Bil Sabab Power Hour: Dick Higgins - Danger Music #17

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scream. Is there anything more inspiring than just screaming your head off trying to express all the frustrations and all the perturbations that are boiling inside of you? Of course there is. But all that garbage keeps piling up inside of you and in the end there is not much place for anything else. You just feel overwhelmed for no reason at all and you can't get away from it. There is this unease. As a countermeasure you can mess around but after a while it becomes counterproductive. You can succumb to it for a while but that is rather pointless exercise in vanity. You can also ponder about it - but it is just numbing. What else can you do with it?

If you need to clean up the place - you need to cut the crap. Or rather blow it off.

For sure there are more creative ways of letting it go. But why bother with trying to go around something in dire attempts to recycle it when you can blow it off once and for all and just go on without excessive baggage?

That's why i find Dick Higgins series Danger Music and #17 in particular so exciting. It doesn't look like an art piece, it has no pretense of being highbrow elitist bunga-bunga. It is a simple thing with no twists - just Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! - up to the point you are unable to scream more. It gets you out there and far beyond any comprehensible boundaries. It gives you a chance to let yourself go inside out and drop all the hidden and long overcooked grievances away in a nice form of a soul spurting scream. It is a nice therapy.

There is no need in other kinds of expression to provide a clean-up with extreme prejudice on yourself. It is like letting bugs to eat out the flesh on the bones. And that is something that is sorely missing in the majority of more common and acceptable artistic practices - extremity.

Look at the the score:

For all its simplicity - it is undeniably transcending. No words can properly describe the feeling you have after performing the piece. When you're performing it - you feel something completely different. For example, i once had a full-on 2001 kaleidoscopic colors running through my eyes. On other occassion i felt sudden explosions of emotiness inside my stomach. It was like a cave was forming inside of me.

Any time - it is rather eccentric experience to behold.  And that is something worth thinking about, even overthinking. It is something you can express in other forms.

Even looking at the score card, at the word "Scream!" makes it something very different from what you usually perceive as a word "scream". It becomes something alien, something you can't really comprehend and that sudden barrieris something that dares you to turn it down even more.