The First Annual Electro-Acoustic Music Festival
The future begins now. Correction...
The future began Thursday 6 November. The opening ceremony for the future took place 10 miles North of the San Fernando Valley - one exit before Six Flags Magic Mountain- at the California Institute for the Arts, Cal Arts.
The first night of Cal Arts’ THE FIRST ANNUAL ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC MUSIC FESTIVAL- a small academic series of concerts highlighting the work of composers who utilize computers-heralded the launching of a new era and a new time. And let me explain how the future sounds- it sounds like futility, which makes me very comfortable.
For all the technological innovation and possibility inherent in the coming days, the only music the people who embrace this modernization want to make are disjointed tones alternating between bedlam, ecstasy and boredom induced confusion. And if my belief that the music performed by the artists at the ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC MUSIC FESTIVAL precedes and predicts the future, then all the bedlam, ecstasy, and boredom induced confusion in my first 22 years has been good preparation for the future, which began last Thursday.
I was amazed by how beautiful the whole set-up was. A huge empty hall with only about thirty chairs and two huge pieces of white cloth which focused the performance area. Behind the one chair and music stand that functioned as I stage, two symmetrical staircases spilt to an upper floor some 75 feet above. The woman performing when I approached the scene looked as passive and disinterested as her audience did. Her music sounded like the score backing some very uninteresting conflict between man and machine or nature and man. On stage, she slightly adjusted the small mixing board on her lap and the sound crashed and disintegrated to the sounds of elves speaking backwards.
Then something extremely beautiful happened. A genuinely captivating female art student approached me.
I looked smart and plain then, which I read is the hippest way to look right now. My khaki colored Dickies pants matched my khaki colored Dickies shirt. A dark brown belt defined my waist and matched my dressy causal shoes. And my brown Dickies mechanic’s jacket fit snug slightly zipped up. My brown baseball cap gave the ensemble the feeling of closure.
"Hi," she said, "have you seen my friends? A guy and a girl, the girl has on a red shawl.
Wow. I felt like BAD ASS JAMES who doesn’t approach women. He just waits for women to come to him like he’s waiting on bids from contractors. And they come all the time; when he’s on his way to work, at the cleaners. Wow. BAD ASS JAMES must feel good.
"No. I’m sorry, I haven’t. I’ll keep a look-out for them, though," I said.
"Good." Then she walked away. Good? That’s a strange thing to say, I thought.
She walked away effortlessly or in some other way that represents that is a cliché’ way to describe beauty.
I sat down and listened to some more computer music, dazed for a second then focused on finding the girl in the red shawl. I swiveled in my folding chair. No girl with the red shawl. Time to get up. Time to look around.
I always fantasize about talking to female art students. In my fantasy I usually bust some unbelievably perceptive witty comment. In reality- when it actually happens -I generally sputter some random attempt at humor that usually receives a response of an annoyed, "What?" If I found her friend this female art student would practically be indebted to me; I would have the opportunity to make three or four comments that would increase tremendously the likelihood of me saying something cool or at least coherent.
I walked around the huge main building of Cal Arts without a clue where a girl with a red shawl might gravitate. I became suddenly fixated on the students who attend Cal Arts- the school that is hosting the inauguration of the future. They must be people with a profound understanding of the future, I thought. From them I gather many perceptions about what the future might hold:
1. Lots of retro looks 2. An androgynous quality of self-presentation that looks better on females than males 3. A focus on apathy or an interest in seeming so off and such a caricature that you are perceived as apathetic.
I walked down a staircase and noticed a sign. There are a grip of art openings tonight,’ the sign read. A grip means a lot.
I looked at bulletin boards, which presented incredible opportunities for the students who attend Cal Arts. Positions or internships for artists, computer programmers, and writers from huge entertainment firms speckled the corkboard. The future has a grip of opportunity, I thought.
I wandered into a photography studio and found profoundly interesting interpretations but no girl in a red shawl. Around me dreamy female art students and self-possessed male art students milled and joked with each other. They all seemed so together and I felt so alone. It was great. It was like being in high school again.
Cal Arts has a theater donated by the Disney Family and walls with donors names like GEFFEN, SPEILBERG and BARRY DILLER. The walls have announcements taped to them such as you have to provide your own transportation to the screening of Anastasia- the animated movie sensation still weeks from release. Big interests obviously have big interest in making Cal Arts the nest of the future. And the best part is all of the students seem so typically untypical. If these aren’t high school outcasts gone right- or at least that very ’different’ cheerleader or ball player- than they sure have affected that look of displacement. And they all catch my eye but still I see no girl with a red shawl.
The main building of Cal Arts, as my exploration passed an hour in length, became more and more the museum of my dreams. I opened a door and I was in somebody’s art studio- alone with his or her art just like them. I opened a door and I was in a computer lab watching people edit video. I opened a door and I was in a huge library doused with funky intellectual books, art books and a record collection that has its own shelf for Impulse label Jazz records.
I walked down a corridor to an art opening with a band playing. There are three people in the band. There’s a drummer, a guitarist and a guy playing a homemade contraption melding a guitar with an old keyboard. This guy’s also messing with a wood cabinet of mixing boards that is operating as a synthesizer. The band is called WILBUR POST. And there’s the captivating genuine female art student, and she’s heading this way.
She gets close to me, cuffs her hand on her lips and shouts, "Have you seen my friends?
This moment felt very right. The band was rambling and thrashing. People were milling. There’s something mystical about seeing anti-social people in cliques and sullen people sweating. I soaked it all in for a second and then cuffed my hand and stage whispered back, "No. I’m sorry."
"Could you get on your walkie-talkie and ask if anyone else has seen them?"
"My walkie-talkie?"
She paused and soured her face, "You’re not a security guard?"
I shook my head, "No," and made a sad-clown face. She looked at me for a second, turned and walked into the future. And she looked pissed.
