“This a faded aftermath of some little drumming y’all can’t hear.” A poem concerning the terror of being valued, drinking to the music, and improvisation as a “concertized thing,” in response to a DJ set by Kevin Beasley.

whatnot to the music

by Fred Moten

Digital Project Published on August 11, 2015
-:--  /  -:--

This a recording. Trill mark the terror of being valued. The bottom confirm without signaling live and let, tap and type, footwork and fingerwork, needlework and noodling, comping and camping how that solo put together. See us tip past meaning lighght, lit with an extra sigh? See you can’t say, see by flash in movement, see that coughgh, is that the new thingng, has new shit has been brought to lighght, man, see, see, turn noise out a fuzzy head. Falsettoed bottom see the error of being valued. Say make me see it again.

Repetition without a pulse, when the pulse is new in every instant, still be pulse. They be drinking and whatnot to the music. I had to wait until the picking was good. The smoke and everything—it’s not a concertized thing. Can there be such a thing as a concertized thing? I be drinking and whatnot to the music. I be drinking and whatnot to the music. Whatnot to the music. What’s not to the music? You had to be fighting not to play in these clubs. My favorite things fight concertization. Concertization is like conceptualization only tighter. It wants to be concretization, like a piece for four hands, three of which can’t tremor. Dana Ward says that “Fun, Fun, Fun” is the musique concrète of patricide. Concert music is the fun, fun, fun of patricide. Mingus want to kill the phantom of the opera. He want to play the cello for all it’s worth. He want to play the drag mix but he can’t mix thang. He want to play the disc coquette.

When Marshall Allen’s people beat the air, transcription faded into document. I heard them people beat the air. This a faded aftermath of some little drumming y’all can’t hear. It’s a time lag between what I’m playing and what y’all hear. This a live in concert thing, when live fades and concert flays, frayed out into vinyl, but what you holding, as you know, is neither here nor now. I was playing but you couldn’t hear me, like you were Glenn Gould smelling himself underneath that vacuum. It was probably the maid vacuuming, laughing at him falling in the sound well, where the sound can’t get out, outta sound so he can feel abstract between the noose’s theses, like you were Frankie Knuckles in caress, the sugar ditch beneath the house’s vacuum, no values, nothing to say, mute beyond report, muted in delay, make you wait on make me wait, Nate said, moved in homeless core, changed in thrash laugh, lored, black flagged till.

Please rotate your device.