October 2008

In New York (or maybe everywhere) "karma" has become synonymous with "revenge."

1. US military repeatedly dumped sarin, nerve gas, mustard gas, and explosives into the coastal waters of New Jersey from World War I to the early '70s (and then supposedly stopped).

2. Nuclear wastes at the Hanford facility in Washington state are slowly creeping towards the water table and the Columbia River.

I realize there's been sort of a learning curve vis a vis our place in the planetary ecosystem, but if extraterrestrials held a trial tomorrow of all other living creatures vs us the brief looks damned sorry. "We thought if we buried it or threw it in the water it would just go away! You can't see it, right? Duh, drool..."

There is an organization for voluntary human extinction. Don't breed, try not to contribute too much toxicity during your brief time. Let the planet rest and start over, maybe with birds or bugs instead of mammals. It sounds extreme, but then so does dumping 64 million pounds of chemical weapons into the ocean.

Just learned from the disquiet blog that composer Donald Erb died. First heard of him during a radio interview with Frank Zappa, in response to a "what are you listening to?" question. Have had the Nonesuch recording of "Reconnaisance" and "In No Strange Land," chamber pieces using live electronics, for many years.

I saw a live Erb performance in Dallas, sometime in the late '80s. I recall a long raucous bellowing trombone solo, which climaxed the piece, and then during the applause a young woman started screaming, like a teenager at a rock concert. Erb looked bemused. I wondered if it was his daughter or a student who knew him well. That kind of emotional response to 20th Century music was...rare.

Update: Just re-listened to my Erb record. The electronics soloing in the first movement of "Strange Land" rivals Cecil Taylor or Sun Ra at their most frenetic and wacked-out. Really intense stuff. Ah, the '60s.