"Monsieur de Pontchâteau had at first collected miniatures, before he became infatuated with books. From the moment he began to enjoy reading them, he lived for them alone. He was always ready with this phrase from The Imitation of Christ:

In omnibus requiem quaesivi et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro (I have sought rest throughout the whole world and found it nowhere, except in a corner with a book).

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To live in the corner—in angulo—of the world.

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In the angle mort—the blind spot—where the visible is no longer visible to sight.
      In the dead zone where the two human rhythms (first the cardiac, then the pulmonary) embrace and around which they generate sonic ecstasy and, perhaps, music—and, from music, time."

The above is taken from The Roving Shadows by Pascal Quignard by way of the blog site Isolda di Rifuti.

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The graphic above is the cover of the new-to-come FORT!/da? book, a generation of the 'two human rhythms' around which the book has been generated one might say. Frankly, few will worry about the textual content (by that I mean they will generally decry the persistence of what looks like anything but the time of music, much less its ecstatic component).  However, for me they are inextricably connected: music, time ecstasis, text since my first introductions to what was once called the avant guard was through often very poetically written reviews and manifestos, especially of the Next Wave in jazz as it was once called; and in a very real sense had a hand in creating the excitement of the music.

Here is a short excerpt from one of the opening essays:

 

Excuses, Excuses

Robert Cheatham

As always with FORT!/da? Books there is no justification or exoneration for what follows. Which hardly matters since there will be few readers so we can relax. Perhaps some remuneration for the few readers’ difficulties can be had with this quote (further along mind you), the source of which I have completely forgotten: (This forgetfulness could be said to be the way of im/possibility of all events, improvised no less that all others: all attempts at clarity inevitably raise a haze from all the stomping around. Nevertheless it is a hope that we all honor, that we will get more out of a situation rather than less, that we will see farther rather than closer, an ophtomalogical conundrum that is not necessarily allayed with a prosthetic, whether glasses, language, or delay pedal. Improvisation often lays those fears of hopelessness to the side, and says just play it as it lays. Or maybe as it doesn’t lay.  Or maybe it says to just fuck the system of remunerative allegories that most life now rests on.)  With improv there is the hope to have a (here’s the quote) “‘free relation’ to these parts of ourselves and our world, such that the unmovable density they once comprised becomes pliable and navigable.” But do they become unmoveable and airy because we just forget about them? Then the obstacles maybe don’t just go away but, like a black hole absorbing all light that approaches it, the density just drops to a different, lower register if you will, yet still providing an invisible pulsive/tractor beam. Astute philosophically inclined readers will recognize this as the hermeneutic circle. Like the roach hotel, you enter into the circle at birth and you don’t really ever come out. That’s the story anyway. But who knows? Maybe the Real does find a way to break into the circle. Maybe the sacred machines we are busy building can move beyond. It could even be said that the modern systems of recording have, while retaining the past, are also a way to ‘fuhgeddaboutit,’ to form a reverse cocoon. And of yes: If one is looking for a tabular registration of 1) memories or 2) a dictionary of improvisational gestures--well, better to just put the book down and slowly walk away.