UJAM ON TOAST

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(utopian vision?)

WRITTEN 1992: When I was in graduate school I built an instrument called theACOUSTISIZER . Half way through the program my advisor and mentor Richard Bunger retired. By default I was given his replacement even though he knew little about "Prepared Piano" (the subject of which Richard Bunger was an expert) and the basis and point of departure for the ACOUSTISIZER. His instructive contribution to my project was minimal and on the night of the premiere of the instrument, to a full house,(around 200 people) he stood up and responded to a goal I had written in the program notes. The goal said something lofty and naieve like how I wanted the instrument to bring people together and help generate world peace. So of course he asked how the instrument was going to help bring about world peace. I stood there dumb founded, in front of all my friends, relatives, class mates / inmates, like some kind of adulation sycophant idiot!

It's been nearly 30 years since that night but I think I finally have an answer or at least a theory or maybe just a proposal:

You know how flocks of birds, schools of fish, swarms of bees, move and dance across the sky and through the water together, in unison. It almost seems as if some kind of energy connects them all together. If you've ever been in a jam session or drum circle something similar happens.

Once you find the groove you seem to just fall into something. You know where things are going without thinking about it. Time and space seems to be under a spell even kinda controllable or predictable. Sounds and events seem to happen visually before you hear them. Everyone's tapped into some kinda life energy force flowing intuitively like the schools of birds fishes and bees. Directions change, you feel it, you're in it, engulfed by it. And then it ends, like a wave flowing over you and out of you projected into space in all directions through the cracks in the walls under the doors absorbed by everything and everybody on contact. Then you look around at your fellow jammers smiling, feeling sort of invigorated, kinda bonded, accidentally closer, maybe even friends now.

That's it! Engaging people in the act of making noise together and bonding for a brief moment in time and space.