Spontaneous Grace – a testimonial to Pauline Oliveros at 80 ...

Spontaneous Grace – a testimonial to Pauline Oliveros at 80Michael Century, May 10, 2012Composer, improviser, performer, performance artist, instrument builder,software designer, DIY hardware hacker, feminist icon, essayist, theorist,New York Times op-ed contributor, ace softball pitcher, martial arts expert,music philosopher, champion of the disabilities movement, humanitarian,foundation director, revered teacher, deep listener… And last but by nomeans least, warm and generous colleague.I begin this testimonial to Pauline Oliveros with a simple list of attributes, toindicate that she is not just a woman of parts; but a woman who bringstogether many parts in a particular way: as a multiplicity (from the Latinmultiplex, consisting of many elements in a complex relationship). I’ll comeback to this idea shortly.First I will speak of Pauline as a colleague, in the Department of the Artshere at Rensselaer. Her classes, research seminars, advising, participationin graduate critiques and thesis committees enrich the lives of all touched bythem. She infuses the normal routines of academia with her own specialvalues– empathy and rigor, wisdom and spontaneity, generosity and grace.Her transformative influence on countless students around the world islegendary. Recently we have embarked on the challenging project ofconceiving a new undergraduate major in music, premised on a 21 st centurymusicianship: combining theory and practice, composition andimprovisation; technology and new scientific knowledge of perception andcognition – a vision of 21 st century musicianship that you would look hardamong current music conservatories or music departments to find even an

inkling of. So as a colleague, there could nothing more inspirational than tohave the very embodiment of your vision sitting amongst you. Paulinemakes it necessary for us to rise toward a high standard, to be in a way betterthan ourselves.Now to go back some decades, 31 years to be precise, when I first met withPauline. It was at the Banff Centre in Canada, where we had the privilege ofbringing Pauline for an experimental workshop on ImprovisationalComposition. It was my first glimpse of performance art – she collaboratedwith Linda Montano and the young artists in the program to create a feministmusical Cinderella. Also this was my first look into group improvisationand sonic meditation. Word about her week-long residency got out, andpeople came from all over, to share in the experience. So I was introducedto the astonishing power of her presence, the unique connections betweenspirituality and musicality, the power to bridge capacities and abilitiesthrough art. Here was something challenging and profound, and it markedme even if I didn’t really grasp the significance at the time: an open kind ofmusical process and form, elevating listening itself to participation.I spoke earlier of Pauline’s attributes and roles as a multiplicity. In using thatword I am thinking of the way philosophers have had two ways of talkingabout the relationships between many elements. There can be multiplicitiesthat are discrete, and those that are continuous. The discrete multiplicitydivides things up into non-overlapping elements, each separated from theother, quantitative, spatial. In the continuous multiplicity, borders betweenelements are porous, they inter-penetrate, flow into one another. Thecontinuous multiplicity is durational, occupying time, not space.

I think of Pauline’s many roles and achievements as the second kind ofmultiplicity, qualitative, continuous, durational, and this is also at the core ofher deep listening philosophy and practice. In a provocative article, about10 years ago, on “quantum improvisation”, Pauline developed the idea thatquote "Improvisation is creative problem solving and is a portal to quantumthinking – thinking in more than one state simultaneously." unquote Herewe see the futurist in Pauline, the artist always eager to understand theleading edge of scientific knowledge – who is not only fearless in the wayshe appropriates new technologies into her artistic work, but in the way sheenvisages the capability of the human mind and body for evolutionaryexpansion.When I think of Pauline against the long arc of music and cultural history, Ithink of two strands – one is the lineage of the American musical maverick,which is near and familiar and almost entirely male; the other the femalemusical visionary, which is less familiar and perhaps more distant preciselybecause women composers and musicians so often were written out ofhistory, or their talent was not allowed to flourish. Speaking of theAmerican mavericks – Ives, Cowell, Varese, Partch, Nancarrow, Cage –in the literature there is certain trope about them - fearless, pioneering,ruggedly individualistic, iconoclastic; and then I stop to re-consider. Takethe word iconoclast: to shatter a holy image – an act of breaking asunder.What if we were to flip the terms to find something more appropriate: notthe visual, but the sonic; sonus; not to break but to reconcile or bringtogether: to make an accord, the root of which is to bring to the heart;therefore, sonaccordia, to bring sounds together in the heart; not

iconoclasm, not a shattering, but a bringing together of sounds in the heart.So can it be any accident that such an artist, a sonaccordist, plays theaccordion?About the other long strand, let’s consider that distant mistress of music andthe spirit, Hildegard von Bingen, composer, mystic, theologian, author, whoflourished in the Medieval Age, in the time of classical liberal arts, whenmusic was a fundamental aspect of learning at large, alongside mathematics,astronomy as well as philosophy. Much like Pauline.Among her many accolades, I will single out just two, as particularlyrevealing. First the William Schuman prize, given 2 years ago by ColumbiaUniversity – uptown - , the first time to a woman. Second the John Cageprize this year – downtown – taken together a pairing of awards that revealsin a nutshell the breadth of Pauline’s influence and impact. On the occasionof the Schuman prize, I wrote.Dear PaulineYour accordion spoke to me this morning. The deep bass tones of theinstrument you’ve been loaning me mellowed as I held a single low Findefinitely. As you had suggested, I was listening for the moment I nolonger possessed any desire to hear the sound change. Clearing my mindand body of their instinctual reflex to make something interestinghappen, I felt the world shift, just a millimeter of a lurch, but enough toallow me to hear a universe of sound within just that one note,shimmering with an infinite welcoming tenderness.Thank you Pauline.