Why Do the Heathen Rage?

My goodness. I depart to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with my
parents and return to a veritable geyser of gainsaying from Mr.
McLaren; It would appear that a fair number of the rest of you have
dealt in an interesting and straightforward way with the vituperative
vortex/Philippic plume, so I'll merely mention that Brian has about
as nuanced a grasp of the notions of sociolinguistics as he's brought
to bear previously in the notion of Canonicity. There is, thankfully,
*no* single fulminatory being who is free to use his/her copy of the
lexicon as something with which to beat others; definitions of all sorts
are constantly negotiated - meanings drift and change according to all
sorts of contexts and even among members of the communities who
would generally agree on a given meaning. Some of the ongoing and
exceedlingly interesting discussions here on notions of terminology
and strategies for naming and notation are, in fact, examples of that
very thing in action. Most, if not all, of the sociolinguists with whom
I am socially acquainted (they can be a fun lot. One of my wife's students
is looking at the way that Dutch acquired the reflexive verb by looking
at letters, diaries and municipal records in the City of Haarlem's
population. As a side effect, Jen regales us with tales of the seige of
Haarlem as recorded by the common folk in addition to the more "hard"
research side of it) seem to view that kind of drift and fuzziness *not*
as evidence of some dreadful inexactitude which must be cleansed to
assure conceptual purity, but as the kind of sparks thrown off the
great Catherine Wheel of social construction - be it art, or music, or
new ways of telling fish stories. As the estimable Mr. Lyon has pointed
out so succinctly, one of the reasons that John Cage remains a central
figure in the musical and aesthetic practice of this century is that he
provides some singular examples of the ways that one can puah and
tease the "certainties" of definition to reveal new ways of thinking or
working, or to reveal previously unrecognized modalities which
situate themselves in what seems to be "common" practice. Indeed,
one might suggest that some of us might hope to see ourselves as
being engaged in a similar kind of work - and I, for one, remain
convinced that the most productive way to engage in that dialogue
involves the belief that the best aesthetic situation is one in which
*no one* [not even me :-) ] has the last word. With every outburst
of the sort I've seen from him recently, I grow more convinced that
some part of the poverty of Brian's delusional edifice is that he seems
only to understand music as some kind of zero-sum game; it's the
only explanation I can come up with for his seeming desire to replace
one sort of orthodoxy he despises with his own. To quote Pete Townsend,
"Meet the new boss/same as the old boss." I think it's sad.

And who on earth taught him to define "algorithmic composition" in
the way that he does? Sure wasn't Bill Schottstaedt. It *sure* wasn't
anyone I ever sat at the feet of....

With regards,
Gregory Taylor

_
I would go to her, lay it all out, unedited. The plot was a simple one,
paraphrasable by the most ingenuous of nets. The life we lead is our only
maybe. The tale we tell is the must that we make by living it. [Richard
Powers, "Galatea 2.2"] Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI



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I don't know what's more embarassing: When Brian attacks me as a JI Fascist
Thug or when he praises me and my work in such an overwrought fashion.


(I'm all for his suggestion of people sending extra money to the JIN,
though. ;-) )


--DBD
==========================================================================
David B. Doty jinetwk@dnai.com
Just Intonation Network http://www.dnai.com/~jinetwk
Phone:(415) 824-5325 535 Stevenson Street
FAX: (415) 864-8726 San Francisco, CA 94103


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