Silences So Deep

Author: John Luther Adams
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374722269
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
"[An] illuminating memoir." —Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times The story of a composer's life in the Alaskan wilderness and a meditation on making art in a landscape acutely threatened by climate change In the summer of 1975, the composer John Luther Adams, then a twenty-two-year-old graduate of CalArts, boarded a flight to Alaska. So began a journey into the mountains, forests, and tundra of the far north—and across distinctive mental and aural terrain—that would last for the next forty years. Silences So Deep is Adams’s account of these formative decades—and of what it’s like to live alone in the frozen woods, composing music by day and spending one’s evenings with a raucous crew of poets, philosophers, and fishermen. From adolescent loves—Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa—to mature preoccupations with the natural world that inform such works as The Wind in High Places, Adams details the influences that have allowed him to emerge as one of the most celebrated and recognizable composers of our time. Silences So Deep is also a memoir of solitude enriched by friendships with the likes of the conductor Gordon Wright and the poet John Haines, both of whom had a singular impact on Adams’s life. Whether describing the travails of environmental activism in the midst of an oil boom or midwinter conversations in a communal sauna, Adams writes with a voice both playful and meditative, one that evokes the particular beauty of the Alaskan landscape and the people who call it home. Ultimately, this book is also the story of Adams’s difficult decision to leave a rapidly warming Alaska and to strike out for new topographies and sources of inspiration. In its attentiveness to the challenges of life in the wilderness, to the demands of making art in an age of climate crisis, and to the pleasures of intellectual fellowship, Silences So Deep is a singularly rich account of a creative life.

Silence

Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819570648
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: "Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant." "He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It's what's happening now." –The American Record Guide "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away."

No Such Thing as Silence

Author: Kyle Gann
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300163010
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage’s 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. A meditation on the act of listening and the nature of performance, Cage’s controversial piece became the iconic statement of the meaning of silence in art and is a landmark work of American music. In this book, Kyle Gann, one of the nation’s leading music critics, explains 4'33" as a unique moment in American culture and musical composition. Finding resemblances and resonances of 4'33" in artworks as wide-ranging as the paintings of the Hudson River School and the music of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he provides much-needed cultural context for this fundamentally challenging and often misunderstood piece. Gann also explores Cage’s craft, describing in illuminating detail the musical, philosophical, and even environmental influences that informed this groundbreaking piece of music. Having performed 4'33" himself and as a composer in his own right, Gann offers the reader both an expert’s analysis and a highly personal interpretation of Cage’s most divisive work.

A Book of Silence

Author: Sara Maitland
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619021420
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).

Silence

Author: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101638060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
A provocative meditation on the role of silence in Christian tradition by the New York Times bestselling author of Christianity We live in a world dominated by noise. Religion is, for many, a haven from the clamor of everyday life, allowing us to pause for silent contemplation. But as Diarmaid MacCulloch shows, there are many forms of religious silence, from contemplation and prayer to repression and evasion. In his latest work, MacCulloch considers Jesus’s strategic use of silence in his confrontation with Pontius Pilate and traces the impact of the first mystics in Syria on monastic tradition. He discusses the complicated fate of silence in Protestant and evangelical tradition and confronts the more sinister institutional forms of silence. A groundbreaking book by one of our greatest historians, Silence challenges our fundamental views of spirituality and illuminates the deepest mysteries of faith.

Silence

Author: John Cage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819560285
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: “Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant.” “He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now.” –The American Record Guide “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.”

Silence and Beauty

Author: Makoto Fujimura
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830894357
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Internationally renowned artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on Shusaku Endo's novel Silence and grapples with the nature of art, pain and culture. Showing that light is yet present in darkness, he uncovers deep layers of meaning in Japanese history and finds connections to how faith is lived in contexts of trauma.

Angels & Saints

Author: Eliot Weinberger
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811229874
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
A gorgeously illustrated co-publication with Christine Burgin by “one of the world’s great essayists” (The New York Times). With a guide to the illustrations by Mary Wellesley. Angels have soared through Western culture and consciousness from Biblical to contemporary times. But what do we really know about these celestial beings? Where do they come from, what are they made of, how do they communicate and perceive? The celebrated essayist Eliot Weinberger has mined and deconstructed, resurrected and distilled centuries of theology into an awe-inspiring exploration of the heavenly host. From a litany of angelic voices, Weinberger’s lyrical meditation then turns to the earthly counterparts, the saints, their lives retold in a series of vibrant and playful capsule biographies, followed by a glimpse of the afterlife. Threaded throughout Angels & Saints are the glorious illuminated grid poems by the eighteenth-century Benedictine monk Hrabanus Maurus. These astonishingly complex, proto-“concrete” poems are untangled in a lucid afterword by the medieval scholar and historian Mary Wellesley.

Landscapes of Silence

Author: Hugh Brody
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571370950
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Hugh Brody is renowned for his work with indigenous peoples. In the 80s he was engaged in a lawsuit brought by the Inuit people of the Arctic against the Canadian government. Brody lived with the Inuit, learned their language, recorded all their stories, which were then used as evidence in the court case - which the Inuit won. In his new book, he returns to the Arctic and is confronted by the deterioration of the situation there. The Inuit now possess the land, but the government has pressured them into living in settlements rather than out on the land. Their children are forced to go to school where they learn to speak English, losing their own language, which is the element that ties them to their land. Sexual abuse by the treachers intimidates the children into a silence that results in widespread suicide among the young. This silence ties in with Brody's own story - a mother hounded out of her home in Vienna by the Nazis, causing her to retreat into the same kind of silence that Tom Stoppard experienced from his mother, who also fled from the Nazis. As a writer and anthropologist, Brody's concern has always been with the human condition, arguing for the need to safeguard the most vulnerable from the depredations of the modern word.

White Hot Light

Author: Frank Huyler
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062937359
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
“High stakes lyricism infuses White Hot Light.... At times his style owes something to the rapturous economy of Denis Johnson, and the people drifting in and out could well find a home in a Johnson story.... Huyler's work is implicitly political -- he lays bare the cruelties of poverty, and of for-profit health care in particular -- but maintains an elemental tone." — Harper's Magazine “Huyler depicts the crises he treats with vivid and cinematic detail, but the book is less about the salacious depiction of trauma than it is an investigation into the vulnerabilities and resiliencies of human nature.” — Santa Fe Reporter "Frank Huyler's two collections of short personal pieces documenting his life in the ER—The Blood of Strangers and White Hot Light—are both masterpieces in my opinion, at once so powerful and so beautiful that I rank him as one of the finest writer-doctors since Chekov." — Paul Auster "Huyler, an ER doctor who began as a poet, is a writer who makes every word count…. In terse, riveting vignettes, Huyler confronts us with enigmas, images and ironies often memorably welded together. The work of a now veteran ER physician, White Hot Light offers added authority (“The Gun Show” should be required reading for every American) – and also wisdom, as Huyler turns his cool gaze not only outward but also inward." — Rachel Hadas, TLS Books of the Year “Haunting…instantly grabs readers’ attention….Huyler’s compassionate perspective and gripping stories result in a memorable account of the life he leads and the patients he sees, and sometimes saves.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review “Tales from the emergency room, told with no-nonsense brevity, clarity, and compassion. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Blood of Strangers, Huyler returns with more interesting, largely stand-alone stories from his work in an ER in Albuquerque…. The title aptly describes the illumination Huyler brings to patient care—and to writing about it.” — Kirkus “[Huyler] tells it like it is, but also manages to craft these windows into various lives that will haunt you long after you’re done…. Captures life, death, the decisions that change our lives, violence, and grace—all at once.” — Book Riot “Huyler brings a beauty and thoughtfulness to crucial issues affecting medicine and society at large. Within the visceral brutality, the writing is thoughtful and self-reflective, the collection a study of caring.” — Shelf Awareness