maskings: the second masking

the second masking

The vibraphone has been described as piano-like, or drum-like. But I do not think it is like either of those things.

The vibraphone is a set of flat bells, a semantron: a sign, a thing that signifies.¹ The sound of a bell always has meaning. A bell calls to action. When we hear cathedral bells, we are aware that the bell is in a church. When we hear a fire alarm, we move to flee. A bell roars, it barks, it shouts.²

The bell is a mouth.

The vibraphone is a mouth.

In jazz+, the mouth is central: it is used by musicians to speak about itself and its actions. Yet the studies of jazz are intent on the body³. But the mouth engages us with the meaning of the body. The mouth is not just one organ: it is a space of interior spaces and surfaces that relates to the exterior. The interior is as noisy as the exterior. The mouth mediates.⁴

The mouth is the site through which we attempt to be heard,⁵ through which we have voice.

Ella Fitzgerald.

The mouth is instrumental in the instrumentality of vocality. The mouth moves, sounds formed and emerging within and from its cavity. But not all mouths are the same.

I am an improviser; I make improvised music. Improvising is attempting to make music by using music. It is active; it is never a state.⁶

This attempting is also present, situated in the context of now. Improvising music provides me ways of perceiving, interpreting and learning about the music I am making at the time. I use the vibraphone to do this within jazz+.

The vibraphone is my mouth. It has its shape, it has its sounds. Some heard by you, some only by me and it. It and I are the vibraphone. We are organs that form the mouth. I cannot say what we are the mouth of: I can only say that it is my mouth and I am part of the mouth. Maybe my body is made of other bodies.

This is what I have wanted to write about. And so I have read; to locate myself within the field. I saw myself, but darkly.

The shape of my mouth has not been described. Others describe the shape of the human body, of the hands. They say that there are things the hands do and find;⁷ and there are things the hands should not normally do.⁸ I read again. The shape of my mouth will not be described. Structures are formed. The structures are made of thick glass. I may be outside these structures. I am surrounded by trees. I hear other voices in the field. They may be outside too. We can feel the wall but, at times, we cannot see it; we do not know which way it curves.

I am thinking about Ellington, Ellison. Each using polyphony to detail experience.⁹ This is my hidden tradition. I am thinking about the vibraphone, its energy, its material.

Timing, tuning. A = 439.82Hz. I hear it as true enough. But it is not the only sound.

Hands, boards, bows, sheets, sticks, runes, cords, mallets, forks, bolts, tape. I choose when and how to use these. This is a personal lesson.

I am sounding into myself so that I may read into myself, and show the shape of my mouth, of which I am a part. I am trying to clear the trees.

Each strike urges me to survive. The higher harmonics elicit fear, making my heart jump. And yet I move in the middle of it. I speak my family, my love, my joy, my pain into existence. I am reading into myself so that I may slip between the gaps in the structures. Each line calls a memory, a feeling, other bodies. Each transgression dies again on the surface. I strike and scrape and press my wounds to death. Like Hutcherson, my mouth, once clenched, opens.

The structure yields, a little. It is a start.

To the third masking >>