Music For Imaginary Products

Jude has invented the perfect place to get away from it all… He calls his score Music for Imaginary Products Hurrican Home... and this is the theme tune for the turmoil of today, both real and metaphorical, (I think).  He begins with a gladiator and ends with a nod to the big bad wolf huffing and puffing.  those pointing fingers make me think of a particular figure in the news now too. and we are just bobbing buoys.  I know I feel that way.

Brilliant mailing, Jude.  Thank you!

You don't know what you need until you have it. Subscription Opus

Once upon a time I was on Jude's mailing list, regularly. So I am delighted to be able to share this Subscription Opus! Jude has a phenomenal imagination and way of expressing it, with scores - that blows my mind. 

There's a place on the English coast, called Southwold where they have those mad pier exhibits with fantastical machines that do things you don't need.  Jude's egg machine is something like that, and the music for Virtually Free Range Chicken takes some of those words and things we associate with chickens and puts them to music or makes music from them.  

And there are lots of surprises. While I would think that the punch line (spoken as fast as possible) would support the use of free range chickens… I am reminded that they have a bigger footprint. Do you eat chicken chassé? I had a pen name of Galina Poole (back in the day)! Great good fun! Sadly the fox got all our chickens, again.

Subscription Opus has me Singing E 3D.

In the spirit of chaotic rearrangement (look carefully at the way Jude number and cross numbers his movements) my computer rearranged the postcards that I had input in a certain order, tying in with the roman numerals, for some reason, and randomised them. I suspect Jude will be pleased.  Or maybe he won't.  I can't begin to pretend to know EXACTLY what goes on in Jude's head, let alone his blesseed corpse.  I love the reconfigured bodies that point to the addressee. 

In a frankly literal way, I have scanned the reverse of the postcards together, as a unit so that they spell Jude's surname.  What I noticed that I have never noticed before was that even though it spells Weirmeir, my brain wanted to read Wiremire. But that's not the point.  The point is that Jude wants us to sing the letters of his name with a chosen clef, at  a personal tempo,  with a particular vowel and a meter tha works in a venue. 

For this task you better read music not just acoss the page but around the page, pictographically, with all sorts of rules. Great stuff!

Let them Sing Cake - Opus 52 - Jude Weirmeir

I haven't had mail from Jude in a while.  Jude hasn't had a portion of his quota of mail from me lately so I am doubly happy to get this rather delightful musical notion. Look at the top left stamp-like image of singing cake! It's such an oxymoron what he's trying to get me to, to take a perfectly good cake and get it printed onto so that I can sing over it.  In my opinion singing is even more suspect than blowing out candles when your talking about germs.  Look at the gusto that guy is singing with and then you analyse the hoops he wants me to jump through while singing. 'Using a stright stick the length of the keyboard sound all keys together'. REALLY? I won't even go into the fecal oral issue.

Still it's a great concept and a pretty score!  Thank you Jude, as ever.

Spellbound by Jude's (not so) little ZINE

It must be so disappointing when you mail a big fat zine in good time from the west coast of California to a little island in the North Sea and the recipient doesn't open it on time, because she refuses to try to make sense of what she gets until she has some time. 

I am not a really keen scanner, but I am diligent, so upon opening Jude's magical spellbinding zine, I set about to reproduce it for you all to see. Now that that's done, I have looked with some care at its contents and am overwhelmed by the wizardry of it all!  There is so much to cackle at and sing to! Rather than hold your hand through the labyrinth of the fun house, I'll let you all sing your way down the hallowed halls! Thank  you, Jude and so, so sorry for missing the debut on Halloween!

Meet me at Dan Lynch or La Jolla

 Our daughter joined a choir again.  I think it's a Greek choir in Glasgow. Our son doesn't have time this year; his schedule, as a junior doctor, is unpredictable.  Although I don't play any instruments and don't belong to a choir, the practice of music is something I esteem, and that esteem seems to have translated to our children.  What I'm trying to say is that if I were near Jude Weirmeir, I'm sure someone in our family would be high-tailing it to the corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Genesse to Learn the Blues. Would they be singing or playing them?

I love that concept, learning the blues, can you REALLY teach that? I thought the blues was embodied. 

When I lived in NYC I used to go to a place called Dan Lynch to listen to the blues. I understand it has closed.  That makes me sad.  I used to get right up close, shoes filling with sawdust. I also adore the puns on this mailing: the cow horns and 'meet'; 'fame and fortune guaranteed, the antithesis of singing the blues, And also the fab aesthetic above and below.

I am reminded that if I don't get my skates on and send some mail art to Jude, he will give up on me!
Huge thanks as ever.  My excuse this time is I am obsessed my Donna Tart's The Goldfinch.

a-maze of music Jude Wiermeir Issue 72

A few years ago I was part of a charity that worked with young people and teachers to reflect on and engage with growing and art. One of my wonderful colleagues was a green-fingered permaculture specialist who knew a lot about mazes.  We discovered a school in the Midlands that has its own labyrinth that they use to 'graduate' the students, and went to visit it.  Mazes and labyrinths are thinking spaces for me.  One of our collaborations was with the Royal Institution and we played pots of plants which we arranged on a stave.  'We' was not me.  I just helped to encourage the others to do these things. We had the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the collaboration and they read the pot music and played energetic pieces in response. An environment can be the catlyst for exciting music!

I suspect Jude's Maze Music is equally revealing. I wonder if he imagines carrying an instrument or simply singing as we walk. Would everyone have the same tune to sing or would there be rounds, or squares?  I am also curious whether the sound would change as you went around a corner.  I guess Jude's view is looking down on the notes.  For diminuendo would you bend low and stand tall to make a louder sound? I wonder about the colour too. Is this a comment on musical colour?  So provocative!  Thank you.