Evan Parker – Free Zone Appleby 2004

Little stabs that don’t hurt too much – in a way the pain can be pretty; the sounds of imagined pain is painful to the mind’s emotional sector.  Gurgling from a deep place that morphs into strange animal like noises that crawl over skin.  Hits, blips, reversed to violin and violin like processing.  Waves of low end underneath the pointy violin stabs.  Chewing and swallowing into the deep emanating sound.  Ice and birds uniting in musical winds.  Wood scratching, pawing at logs, trying to get something – maybe out.  Windy lands, seemingly spiritual, fade into nothing.
Slaps gentle to the ears.  Saxophone is nicely flowing above the percussive scratches.  Falling over, but back to the feet quickly, and back at it.  Squeaks, snaps, saws, polishing the surface.  Clatter to almost silent calls of newborns, which grow and grow into sympathy and dark forces.
Dropped something on the strings.  Picked it up, and up popped a brief melody.  Waves of falling things being dropped again and again, when a snarling growl interrupts and splashes in the water.  Melancholy atonal breathing behind clean windows that are rubbed against.  
Children playing at recess in the school’s sandbox.  A few friends with a clear leader, who keeps the others in line.  Don’t make him mad.  Please.  Tension, but some have buffered the leader, he seems to be calming down.  Whistling in his happiness, he’s so, so happy while the others play along to him in their pretended joy, afraid to move against the grain.
 Shuffling the silverware, washing dishes during a summer day.  Mechanical birds fly by, while something just got caught in the garbage disposal.  The birds keep flying.  Knives are sharpened.  More soap to increase the bubbles that the birds and the glass like.  Unplug the drain, let the water flow down the country into the ocean.  Put the silverware away, the good shining crystal is talking back to you, screaming and pleading to be cleaned even more and more and more until there are none to be found in your sight.  Dreams are different.  They will get you later.  The birds, the good crystal will not be vanished in dreams!  With the afternoon comes rain, the tap is getting colder.  Winds usher in the absence of light.  Harder to see until you find yourself cleaning the floor.
Naïve sax and violin.  Deep rumbles punctuated by high pitched violin sharpening.  A rolling saxophone, down a hill during summer evening twilight.  Ascending; running back up, summersaults all the way down.  Happy not to know anything.  Ducks passing by.  Unknown to the world.
Taps.  Looking up, birds over head.  Washed in tides of light and cloud.  Through trees, over the tall grass, in the night.  Formation patterns.  Calls and chirps, singing high above everything.  The moon is big and luminous tonight.  Clouds breathing its light; the blankets of silvery water floating above the world.  They soar through the mist and cold hundreds singing above the clouded bed.  Looking up, clouds and calling late at night.  Unusual.  Echoes fly past and by.  Great swoops and circles, up and down, over and under, falling through the air, the moon.  Too free to feel the cold, but gravity pulls and fear is nowhere, only peace.  The tidal currents of light and nighttime air merge into the song, and into the world above.
Pin pricks of pointed light on concrete in the middle of the day.  Like lasers but not quite, it’s stretched and pulled from all points – one – in different directions each time.  Clanging and scribbling on the sidewalk with pointy things while a windup toy plays a tune behind.  Slow down to rest.  Shake the salt, stir the drink, taste, spit.  Two coughs drop in because the drink is for shit.  Another try?  Not prepared, but made up on the spot.




Home  About  Writings  Gallery  Music & Lyrics  Press  Contact