At the moment I'm unable to deliver a proper meditation on the rhythmic listener. I'll get back to it. For now I need to mention that if you're going to be in Seattle you need to check out the Jason Parker Quartet, all of whom are sensitive listeners.
A passage in Nancy's Listening serves to amplify an idea of Lefebvre's that rhythm requires another time besides or outside of time in order to meditate upon time. Here's Nancy:
We should linger here for a long while on rhythm: it is nothing other than the time of time, the vibration of time itself in the stroke of a present that presents it by separating it from itself, freeing it from its simple stanza to make it into scansion (rise, raising of the foot that beats) and cadence (fall, passage into the pause). Thus, rhythm separates the succession of the linearity of the sequence or length of time: it bends time to give it to time itself, and it is in this way that if folds and unfolds a "self." If temporality is the dimension of the subject (ever since Saint Augustine, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger), this is because it defines the subject as what separates itself, not only from the other or from the pure "there," but also from the self: insofar as it waits for itself and retains itself, insofar as it desires (itself) and forgets (itself), insofar as it retains, by repeating it, its own empty unity and its projected or . . . ejected [protojée, ou . . . jetée] unicity.
(p. 17, Nancy's emphases)
A quick thought. In addition to thinking about the methectic quality of listening, which Nancy invites, we should mull over the improvisatory attribute of (contribution to) methexis. Where is the methexis in a trumpet full of my emptiness?
Labels: Jason Parker, Lefebvre, listening, Nancy, rhythm, subject, temporality, trumpet
2 Comments:
I'm still trying to digest that quote, but I dig it as far as I understand it. Rhythm and time are, of course, vital concerns for the improviser, and each member of the band needs to figure out how to make his/her own time gel with the overall time-feel of the band.
Thanks for coming out to Lucid to see us. Hope we'll see you again soon.
Hi, Jason. Nancy's writing is typically difficult but digable. Listening is no exception. You spend a lot of time reading and rereading the same passages, following long digressions through footnotes. Along the way you have many epiphanies so you feel rewarded. That's been my experience so far.
We don't make it over to Seattle very often but we'll definitely be following you. Thanks for making music.
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