Hallock Hill

As if it needs to be creative. The essential aspect of so-called creativity has always seemed more about reacting to an impulse than carrying out a plan. The plan itself may simply be an idea, and while one could leave it at that, the realization of the idea takes on a level of the pre-ordained. Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing hits on this over and over. Invest in a concept. And leave it at that. Or try to put the concept into practice and make a work of art. That work of art will never be the realization of the concept, just one of a multitude of possible realizations. Even if the concept appears simple: record a track that is four minutes long and only uses objects found in the kitchen. The rubric is clear, the plan concise. But within that frame are endless possibilities.

Improvisation has gone far in the direction of expression, and not far enough in the direction of absence. Identity matters, where an extraction of self should matter more. It isn’t about who you are, but about who you are not, or at least not yet. Where that concept can take us is endless as well, and has no boundaries in time or space. We don’t keep reading Shakespeare for the plots. We read him for his language. The materials of art are as important as the product. And once it is product, it can be traded, shared, sold, bought. Where some speak of the expression of improvisation, there is also (and for me more intriguingly) the exposure of the stuff of life, whether it is word-stuff, paint-stuff, guitar string-stuff, or wind-stuff. Those things have identity too, and get out and beyond the so-called “self” of the improvisor. They also turn the “self” of the work of art into three dimensions. Digitization cannot destroy the experience of a piece of sculpture, or even act as a place holder for it. And once you conceive of all works of art as sculpture, it is hard to accept the digital’s thingness as substitute. After all, we aren’t satisfied looking at the code that contains the digital information that unleashes Hendrix through our speakers. We want the uncoded.

You can read volumes about John Coltrane’s celebrated embouchure and how it affected his tone. It must have affected everything he did, in some way. It would seem as likely that the way Vermeer held his paintbrush affected how paint was applied, as well as how he held his fork when he ate. These were part of their codes, but what person experiences them now? Do we care that the LP says “John Coltrane” on the cover, or that the painting sits next to a museum label reading “Vermeer?” We do as validation of something beyond our own “expertise” and “judgment.” We are free to accept these things in a different way with the word attached to the piece of art. The label joins the work to its code and code-maker and gives us a cultural mechanism with which to move forward. What about moving up and down, rather than back and forth, without the LP jacket, without the museum label. What if someone handed you a poem and you had to read it, bare on the page.

All of this above is just another improvisation, tapped in sequence. Really, without. I’m not here. Or up there.

The code to my track ‘The Miller’: The Miller code