Folk Music of the Anthropocene (Daily Planet email #1129)
Stoplight Rhythm: (two hands, left foot, floor mat, and steering wheel) An ad-hoc exploration of common-time rhythm whose duration lasts as long as traffic is stopped, whereupon this accompaniment for an imaginary, sedentary dance is immediately abandoned and forgotten.
An Ironic Love Song: (solo human voice and wine bottle) This timeless lamentation is often sung while proofing a presentation layout at 9:30 on a Friday night. Sample refrains include: “I love my job.” “I wish my team were here.” “Isn’t my boss the greatest?” and “You gotta love this client.” The words through their almost careless accretion devalue themselves, drifting inevitably away from meaning into the emptiness of cynicism.
Printer Head Epic Battle Improvisations: (plastic slats, crumpling paper, mechanical whirring, struck objects, and colloquial utterances) In this private ritual performance, an amateur shaman works to conjure a single, legible sheet of printed paper from an inscrutable, almost mythically-malevolent box. Success brings no succor – the performer seethes in dark exhale as the printer head coils back into position for its next strike with a blithe, anodyne beep.
Song of the Bailing Man (excerpt): (human voice, water, larger body of water and plastic bucket) Water is moved incrementally with great splashing out of a place it is not wanted. Attentive listeners will detect occasional grunting to portray exertion and a slight increase in tempo to indicate urgency. Bagged sand may be added for textural interest.
News Cycle (excerpt): (synthesized brass stabs and human voice) A strophic ballad in which the three-note “Breaking News” theme is either played from a recording or sung, followed by a brief spoken interlude of nonsense, then interrupted by the three-note theme, and again followed by unintelligible gibberish, to be repeated indefinitely. This song-cycle is usually performed during a playground jump rope game, or as a background to doom scrolling in the muffler shop waiting room.
The Wind Beneath My Scalp: (nocturnal electro-acoustic performance for inner voice) Where there should normally be a sedate and undemanding silence, the stage of one’s mind is filled with comings and goings, contracts both signed and implied but all regretted, download speeds, missed typos, LOL and IDK, obligations both known and yet-to-be-revealed, missed opportunities, fear for the future as well as the past, unformed questions, possibly unusual symptoms, fifth grade injustices, and a hunger not for food nor anything else previously known.
Hey, Good Lookin’: (piano, metal and plastic parts, random crowd, and reverb) A pianist in the middle of Menards plays jaunty Americana tunes, in this case the classic Hank Williams song, while a randomly distributed populace shops for items to put in their sale bucket.
Brown Box Shuffle (excerpt): (paper, bubble wrap, plastic, glass, amplified voice, shoes, and shopping cart wheels) A polyrhythmic ensemble of inadvertent participants lumbers through the shambolic shelving of a late-capitalism flotsam store on two-dollar day. The uneasy balance between structure and mayhem is furthered by aggressive, distorted interjections from an unseen loudspeaker. See also one-dollar day.
Office Mood Topography: (keyboard and human breath) In an open-concept office, eleven people are working at their computers while wearing headphones. A loose tapestry of sighs percolates from the workers, like gas bubbles from an ocean floor. None can hear the others around them, so it is functionally a performance for an outside witness. You can join in, but only you will know.
Dump and Grind: (D2 steel blades and HDPE seal) A single-use plastic ring cap cover from a bottle of coffee creamer skitters uselessly along the steel rotor blades of a plastic granulator. Too small to be recycled, it hovers over the burr of the heavy equipment with a cheerful, aberrant chatter. The resultant pareidolia suggests words where we know there are none.
Daily Planet Productions Ltd.
"Music fathoms the sky." – Baudelaire
