gravy
a meal is presented at table; at once, we will just know that it requires gravy.
gravy aids the digestion of a dry meal; but it always threatens to become the dominant flavour.
style is gravy. it must never obscure content, only enhance it; help it's assimilation into the 'body'.
we all understand, however, that we cannot solve a famine with a lorry-load of Bisto.
the second, that it contains very little in the way of a recognisable 'style'.
good.
because it's together in the manner of a conversation; not the awful, miserable, pompous 'dialogues' of Plato and his ilk; but a gentle, conversation, that might be had over dinner (so long as it doesn't take a dark turn, towards a 'symposium'), or at a common-or-garden-party, or even one of those phone-calls with a friend that one hasn't seen for a while.
this isn't even a turgid, weighty 'Chautauqua', in the method of Pirsig (although he seemed like a nice bloke, i have nothing against him); but i prefer being talked with, rather than talked at, as i'm fairly sure you do, yourself.
it's a , about something, and nothing; the notes are ones, that jump about in their order and significance, depending on how worked-up the last person to slam their magnetic, fridge-door 'medium' actually, momentarily, was.
it's a normal, subject-leaping, navel-gazing, full-eye-contact, spring-heeled, moribund-silenced, bar-stooled-and-tie-loosened, nobody-remembers-how-it-started, and-neither-of-us-cares-where-it's-going, mis-hearing-and-taking-offense, not-sure-how-many-they've-put-away kind of a conversation.
you wouldn't know that, though, from the dry husk, presented at the outset; that is, 'what-i-think-are-the-only-True-statements-that-one-can-make-about-Music-itself'.
i have called it Grand Universal Music (or GUM, for short), with what, i assure you, is atypical grandiloquence; in reality, i make myself vulnerable and humble, almost prostrate, before it's magnificent simplicity; as the result of this anti-hubris, i've uncapitalised it, as in gum.
it isn't a set of rules, but of criteria; and what follows is both explanatory and exploratory. In describing 'events', in the latter sections, the aim is to set out some possibilities and opportunities for both instrumental and machine-derived Music; but, at the same time, it's an attempt at connecting the simplicity of the Outside, with the simplicity of the Inside, via the simplicity of the Middle
it's often been said[citation needed!] that it's impossible to make original music, these days; i claim otherwise, and this is how to do it; or, at least, one way. Anyone can do this; it isn't just for 'creative types', (whatever that's supposed to mean), and it isn't the preserve of a 'select few', or 'the gifted'.
all it takes is a modicum of thought, and a place to play; and time, which seems to be the scarcest resource on the planet. Always.
oh.
...and this book, of course. far better ones exist, by far better authors; but this one has Douglas Adams' 'large, friendly letters' on the front.
as you'll soon see, footnotes don't exist, here. they're splattered all over the place, like forensic clues in a crime-scene. often, you can't figure out Whodunnem; i never can.
Fear not; for moistness emerges, post haste.
