TWO PATHS—

One returns
the other does not
and I still don’t know
which one leads home

TEXT is from my THE LITTLE CLAVIER, free ebook (633 pages) at http://picture-poems.com/tlc/the-little-clavier.pdf

Avian soloists, recorded from April through July around 1400m in dry-side Northeast OREGON montane mixed conifer forest (Doug-fir, Grand fir, Larch, Ponderosa pine create the acoustics), are: Hermit Thrush, Mountain Bluebird, American Robin, and Swainson’s Thrush.

What I sense as the spiritual/philosophical poverty of present western musical culture—whether the toxic commercial sounds normalized by predatory capitalism and social media, or the faux-African minimalist music of the percussion ensemble in the concert hall, or the last vestiges of post World War II European mindless, vainglorious complicatedness of the runaway  intellectualism of Schönberg, Stockhausen or Ferneyhough—is caused, at least in part, by our near total fragmentation from Nature. Not just nature as wilderness, but also nature as sound.

This is a little prose-poem meditation, on a new way of hearing, sensing, and perhaps composing many-voiced or polyphonic music.  We are not going to discover it in New York City, or Berlin, I think, but rather as we leave the isolation of our studios and enter the marvelous unknown of the pathless land. 

IMAGE: KRAG PEAK RIDGE, with Whitebark pines, at 2600m, South Wallowas, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OREGON.

TWO PATHS, a little 17-step poem in a polyphonic avian sounscape…

Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on X

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

TWO PATHS, a little 17-step poem in a polyphonic avian sounscape…

Cliff Crego