maintain the state which is supposed to maintain.
For example, democracy cherishes equality and free speech in the quest to maintain peace and create a better world. However, all that is written on paper is very different from what is happening in reality. Abuse of power, denial of civil rights, governmental corruption and bureaucracy are with us since modern democracy has been born.
I am not suggesting it was better in the past, i am pointing out that the system is not as it is believed to be. Many times people argue against anarchy basing themselves on the ideologies and doctrines which are in fact not even followed.
Another important point is that the condition has not improved due to the existence of the state, but due to the ingenuity of those who created medicines, water filters, vehicles, computers, etc.
Many times people reject anarchy on the simple assumption that it will be far worse than today of even than the past. It is assumed that the absence of state leads to rampant crime and war. However, advocates of anarchy have not killed millions of people in two World Wars, and have not devised propaganda which would lead to the death of many other people in the Middle East or anywhere around the world.
I am not going to deny the existence of those who believe that being an anarchist means to be part of a group and start beating people. These people fall into a trap. Some join certain groups which... have a doctrine, accept only certain individuals.... that's not anarchy, it is a club.
Another frequent argument used against anarchy is the third world countries which lack a solid government, food and infrastructure. They also lack aid. The few million tons of food sent every month are like a chewing gum for an elephant.
Why is Africa in such a condition ? Look at the map and see how the lines are drawn. It is the result of the colonization, and then decolonization of the continent by the French and British empires which went there to steal their copper, gold and diamonds. Their misery is caused by government, and is perpetuated by the ideology that a each of those square states must have a ruler, which leads to rival clans warring eachother for the leadership of a certain state. Africa is a tribal civilization, not a union of states, thus you can't expect them to work well under such a system. Yet, it is said that a government will solve their issues.
The violence and poverty on the African continent is caused by the statist ideology and the indifference of the world which always expects its rulers to solve the problems. This indifference is a side effect of the statist ideology. Most people embrace the state because they have no idea what to put in its place. Good manners and cooperation is what they should replace it with, as the mentioned virtues are way too rare these days.
Frequently people ask how things would work in the absence of the state and laws. How will society avoid the collapse of its infrastructure and its values ? How will society be able to function ? Buildings won't be demolished, we wanna live in them. The roads will be repaired because we need them, and our values... Well, everyone loves to be shown respect, everyone likes peace and preys for the security of themselves and their family. In the end, the world is and will be shaped by you. Even now, if you incite violence or oppression, to a tiny degree you're gonna get what you ask. We all have a small effect on the world around us.
I admit, there are some who do not share the common values, but those are sick individuals. Terrorists, emotionally wrecked people, criminals of all sorts. But they are the result of a sick society. A society which tolerates war and redirects huge amounts of resources towards the military is sick. Paranoia is the name of the sickness and is perpetuated by governments. Instead of searching for a way out of the mess, the people we elect seek to accumulate even more military potential. Instead working together, we are fighting eachother.
There is of course the argument that we need to survive and that there aren't enough resources. However, that is a myth. Ever since capitalism came into play, the world produces more than it consumes, it creates 9 times more garbage than useful stuff. And all of that, for profit. While we're fighting for the money, we're also destroying the world. But more importantly, we actually have enough, we don't have to fight in order to have. I agree, there are some resources which certain masses of people do not have, but there are also some things which they have. That's how trade was born.
There are many questions about how anarchy would work.
How will we send aid to disaster areas if there isn't a legal institution to do it ?
Foreign aid is voluntary, and there isn't a country which doesn't send aid when a disaster strikes.
How will we decide what we want to do ? We come together voluntarily, we discuss, then we appoint a leader either based on his qualities or through direct vote. Sounds like politics, but it's not. This leader doesn't have to be a person, there can be a group. We do not need elections and a rigid system. We can do it different from what i've suggested, we can appoint a supercomputer to do the job, or we can ask the entire world what we should do. But most important, there must not be a system that would enforce a specific method. For from that arises politics, oppression, crime, police, war and all that we see today.
Unlike politics, this system is flexible, is not based on any laws, but on the common desire to solve a problem or to create something. The only less flexible thing is the knowledge that we use to do what we need and what we want. It is actually the best way we can take. We just do it and we're careful to do it right. In the representative democracy ideology, the will is of the people, and the politicians are mere messengers. Too bad that the current system is flawed and allows abuses of power as well as other bad things like monopoly and collusion. But, as the informational grid expands and technology evolves, politicians will no longer need to be our messengers, they will no longer be necessary.
Surely, another question arises. What about the stupid and lazy people ? What will prevent them from interfering with the well working of the world and from living lazy on the backs of others.
If we abolish the government, and thus the states and their system of laws, in consequence the economic laws will be abolished, and thus money will be abolished as they will no longer work without regulations. Further, without money, there can not be a financial imbalance in society. Money represents power, and some people have more power than whole countries just because they have lots of money.
Stacking money is easy, stacking food and clothes is hard. Once money becomes useless, the only important thing will be the resources. In combination with the abandonment of huge military budgets and resource diversions as a result of the abolishment of the state, the removal of money as a barrier to those resources will allow their redirection to where they are needed. This way, people will be educated, the sick will be taken care of and the more important civilian projects will get their funding in form of the needed resources. No more people who have everything and give nothing, no more poor people who need to resort to theft in order to survive.
As the research will be given more attention, technology advances and technique improves, it wouldn't be a surprise to see automated production become so efficient and widespread that there will be no more need for jobs. In fact, that will be the catalyst for the people to continue working once the government is abolished and there's no more coercion to keep people in their workplace. People will work knowing that their effort will add up to the effort of other people and one day they will not need to work anymore.
That is not all, it is only what i could think of.
All that i'm asking is that you don't take it apart and criticize it destructively, but seek to improve it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_No_Rio
EXCERPT:
Interior of ABC No Rio
Cover of the book: ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery (1985) Edited by Alan Moore and Marc Miller. New York: ABC No Rio with Colab. Cover art by Joseph NechvatalABC No Rio is a social center located at 156 Rivington Street on New York City's Lower East Side that was founded in 1980. It features a gallery space, a zine library, a darkroom, a silkscreening studio, and public computer lab. In addition, ABC No Rio plays host to a number of radical projects in New York City, including weekly hardcore punk matinees and the NYC Food Not Bombs collective. ABC No Rio seeks to be a community center for the Lower East Side, sponsoring projects and benefits for the community, as well as a center of radical activism in New York City, promoting "do it yourself volunteerism, art and activism, without giving-in or selling-out to corporate sponsors."
However, the term has been misinterpreted and misused to such an extent that even its definition has been modified.
Anarchy comes from the greek : an + arkhos, without ruler. 1 , 2
It is not the same with anomie.
Anomie is social instability caused by erosion of standards and values. 3
There is of course the aggressive component of anarchy. People who had enough from their repressive or negligent governments reject it violently from time to time.
This is due to the failure of the government to maintain the state which is supposed to maintain.
For example, democracy cherishes equality and free speech in the quest to maintain peace and create a better world. However, all that is written on paper is very different from what is happening in reality. Abuse of power, denial of civil rights, governmental corruption and bureaucracy are with us since modern democracy has been born.
I am not suggesting it was better in the past, i am pointing out that the system is not as it is believed to be. Many times people argue against anarchy basing themselves on the ideologies and doctrines which are in fact not even followed.
Another important point is that the condition has not improved due to the existence of the state, but due to the ingenuity of those who created medicines, water filters, vehicles, computers, etc.
Many times people reject anarchy on the simple assumption that it will be far worse than today of even than the past. It is assumed that the absence of state leads to rampant crime and war. However, advocates of anarchy have not killed millions of people in two World Wars, and have not devised propaganda which would lead to the death of many other people in the Middle East or anywhere around the world.
I am not going to deny the existence of those who believe that being an anarchist means to be part of a group and start beating people. These people fall into a trap. Some join certain groups which... have a doctrine, accept only certain individuals.... that's not anarchy, it is a club.
Another frequent argument used against anarchy is the third world countries which lack a solid government, food and infrastructure. They also lack aid. The few million tons of food sent every month are like a chewing gum for an elephant.
Why is Africa in such a condition ? Look at the map and see how the lines are drawn. It is the result of the colonization, and then decolonization of the continent by the French and British empires which went there to steal their copper, gold and diamonds. Their misery is caused by government, and is perpetuated by the ideology that a each of those square states must have a ruler, which leads to rival clans warring eachother for the leadership of a certain state. Africa is a tribal civilization, not a union of states, thus you can't expect them to work well under such a system. Yet, it is said that a government will solve their issues.
The violence and poverty on the African continent is caused by the statist ideology and the indifference of the world which always expects its rulers to solve the problems. This indifference is a side effect of the statist ideology. Most people embrace the state because they have no idea what to put in its place. Good manners and cooperation is what they should replace it with, as the mentioned virtues are way too rare these days.
Frequently people ask how things would work in the absence of the state and laws. How will society avoid the collapse of its infrastructure and its values ? How will society be able to function ? Buildings won't be demolished, we wanna live in them. The roads will be repaired because we need them, and our values... Well, everyone loves to be shown respect, everyone likes peace and preys for the security of themselves and their family. In the end, the world is and will be shaped by you. Even now, if you incite violence or oppression, to a tiny degree you're gonna get what you ask. We all have a small effect on the world around us.
I admit, there are some who do not share the common values, but those are sick individuals. Terrorists, emotionally wrecked people, criminals of all sorts. But they are the result of a sick society. A society which tolerates war and redirects huge amounts of resources towards the military is sick. Paranoia is the name of the sickness and is perpetuated by governments. Instead of searching for a way out of the mess, the people we elect seek to accumulate even more military potential. Instead working together, we are fighting eachother.
There is of course the argument that we need to survive and that there aren't enough resources. However, that is a myth. Ever since capitalism came into play, the world produces more than it consumes, it creates 9 times more garbage than useful stuff. And all of that, for profit. While we're fighting for the money, we're also destroying the world. But more importantly, we actually have enough, we don't have to fight in order to have. I agree, there are some resources which certain masses of people do not have, but there are also some things which they have. That's how trade was born.
There are many questions about how anarchy would work.
How will we send aid to disaster areas if there isn't a legal institution to do it ?
Foreign aid is voluntary, and there isn't a country which doesn't send aid when a disaster strikes.
How will we decide what we want to do ? We come together voluntarily, we discuss, then we appoint a leader either based on his qualities or through direct vote. Sounds like politics, but it's not. This leader doesn't have to be a person, there can be a group. We do not need elections and a rigid system. We can do it different from what i've suggested, we can appoint a supercomputer to do the job, or we can ask the entire world what we should do. But most important, there must not be a system that would enforce a specific method. For from that arises politics, oppression, crime, police, war and all that we see today.
Unlike politics, this system is flexible, is not based on any laws, but on the common desire to solve a problem or to create something. The only less flexible thing is the knowledge that we use to do what we need and what we want. It is actually the best way we can take. We just do it and we're careful to do it right. In the representative democracy ideology, the will is of the people, and the politicians are mere messengers. Too bad that the current system is flawed and allows abuses of power as well as other bad things like monopoly and collusion. But, as the informational grid expands and technology evolves, politicians will no longer need to be our messengers, they will no longer be necessary.
Surely, another question arises. What about the stupid and lazy people ? What will prevent them from interfering with the well working of the world and from living lazy on the backs of others.
If we abolish the government, and thus the states and their system of laws, in consequence the economic laws will be abolished, and thus money will be abolished as they will no longer work without regulations. Further, without money, there can not be a financial imbalance in society. Money represents power, and some people have more power than whole countries just because they have lots of money.
Stacking money is easy, stacking food and clothes is hard. Once money becomes useless, the only important thing will be the resources. In combination with the abandonment of huge military budgets and resource diversions as a result of the abolishment of the state, the removal of money as a barrier to those resources will allow their redirection to where they are needed. This way, people will be educated, the sick will be taken care of and the more important civilian projects will get their funding in form of the needed resources. No more people who have everything and give nothing, no more poor people who need to resort to theft in order to survive.
As the research will be given more attention, technology advances and technique improves, it wouldn't be a surprise to see automated production become so efficient and widespread that there will be no more need for jobs. In fact, that will be the catalyst for the people to continue working once the government is abolished and there's no more coercion to keep people in their workplace. People will work knowing that their effort will add up to the effort of other people and one day they will not need to work anymore.
That is not all, it is only what i could think of.
All that i'm asking is that you don't take it apart and criticize it destructively, but seek to improve it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_No_Rio
EXCERPT:
ABC No Rio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/dcarter.htm
Daniel Carter Interview (Part 1-2)
By Nils Jacobson
Tell me about anarchy.
It's funny, the word anarchy and anarchism, or anarchist... You know, there's a slightly different connotation, at least to my ear, between anarchy and anarchism...
To the people who would feel that anarchy would be disorder and things sort of going wrong, so to speak--wild rioting, overthrow of the government, or what have you--if you said anarchism, they might not feel quite as much that that's what it was. Although, who knows, maybe a lot of the people who respond to anarchy that way wouldn't use the word anarchism so much. It's a funny thing about that word.
I guess I was attracted to it in high school. In high school I had a Russian history teacher. You know, at this moment, I can't say for sure he mentioned the word anarchist, but it seems that somewhere in high school, and it was related to people who didn't think they needed a government, didn't think they needed someone to tell them what was the right thing, the "must" to do.
So there was a thing about overthrowing the government, which would be sort of treasonous. You'd be a traitor to your country if you tried to overthrow your country. But then there's this idea that the idea of democracy and anarchism (in its ideal sense) are not so far away from each other.
The idea of people freely associating, and deciding for themselves individually and collectively, what it is they want to do, rather directly... Might even be more of a democracy than a democracy, certainly as we know it. So I think there's a semantic problem in some people's ears, and I don't blame them. But for some reason I latched onto the anarchist idea, maybe because there is the misunderstanding, and it it could be interesting. Maybe even by the time I was born it had a little more bite to it, a little more of an edge to it, than the mere word democracy. But I think the real idea behind democracy, maybe even ideas that the founding fathers were not even prepared to try to realize because of their situation, is not so different from anarchism.
What's the problem with the democracy we have today?
I think there's too much... Probably Republicans would agree with me here, at least doctrinaire Republicans, because I don't believe they're really telling the truth a lot of times when they're saying "less government," because in certain ways there has probably been more government. More government has come about as a result of their policies.
And the Democrats' policies may be slightly different, but it seems like the government is largely an agent of the corporations, and a huge global financial industry. The democracy/anarchism that I would prefer would be a much more decentralized form. More rights. Give it back to the states. Of course, Democrats, if there are any left, or liberals, or progressives, or left-leaning people, humanists, or whatever, that give it back to the states was probably more synonymous with states' rights, relating to segregationist stuff, historically.
But what I mean by giving it back to the states, or less government, would be more decentralization. More grass roots. More the idea of the internet, non-hierarchical: no node on the internet being more important structurally than another.
Like with unions, I'm not studied on it, but what I've heard with unions... Some of the more progressive ideas in unions are not to be beholden so much to the central office, the central leadership. but to be more horizontal for each local branch to be in touch with each other local branch. And just trade ideas on that level playing field, across the board from each other. And of course they got a long way to go in the US.
Sounds like libertarianism...
Maybe, but it seems somehow... you've heard of Max Stirner? He's one of the prime movers, idea-wise. I got a lot of books on my shelf that I have to read more than three pages in. But I got the feeling that in this country, a lot of libertarianisms were sort of Republican in relation to money.
Motivated by business in most cases.
And I don't know how much those businesses would want to make sure that their investments, their products, and whatever else they do with their money, really promotes liberty in their own precincts. And say among people as fortunate as they, business and money wise, and property-wise.
I know that there's this guy, his last name is Gates. Not Bill, not Henry Louis. [Jeff Gates.] I wish I had my notebook, because I was going around telling people about his guy. I have to look in my notebook where I list the names of books. He was talking on the radio, and he was talking about capitalism, and he was saying that one of the problems with capitalism in this country, and probably in the world, is that there's not enough of them. In this country, there are probably only a handful of people who are benefiting from the profit, whereas the vast majority of us are wage-earners, if we're that. So all those wage-earners should be turned on to capitalism, and ask themselves, "Am I a capitalist?" Even though my vote may go in that direction, politically. "Am I one myself?" So I'm voting for this minority.
So I don't know how many libertarians might be like this Gates guy, and maybe to that extent it might be interesting to see... Maybe the universe is curved. Maybe space is curved to the point where the socialists ideally are coming from, and the capitalists, ideally in this sense, might hook up in a harmonious way. This Gates was saying there needs to be more ownership on the part of everyone. Whereas I guess the others are saying ownership should go to the state, and an anarchist might say there doesn't need to be a state. Maybe there's some point where all of this meets in a positively ironic, or paradoxical way.
Maybe some quantum physicist could help us out.
Who would get your vote for president?
Now there is a secret. Any of the choices they give, I would vote for none of the above. And that's where I think the voting system should be changed, so people can write in who they want. And I think that would be closer to democracy.
In terms of people who are out there, I feel very ignorant as far as who the various socialists are, who might have run for president... I know the Green Party, with Nader, of the visible ones... he would have been a better choice. And maybe if there could have been a coalition between the likes of Nader and... I don't know what happened with Jerry Brown, inviting marines out there to Oakland, and being tough on crime. I don't exactly know what that's all about. Before he went back into politics, he seemed like a good one for starters. But I think all of these people, to the extent that they are leaders, need to be shaken down in a rigorous anarchistic fashion. So they would know they are always truly (not just lip service)... It's the people they have to be constantly in touch with for their direction. And there have to constantly be referenda. All the things that people would say would make government too inefficient, too chaotic, too anarchistic, maybe, are the way to go.
I got this book...you know Gregory Bateson? He was Margaret Mead's husband, I believe. He had this book called Steps to an Ecology of Mind... there's another book called Ecology of the Mind, and I think it had a subtitle, something like 'by God,' and it was supposedly written by God. And God spoke through this guy's computer. Somehow this guy's computer was picking up on some stuff. And he had to search and see if this came from some weird file, or someone had gotten into his computer. I guess this was before the internet was as widespread as it is now. And sure enough the guy had to admit there was some entity, even if it wasn't God, but there was some entity that was speaking through his computer. And this entity said, "Take notes, save everything I'm giving you." And it really boiled down to the fact that God was trying to let us know that democracy really is the way, but not a democracy full of lawyer politicians. The milkman or farmer or truck driver could be better trusted. Anybody you know with a good heart in your neighborhood, or in your block, or in your building, who is trustworthy, would be a better choice than what we've got.
So what we need is more true decentralized grassroots democracy. And there doesn't even really need to be a president to be a democracy. That seems to be sort of this top-down idea. I'm sure it would be quite a chaos. The Europeans--even with our white male-founded democracy, with only white male property owners voting--the Europeans thought this would be chaos, this would be too unwieldy, even at that. So maybe what a lot of people now would say what I'm talking about now would be too unwieldy. But who knows.
Because in a way we're getting less people voting. How many people voted in the last presidential election? A large percentage did not vote, and apparently it keeps going in that direction... I would prefer to think that these people are voting too. They're voting by not voting. And you have to look to see what they are doing in their lives. And I would dare say that most American people, whether they officially are Republican or Democrat, or Independent --whatever, some other party--they are voting for material security. Even though they are probably working more hours, they're probably trying to steal some hours away for themselves and their family and their friends. More and more of them want to get cell phones and pagers and be on the internet. And if they have to work more hours, they want to have a guaranteed at least two-week vacation, where they can just get away from it all. And probably a lot of them would vote for not having to go to work for near as many hours to get the amount of money they've got. If we could find out from most people, they'd probably transform the government. You wouldn't have to look to any wild crazy anarchist who would want to totally innovate the government. Just the majority of the people...
How does this idea relate to the music?
It's been constant pet peeves for decades. How quickly someone wants to be the leader, or feels that they should be the leader! How quickly! And I guess some of my pet peeves are how little mosquitoes, and maybe sometimes the mosquitoes are big mosquitoes, come on the scene. And I don't think it's any kind of mean-spirited way, just sort of the way people have been trained and brought up...probably the people who they liked and loved in music were leaders. And I don't know how it got to be that by degrees in New York City since 1970, I would run the other way, rather than to be a leader or a sideman. Sometimes I get caught, I got caught recently, flatfooted, and I've participated in some things as a sideman. And I've been accidentally caught flatfooted being a so-called leader.
I just think that if the music is essentially people improvising--people playing spontaneously--then how could it be under somebody's name? And I can answer that question. There's that thing also left over that if somebody got the gig, then it should be under their name. I sympathize with how hard it is to get gigs, and I'm certainly guilty of being one who doesn't get gigs, so who knows? Maybe if I spent as much time as these people getting gigs, maybe I would be corrupted: "Hey man, this group is me! The name of this group is Daniel Carter!"
Most of the groups I'm in are collectives. Sometimes they've started out otherwise, and I've fought for them to be under a collective name, because that name... just as in the case of Jews and Muslims naming their children... some name that would be inspirational or aspirational for the whole group. So that when everybody is really throwing down, and there's all that blood on the tracks, they don't have it at all in their mind that this is not equally them as an individual as anyone else in the group. It seems to me that spiritually and energetically, it should work better for the group to do it that way.
But then you pay the price by not getting exposure, right?
It seems to me that if you can really stick to the group there, that there are other things that seem to happen. You might be part of numbers of groups, and the word gets around among musicians, and you start to get play different ways in concerts, and on potential recordings, and actual recordings happen. So I don't know... Of course, some people, the way they do in their career, so to speak, is that they are creatures of one or two groups, rather than 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10. I'm sort of a creature of 5,6,7,8,9, or 10 groups, so I can understand that maybe they feel that is spreading themselves out to thin.
It's a good question. Because you might ask yourself the question, "What is exposure for?"
I've seen situations where people were with quite prominent leaders, and they had difficulty getting anywhere. Because they were sidemen. So this idea of leader-sidemen seems to perpetuate leader-sidemen. It's almost like the system of hierarchical power in government seems to perpetuate the idea that the little man says, "When I get into the position, I'll become the boss, and have a lot of people working for me." Anyhow, on the subject of anarchism, have you heard of A Mica Bunker [now called the Bunker Series]? In New York City, operates out of the Knitting Factory, but it's been an organization for... I don't know man, it could be decades. So each group of people come in when they come in, and they may just not know the history of it. Like I don't know the history, but it goes back to actual anarchists. And I guess anarchists go back to the '20s, '30s, or before?
In Europe it was before the turn of the century. And some more than fifteen years ago, when A Mica Bunker was operating on East Ninth Street, one of the actual elder anarchists spoke to us, and he used the example of engineering. He said the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Engineers, electrical, mechanical, nuclear, civil, and now I guess you have computer engineers and spacecraft engineers--he said the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Engineers. They don't know it yet, but because of this talent, the inventivity that they have, the kind of ideas, their ability to manifest gizmos and devices from mathematics and pure science--to be able to apply this into inventions--that they don't really need a boss. They don't need a CEO. They don't need management. For us to think what kind of world it could be if you had decentralization, if all these engineers were turned loose to be able to talk and commune amongst themselves. To trade ideas freely. Speaking of secrets, they'd have to keep a lot of ideas secret because they now work for one corporation against another. He said, "One day they will realize that they don't need a boss." In good old anarchist spirit.
I didn't mention the writing that I've been engaged in, inspired by Melville, Joyce, many of the post-structuralists, probably. Derrida, Cixous, Foucault. Again, a lot of these people I read two or three pages from their books on my shelves. Just those words... Mallarme, Artaud. And Virginia Woolf. I think the feminists in general--because the feminists have taken a lot of inspiration from the post-structuralists (some of them anyway) and sort of run with that fire themselves... and had already run with that essential fire long before there ever were what we call the deconstructionists.
Something that would deconstruct these structures and these different words, and these power doctrines. I would say that in a sort of non-hierarchical kind of flash-by-flash way, words come to me and I put them down, sort of almost by themselves, and sometimes just letters. And see what the next word might be. And if there is no next word, leave a lot of space. The next word may not go with the previous word, so leave a lot of space and maybe at some other point a word comes in and builds it up like that.
Now there's a publication called Wandering Archives. These are some young guys. Have you ever heard of David Nuss? Have you heard of the No-Neck Blues Band? David Nuss and Jason Meagher are in the No-Neck Blues Band. Well Jason and one of his partners--a guy that is in that same community, Adam Mortimer--have collected some writings, and some artwork, and photography, etc., together in a lit-mag, or zine, called Wandering Archives. it's called Wandering Archive One 1998. 638 West 131st Street. N.Y., N.Y. 10027.
(You know David, by the way? He put out two vinyl recordings of the trio, Tenor Rising. Sabir Mateen plays tenor saxophone on both of those records, and on one of them adds electric organ. David Nuss and I play drums on both records. David is intensely instrumental in this and other important groundbreaking work.)
This publication has one of my pieces in it. I just was walking around with twenty pages of double-spaced stuff, and some of these No-Neck [Blues Band] people took an interest in it. It really made me feel good, because for the last 30-35 years I had been writing stuff, and I just never had the motivation to go into the thing of sending stuff in to be published. I had much more interest in writing and writing and writing, no editing.
http://www.abcnorio.org/about/history/improvisor_96.html
THE IMPROVISOR, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FREE IMPROVISATION
Volume XI, 1996
'A MIca Bunker, a History' (excerpt)
compiled & organized by Judy Dunaway
*****
HOW THE BUNKER IS BOOKED
Amica Bunker has, from the beginning, had an open booking policy. That means that if someone wants a gig they can have it--no demo tapes, no auditions. However, over the years a delineation was made that it had to be improvised music. . . . Here are the names of (some of) the people who have booked the Bunker through the years:
At Alchemical/Anarchist Switchboard, East 9th St., 1984-90--Chris Cochrane, Zeena Parkins, Cinnie Cole, Paul Hoskin, Doug Henderson and Matthew Ostrowski
*****
At ABC No Rio, Rivington St., 1991-94--Judy Dunaway, Blaise Siwula, Marc Dale, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Reuben Radding
*****
AMICA BUNKER AT ALCHEMICAL THEATRE AND ANARCHIST SWITCHBOARD
PAUL HOSKIN (bass clarinetist & Bunker Booker spring 1987): The Improvisers Network was started in NYC in the early 80s. The people who met included myself, Mike Vargas, Sue Ann Harkey and Chris Cochrane. It had gone defunct by 1983--the last address was Lesli Dalaba's apartment. Chris had decided to revive it, and arranged a few Improvisers Network performances at the Alchemical Theatre Lab on East 9th Street. Then Chris and Cinnie Cole started booking an Improvisers Network series at 9th St.--it wasn't called Amica Bunker yet. Later the name "Amica," which came from the Alchemical Theatre sign out front, the letters having fallen off to spell "A----mica-," became the name of the series. The "Bunker" part was added around 1987. Around 1985 the Alchemical Theatre Lab moved out of the space and the Anarchist Switchboard moved in.
*****
AMICA BUNKER AT ABC NO RIO
JUDY DUNAWAY: After about a year at the Generator, Ken Gen had to close it down, and we once again had to seek a new home. I was friendly with Lou Aciemo (an old friend of David Shea's) at ABC No Rio, and so Lou took us in. ABC No Rio is on a very dangerous street with a reputation for heroin dealing and anti-young-white-artist sentiment. In our years there a few people got mugged, and a few more endured harassment and scary moments.
EVAN GALLAGHER (musician): Once, at ABC No Rio, while George Cartwright and I were playing duets, a guy came in from off the street with a paper bag over his face, sniffing glue. The glue guy sort of wandered up to the front of the stage and George stopped playing. Then the glue guy came over to the keyboards; he and I ended up doing a duet.
MARC DALE (dancer, bassist & Bunker Booker): What I remember of Nancy Campbell is that she was quiet, peaceful, and favored playing in C# on her tenor saxophone. I gathered she was a beginner, or maybe a polished style just wasn't her thing, but either way the few jams we had in the basement of the storefront where I lived did result in some interesting stuff, owing to our combined focus on the "power of creative accident" to lead us from one end of play to the other. There was something to be said for playing with someone not a "chops-jockey," though I suppose there are all kinds of levels of the "creative accident."
I visited her for dinner once, and recall that the place where she lived, somewhere on one of the side streets east of Tompkins (Square Park), had that aura of settled tranquility I always marvel to find outsdide of, say, a Japanese restaurant. The closest I ever came in my home to recreating that kind of duet is in not turning on my vacuum cleaner, but that's another thing. Anyway, beyond that, I saw her on the streets occasionally, maybe three times, riding her bicycle, doing the same thing I was doing, messengering, though with visibly more serenity, to her credit. I never called her attention then because I wasn't in much of a mood for chat and just figured I'd see her later some time. Then Judy and Evan came over late one Saturday and told me otherwise.
Drowned in the tub from an epileptic seizure. And I still wondered, like friends of suicides, if I had done one thing differently, if I'd done one of those chats, would she have taken her bath another time, or taken her medication another time, would her seizure have happened at a different time, or at all, and on and on . . . . I mean, if that butterfly theory of chaotic effect is right, it all goes together that way doesn't it? But then that sort of thing is not for us to know, they say. So later, at a sprawling "do" with a bunch of musicians ( I think the dancers came on a later date but I'm not sure) I set up at ABC No Rio for a Bunker night, I set an empty chair aside in her memory, as i was given to understand that that is what one does in situations for one's peers. I hadn't known her long, but she was good people and was willing to play, and in the porous boundaries of our erstwhile community, I felt she was one of "us."
FRED LONBERG-HOLM (musician): I started my term booking the bunker by improvising in a duo with the former booker, Marc Dale, and ended my term by improvising in a duo with the next booker, Blaise Siwula. During my term I organized the first Bunker Festival.
BLAISE SIWULA (saxophonist & Bunker Booker Sept. 92 - May 94): Once someone called me to complain about something about the Bunker, and I said, "The Bunker's just the Bunker." It means it's not the greatest or worst gig in the world. It's just a place you can come and not have to do something for a commercial audience, a place to experiment. The Bunker's never tried to get any notoriety in the press. There's a mystique about the Bunker. It's its own thing, not connected to anything else.
My favorite Bunker moment was the second Bunker Festival. It was a gathering of so many improvisors all at once--like having everyone from the Bunker be there all at one time. Seven hours of improvised music, with all the different approaches. Everyone had a different angle.
STEVE WAXMAN (bassist, saxophonist & Bunker door opener): The scariest moment at ABC No Rio was when, at a Bunker Festival, Judy was doing something in the bathroom upstairs and Chris Nelson was doing his thing outside, and he took a cymbal that was lying around and kinda loops around a couple of times and threw this cymbal kinda willy-nilly and it hit the bathroom (was kind of a stall). It hit the stall in a way that kinda flipped it up over it with it coming down 90 degrees straight to the floor and like it just turned like this: "ppphhhttt" for a couple of seconds and then the guitar kinda came back, "wahn, wahn, wahn . . ."
The first time I heard Tamio (Shiraishi), that was great. And also what was so great was that it was also the first time other people at the bunker were hearing Tamio. It's also for real, like the first time you get at everything, man. It was me and Paisley, and it was downstairs at ABC. We were down there and set up--like they have those big speakers--and so we spent all this time getting that worked out and then, when I went to play I remember I just had some knob that wasn't turned up or something, but you know I had like a whle of kinda fooling around and not getting any sound and my . . . Doug Henderson was just being you know, whatever, all snotty like "Well why don't you do something?" and finally when it happened, it was really cool because me and Paisley got this really great low rumble going on, for a while--like a really atmospheric low rumble coming out of those speakers 'cause the speakers don't really reproduce everything totally great so you get a generally rumbly thing. And then from the back of the room after like 20 minutes or a half hour of that, Tamio started playing and it was so perfect, like the subway. You know where you have this rumble, rumble, rumble and you have this squealing going on.
BUNKER COOKIES
MARGOT OTWAY (Bunker audience member): These cookies were invented for Bunkerfest, and they've been made for most Bunkerfests since. The idea is to get tahini and ginger root into an oatmeal cookie, with nuts. The original variant involves toasted almonds and currants. A second and perhaps better one has peanuts and crystallized ginger--thus combining the virtues of cold sesame noodles with those of rolled oats.
- 1 stick butter (please not rancid, and if you use margarine, not some evil cheap kind)
- 3/4 cup tahini
- scant 1/4 cup dark sesame oil
- 1/2 cups dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 3 or 4 tbspn. grated fresh ginger root ( I guess processor it or chop it to pulp if you don't have a ginger grater)
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt or to taste
- scant 1/2 tsp. allspice
- grate of nutmeg
- 3 cups rolled oats (not the minute kind)
Either roasted, chopped almonds and currants to taste (say 8 oz. almonds and 6 oz. currants) or roasted, chopped peanuts (8 oz.?) and chopped-up crystallized ginger.
Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Beat together the butter, tahini, and sugar; beat in the eggs, vanilla, and ginger root. Combine separately the flour, baking soda, salt and spices; add to the liquid ingredients. Stir in the oats, nuts, and fruits. Put by rounded lumps on a cookie sheet and flatten the lumps. (Flattening is necessary because of the tahini, which owing to its starch content gets stiff when mixed with water.) Bake until done. Cool on wire rack.
REUBEN REDDING (bassist and Bunker Booker): A horrifying memory was "No Rio" could get just unbelievably cold--and there was one night in particular I remember, where it was much colder inside the building than it was outside.It was incredibly cold outside anyway, but you'd go inside and it was actually colder where there was no wind, because the foundation of the building would just turn into this block of ice. We had this show there where Evan Gallagher was conducting a group of about 17 of us. He was doing a Philip Micol piece, and Philip was not even there; he was on tour. We did this thing and it was sort of like a graphic score meets "Cobra" meets God knows what. There were lots of really great people in that piece--Roger (Kleier) and Annie (Gosfield), Andrea Parkins, (David) Gould, Joe Gallant and Lynn Eshlemann was there. Geoff Dugan had his little electronics and autoharp and there were a bunch of horn players. It was a slew of people, but there were only three audience members. It was so cold in there, we were all wearing all our coats and anyone who could was wearing their gloves. Evan was conducting, and he made it bearable, but it went on forever. It was the longest thing; he just kept turning pages and turning pages and conducting us, cue after cue after cue. Two and a half hours went by, we were still playing. It was around midnight. It was colder than hell. There was this moment in part of the piece when instrument names would come up and Evan would point at you to play solo. Everyone was just completely exhausted and freezing and Evan points at Roger Kleier to play a solo and Roger's sitting on top of an amp, totally reclining and half asleep and starts playing the C major scale but stopping every time he gets to the 7th note of the scale. He repeated this for about a minute. We were just like--"this is summing up our feelings completely!" It was tortuous. We finally got out of there somehow.
My favorite memory of the Bunker was the festival where Michael Evans was doing a duo with Craig Flanagan and Craig saw this big hole in the floor at "No Rio" and stuck the neck of his guitar into it as far as it would go, and it made this great sound and then he disappeared and we were all like, "Where'd he go?" He ran downstairs, and then he started playing the guitar from the basement, with the rest of his guitar coming out of the floor. I think he was the only person in Bunker history to play an instrument that was in a different room.
LAURIE HEFNER (Hair stylist and artist): So anyway as I recall we (the audience and performers) were arguing, giving all the pros and cons, I guess trying to convince him to do it, even though he was the one who wanted to do it. Well as I recall Judy Dunaway was playing the devil's advocate and every time it was close to a decision she would say "Oh Evan don't give up your identity." There was a lot going on. I was sitting in the very back of the room by myself because I didn't want to partake in any of this arguing and what not. I didn't even want to do it in the first place, but I kinda got coerced into it. Then Nelson Simone came up and said to me "Maybe if you were more visible you would be more inclined to do it." I told Nelson I didn't want to coerce anybody to do anything and I was just there in case they needed me. And then Evan decided not to do it, and Johnny went up and said some really quiet words to Evan and then he's like, "Okay, where's Laurie?" And then I went up and got my equipment out and everyone started playing this music, and dancing around and it was like a weird like triangle, a very strange scene. People were wearing masks and I was trying to do this precision haircut with someone waving a jingle bell at my face. It wasn't easy, mind you. Somebody was blowing a trumpet in my ear, and someone was playing drums. It was kind of fun. It was interesting. So I did his hair and then we cut his beard. He bought an electric razor so I just trimmed it and then he, he shaved it. It was really a wild experience for me, and for everyone. But especially for me, being the one that was doing it to him. It really felt like he transformed. Like his whole personality changed and I felt a change in energy.
DAVID GOULD (drummer): My favorite Bunker memory is the very last night at ABC No Rio when Sean Meehan starts out playing drums and suddenly Ihran Elisha sort of takes over for him. And Sean doesn't really have a whole lot to do, and he's pulling cymbal stands out and blowing on them and Sean suddenly disappears and from behind the partition you see a hand with a flashlight charting down the room and then you see his drumstick go flying through the air that's obviously come from up there, which lands perfectly on target on a cymbal. This was my favorite Bunker moment.
*****
http://www.tinwhistler.com/
Welcome to the Wandering Whistler Music Archives!
This site is all about penny whistles and whistle music. I'm the Wandering Whistler, shown here at the Texas Renaissance Festival playing a Chieftain Low D. I've been playing the penny whistle (also known as the tin whistle, tin flute, fipple flute, among other assorted names) since 1995, and am very much in love with it. On this site, you'll find sheet music and midi to many irish and scottish folk tunes, as well as tunes that just sound good on the whistle. You'll find children's songs, Christmas carols, Irish Airs, reels, jigs, or pretty much anything (hopefully) to whet your whistle music craving. About Copyrights
Please note that many of the songs in this archive have come from my own collection of songbooks. To the best of my knowlege these songs are TRADITIONAL music, and the music itself is not copyrighted. If you look on the copyright page in many songbooks dealing with folk songs or traditional music (which are too old for copyrights, or which have been placed into the public domain), publishers usually can only copyright the layout work. I have personally layed out each song in this archive with commercial notation software, so each .gif file of sheet music is copyrighted by me (Copyright (C) 1997-2006, Gregory Mahan). However, in the interest of free music, I hereby license these works to the public under the Creative Commons license. In a nutshell, you can use these images in whatever manner you wish, so long as you do not attempt to sell or otherwise make monetary profit from them, and proper credit is given to the author (me) and my site (http://www.tinwhistler.com/). All recordings of music on the tinwhistle are performed by me, and likewise copyrighted as well (Copyright (C) 1997-2006, Gregory Mahan), and carry the same license and restriction. You do not have to contact me first, though it would certainly be the polite thing to do, and would make notifying you about site changes easier.A few tunes on the site (such as the Willow and Planxty Dale Wisely) are copyrighted works by someone other than myself, are clearly noted on the sheet music page for the work in question, and are not licensed under the Creative Commons license. If you wish to use these works, do the same thing I did, and please contact the original artist/composer to get permission to do anything with them!
The reviews of whistles on my site are not licensed under the Creative Commons license. I can't really think of a reason why anyone would need to copy and distribute these on their websites. Therefore, all pictures, text, and sound files in the reviews section are not licensed for distribution, and I assert all rights granted to me under Copyright for those works. Note: If you are the copyright holder to music in this archive or feel that a song is in violation of copyrights, please let me know. It is not my intention to infringe on anyone's rights with my archive.
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