Blots on the score - Trinity version - Science

Lately I've only wanted to listen to musicians. Not only what they compose and perform, but also what they write and say. Along the way, you ask yourself the question: what is this – “the last time” – when does it begin? A typical opening attracts attention and calls for responsibility. But responsibility dissolves in the June heat and drowns in poplar fluff.

My friend, teacher and colleague Lyosha Mamonov put forward an assumption regarding the unprecedented “poplar effect” this year. A few years ago (another “recently”), all the poplars in our park were carefully pruned in the style of Italian neorealism (see Antonioni b/w: he always has these ten-meter bald stump-trunks with a bark at the top, and industrial buildings in the background). This is called “crown shaping”: the more you cut, the better it grows. Time passed, and what seemed like a disabled stump turned into a bushy branch, a tuft, a whorl, and by this summer it was bursting with white caterpillar fluff with such intensity that even the eternal Moscow summer entertainment - repairing roads and laying new asphalt - seemed too labor-intensive, and technology retreated. It would be beautiful: asphalt with poplar inlay. Where else can you inhale something like this while crossing the streets, where else can you parade around like this when it cools down?

We sat in the poplar fluff, talking about this and that in between games of badminton and Frisbee with the surrounding children and their parents. I thought that I should ask Lyosha for some calligraphic masterpiece, decorate my next essay with it, let it add to the collection of oriental calligraphy that I am slowly collecting. Lyosha said that he would think about it, and we started talking about the Japanese tea ceremony (more often referred to as a “tea ceremony”), about how difficult all these matters are to describe verbally. Tea, music, calligraphy, so-called art in general... why in the scientific and humanities world have art historians long been in bad standing and are mistrusted by historians, for example? Or is that not true?

It is always dangerous to make such generalizations. “One more word and I’ll generalize you,” Vladimir Gandelsman once said. Then they showed a film made about him in New York: an elevated train rides, a plane flies in the sky, Volodya sits on a bench in Central Park and talks about poetry, reads something... What was the name of this movie? I spoke about generalization, that is, it was Volodya who said a phrase about generalization, and it stuck in my mind, became a mana , and I remember it all the time for the purpose and not for the purpose. It would seem that this is nonsense: the poet prohibits one of the main mental analytical operations - generalization. What remains? Specification? Something third?

Over time, I think I understood what it was all about. And I didn’t so much understand as I agreed, because I myself was already tired of generalized abstract concepts, which, being named in a generalized form, completely lose any properties. “He’s already bored at the door,” as we remember. Say “music”, or “poetry”... or this Soviet one, without authorship: “Do you like pop music?..” It’s not clear what is meant. Empty sound.

On the other hand, when I name a specific opus and say at what minute and second there is a passage in it that you want to listen to again and again, the matter will become clearer. But will the conversation continue, and, so to speak, among whom will it continue? “This spot is squeaking, and this line is moaning protractedly” (a made-up phrase from the discourse of one non-fictional artist). On the one hand, general phrases about nothing (essentially the same phatic communication ), on the other hand, subtle disputes at the expert-professional level - this is how the area of ​​what is happening in the so-called speech usage is outlined. In reality, there are continuous transitions and leaps: they abandoned this, they took up this. What were we talking about? Nobody remembers, they got distracted and stopped listening. Some people know how to speak (“broadcast”), regardless of whether they are listened to at all or not. I can't do that. And that’s why I prefer to remain silent. In the sense, do not resort to acoustic effects, except for the clatter of laptop keys or the “creaking of a pen.” But the feathers no longer creak, and the Chinese brushes have a soft and smooth stroke. And there is no onomatopoeic word in the Russian language to convey the sound of the brush touching as it slides over the rough or smooth surface of the “rice” paper, depending on your choice.

A writer I know and, in a sense, a mentor, dreamed of writing a thing in which nothing would happen. And all his creations are partly like this. And recently he admitted that now it is probably worth writing novels in the “old style”: with a bunch of details, details, types, characters, twists and turns, plot twists, all sorts of psychologism... “In the old style”, “in the late style” - Edward Said and Oe Kenzaburo said something important about this. It was probably even something of a debate at a distance. I learned about all this... from whom? That's right, everything from the same Yomota 1 , who is just a treasure trove, a collection of all sorts of similar things.

Damn collections! I was going to write on the topic of collections. But the thought went away, a week passed, and for some reason I wanted to talk about music, but that didn’t really work out either, the heat, the poplar, and so on, got in the way, due to a strange whim of movement following the brush. This essay was written in one breath. A motorcycle rumbled outside the window: a growing sound, a fading sound. Soundscape.

For the first time, the idea of ​​soundscape literally happened and took place in Tokyo in 2009. I stood at the railway bridge, along which electric trains rushed by at nanosecond-precise intervals. Cicadas were dying on the ginkgo trees nearby. The electric was layered on the cicada and vice versa, a duet and counterpoint arose in the spirit of the minimalists. Reich, Cage, ten Holt... I didn’t really know them at that time, everything was ahead, in this sense it was not the last time, but the first. I didn't have a tape recorder, but I'm sure someone else had the same idea - too obvious an acoustic observation - and one of the Japanese probably recorded it, sampled it...

Why am I so sure of this? Because a similar move is shown in the film “Cafe Lumiere” by Hou Xiaoxian. Because the last track on one of Otomo Yoshihide’s solo albums 2 is the only one played not solo, but as a duet, and then by pure chance: during recording, a ladybug swooped down on the studio microphone (I just can’t hear this defect, no matter how much I listen to it). Finally, Anton Batagov, in the wonderful text “Teapot” (booklet for the 1986 recording), admits that during his performance at the Tchaikovsky competition, a sparrow chirped in the hall, and the recording is published with his, the sparrow’s, kindest permission. The right accident does not spoil the right score. A random blot on a calligraphic masterpiece is part of the embodiment. The main thing is not to erase anything, not to fix it, leave it alone, don’t touch it. Hands off!

Alexander Belyaev

1 www.trv-science.ru/2026/06/tokoro-de/

2 neuguitars.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/otomo-yoshihides-guitar-solos/