electric hearing and the human heart

i wish to refer here
to a recent experience
of stage performance
which proved quite disturbing
for "me" at least

insofar as the event
even the performance
was not about me at all
it begs the question
why should this matter??

upon alighting on a stage
near the tucson museum of art
i was presented with
a flurry of technical activity
relating to the microphones amplifiers
and soundboard which presumes
to control the sound to an optimal level
for the listening pleasure of folks
gathered to hear
as we began our sound checks
there was an immediate explosion of sound
coming from my instrument
then there was almost nothing
for the first two pieces
presented tastefully by
john mcgill
i was all but deaf to anything
but a loud and misdirected sound
having nothing to do with what i
thought i was playing

given the opportunity to play
a delta blues version with slide guitar
of a song john wrote
i asked for a direct mike to the guitar
that seemed to work out alright
but i was left to concentrate on what
seemed to me to be a sound that
was dissociated from my playing

i have no way of knowing
what the sound heard in the audience
was like

on another occasion i listened from the back of the audience
near the sound man
and saw that he was consistently troubled
with the imperfections of what he was about
and sat wondering what he might be doing wrong
communication from the stage seemed to suggest
that while the things weren't working perfectly
good enough was good enough
let the show flow
it would appear that a seasoned performer
who knew the glitches and foibles of electronics
could in effect enter into the conversation
of optimal possibilites for sound
and thereby acquire something at least
aesthetically adequate
to whatever the performance was meant to be

i on the other hand could only betray
my ignorance and bewilderment
with the world of amplified sound
a state of mind with which i am becoming
more and more at ease

all of this feeds into my philosophical musings
about the conveyance of music
and why we "stage" anything

this moment in its description here
does well to be contrasted
with another musical moment in time
a song circle conducted
by john mcgill the very next day
with about 10 people all
with guitars in hand
sharing songs each had composed

live strings
twanging pulling at my very heart
strings
in the intimacy of the morning
with but a few listeners sitting
amid the players of tunes

here the music flowed with ease
and honesty from heart to heart
there was some polite accompaniment
some gentle harmonies abounded

where did the music happen
most genuinely???

there beneathe the shade of a tree
in the yard of an old house
in tucson
where our attentiveness went
from song to song with the ease
and joy of decent conversation
and shared laughter

music must be felt on the skin