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These are the liner notes for my upcoming release 2010 for CJR
records. This essay is a true joint effort between Mario Rechtern
and myself. Some aspects are like conversations we've had and our
reflections on the musicians with whom we work including actual
descriptions of the music. Benjamin talked quite passionately about
the Argonauts and their fear of the music of the sirens. Defamation
of beauty is the underlying subject. I hope you will understand
ROCKS IN THE SEA
Mario Rechtern reeds
Eric Zinman piano
Didier Lasserre drums
Benjamin Duboc bass
Recorded in Paris, May 2009
"Rocks in the Sea" is like the classic stories we dream about: Jason
and the Argonauts, Iliad, The Odyssey, Ovid's Metamorphosis etc....
There is no battle field, no competition.....only enthusiasm for our
shared appetite and journey together.
There is an aspect of Benjamin and why Mario initially called him
the 'rock in the sea', not all of us. He has this very firm way of
making statements about anything that he says concerning his
emotions or emotion evolved plans/projects, that does not allow
contradiction or doubt.
Benjamin agreed and upon hearing the music he insisted it is "ROCKS
in the SEA".
To some neither seems desirable..................neither the
argonauts, who are led by Jason on a bootless journey, nor the
sirens.........but if this "rocks in the sea" refers to our
conviction and the way we yield and wield our interactive force by
being clear in what we play and feeling the weight in the ocean as
it moves around us then maybe I understand.
The sirens are a song that we hear after which we're never the same
again. That's the way evolution goes and some people are damned
afraid of growing ........ If the sirens are a consuming aspect of
our desires as men are led to their death by this attraction, then
like all journeys and investigations we develop strength and
strategies against that which consumes us, filling us with more
substance and weight of character in the struggles of life.
Men fear matriarchal power, perhaps this was the divide in
civilization between the southern and northern Mediterranean."more
sex than man can handle"is exactly the term written on patriarchal
flags against matriarch powers embodied in the sirens and many
nymphs, but can women handle this surplus of sexual power that they
have?
Some describe the bodies of the sirens as faces of women with bodies
of monsters with the bones of their prey at their feet while others
describe the sirens as birds of paradise who sing with astonishing
beauty and attraction. What is one's gold can be another's poison.
.....The idea that when Orpheus sang his poetry, the trees and rocks
bent and gathered closer to hear him .......shows that poetry once
yielded great power.
That's where I want to go to.-- poetry has so much power that it can
neutralize them fears about unknown powers of sexual sovereignty
within these so called "scary" archaic women and neutralize means to
give them a direction versus better and more subtle communication:
the trees and rocks gathered closer to hear him!
That's what I call cooperation. And if the rocks gather closer it is
rocks that open up. We musicians try to ply what is inside the rocks
, not their outside shape. We try to get into the things and people.
Inside the sirens are human as everyone else.
This fear of sirens by the Jason Argonauts has a racial and
xenophobic quality: to trash them as bad and ugly and dangerous,
what is unknown, strange and powerful and liquify it,"seduced by
sirens or Circe or other nymphs to more sex than men can
handle....."
These men might have been led to the need to control the sexual
power of these archaic mythological female figures and their own
paranoiac phantasms about womanhood of ancient matriarch systems
reaching into the Mediterranean world having parted on the trip to
patriarch modernity of the Iliad,the Odyssey and the whole
Mediterranean ancient Greek colourful half god heroes mythology
(half gods- legends like Hercules etc ).
And this incredible poetic output of these times which came to an
end with the written text, originally only narrations traded from
mouth to mouth, stand for,.....
Well it is not even that scary, as the "poor male" overwhelmed with
so much sex he cannot handle, puts them to trash--these women-- to
ugliness and insatiability: there is NOT MUCH SEX.
NOT MORE THAN MEN EVER COULD HANDLE, BUT AS MUCH AS these hopeless
men without a solid centre are TRYING TO PUT into.Trying to grab for
possession and being rejected/ eaten.Thats the clue of that story.
There is temptation to EROS (not necessarily sex) by these
women,which must NOT LEAD TO SEX since Eros is life energy that
stands against the death bringing energy of these Argonauts,
protagonists of the coming patriarch wartime machinery which did not
end up to these days.
This hippy slogan make love not war says it clearly and also the
mistake: it is not about making love it is about LIVING, where love
-not making love- is a red thread going through.- the stimulus and
fruity juice of life.- the alternative of power, (Pentesilea tried
to stop this power war man business by denying any sex as long as
there is this war business since this is the only language men do
understand.
When I remember what we heard at Benjamin's place, there is this
thing in my mind of this very excessive saxophone part while you
were rolling in the ocean on piano and Benjamin was moving the beams
of the ship and Didier was stirring the foams of the sea,threading
its depth.... it sounded like the ship drowning any minute turning
over and getting swallowed by the sea and its torments, breaking
down,as the lines of the horn were going up and down and under but
at the end coming out safely yet by surprise there where the sea
suddenly calmed and straightened out, rescued by the sailors
teamwork....the authentic Argonauts of the moments of the poetic
dream....
So this is a perfect example of what I wrote already earlier on new
language collaborative about drowning and rescued by drums cello
piano and love . This is no program music , but these text visions
are instant composition cryptics passing through my/our mind
provoked by stories we tell each other before playing and which take
possession of us, each one in a different way....
While playing and identifying with these energies we ride on or are
possessed by being tuned in.- moments where i am so thankful of help
and presence of you being companions sailing through the open music
seas,to hold on me and hold me on with, for the vessel to pass its
adventurous roll through the straits of sea (meeresenge) avoiding
its rocks in the way by being the rock themselves made of hope and
confidence in unison TOGETHERNESS ... etc etc the pirates still are
onto these days to whatever the future may bring....". composed and
edited by Mario Rechtern and Eric Zinman, additional editing by Lo
Galluccio
Eric
Zinman
=
studio234@ericzinman.com
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