Friday, December 24, 2010

artist's interview: ERIK SCHOSTER







^ ^ ^ introducing brilliant sound artist, Erik Schoster ~
i met Erik in the late fall of 2001 when we were both
freshman at Lawrence University in Wisco.
one my favorite first memories of spending time with
Schoster included an evening stroll with a dictaphone ~
we captured the sounds of giggles, matches lighting,
and chats about squirrels, trees, and Gawd.
i have always been fascinated with Erik's sounds and
am endlessly grateful for the new music he
introduced me to at a time when my mind was most fresh.

for more about Erik, check out his site:
http://www.hecanjog.com

for a collaboration we created together, check out:
^ this link ^

1. kelly: wisconsin to new york to san francisco to wisconsin … not to mention the tours you’ve launched. talk to me about places ~ these places you’ve inhabited, pit-stopped, and toured. is place important? are seahorses important?

erik: Madison, Wisconsin is important to me, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Those are the places that have paved the most roads in my mind with experiences. I think I construct my understanding of place by relating to the people I meet. I hate to pick on Ohio, but it gets a lot of hate from natives and outsiders alike it seems. Ohio has a warm spot in my mind because of the 30-odd hours I was able to spend with Jeremy Bible - an incredibly warm and inspiring person. The show was a minor disaster and I don't remember a whole lot about the city itself, but the experience of place for me was mediated positively by hanging a bit at Experimedia headquarters and dorking out about records with Jeremy. I'm not sure I ever really get homesick when I travel - it's exhilarating to travel and see more of the things that there are to see in the world - but I definitely miss the people, and that can be very a palpable sting.

2. kelly: i sense some genuine excitement about your current studio space in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. what’s the set-up like? are you feeling newly inspired? have you reconnected with collaborators out that way?

erik: Having a work space outside of my bedroom has been a totally fresh and eye-opening experience. It's hard to say what exactly is so wonderful. I'm a private person, so it's great to have a fortress of solitude where I can work without interruptions (let's forget about twitter for a moment) and lose myself in a project at will. There's a vibrant community of artists and musicians on my floor as well though, who I'm happy to have gotten a chance to get to know a little better. We all mostly stay tucked away working on our various projects, but we have occasional film screenings in the common space. I've worked a little bit with Jason Nanna (who runs the Shampoo Horn with two other people) on setting up a studio file server for network-based collaborative projects, and generally we all manage to run into other another enough to make the space feel very much like a community. So it's nice to have a lot of square feet to comfortably house my (small, but growing) personal orchestra of doohickeys and sound makers - and the big old window I can look through in the summer quieted my mind after a rough few months in a basement apartment in SF - but the nicest thing is walking down the hall and seeing that new painting someone hung recently, or the tile mosaic project being constructed in the bathroom, and all of the other nice symptoms of the little community here.

3. kelly: Schoster, i mean not to be the presumptuous molasses-panther here, but like, i do sorta think we both had a suuuuuuuuuuuppppppppeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr weird time with Lawrence University. true for you? why or why not? were you creatively impacted by this experience?

erik: It was true for me too. I have a hard time reflecting objectively on that, even now. I'll just say that while I managed some spectacular failures during those years, I'm grateful for what they taught me. And mostly grateful for the folks - like you, Kel! - I met there. You can sell that to Hallmark if you want.

4. kelly: talk to me about your recent return to Lawrence University. you and Bryan Teoh, creative buddy, were invited back to do some electronic music stuffs. what was that like? what did y’all do? i mean, you posted something online about being welcomed back as a Conservatory of Music drop-out ~ as a fellow Conversatory drop-out myself, i’m curious bout your experiences in the recent-now with that place.

erik: Bryan and I played in the theatre at the new student center, which was the weirdest part of the experience. In two ways: it was already strange being in a familiar place filled with strangers, but the new building made the whole thing even stranger. It's a nice space though, and the theatre sound system goes to 11.

5. kelly: you’ve got lots going on!! there are soooooooo many recording projects (then, now) + websites, albums and albums and albums and tapes … talk to me first about luvsound, and if you would, give some time also to your recent accomplishments ~ i’m thinking middlemarch and the wolf-y tapes. any other info is welcome, por supuesto.

erik: The news with luvsound right now is that my friend Brendan Landis is coming aboard to run the ongoing but sorely neglected singles series and to generally help me run the label. We're both web developers and improvisors, so the combination is pretty natural - working on a netlabel website that releases a lot of improvised music together has come pretty easy so far I think! We're in the middle of a big web overhaul right now. I'm just stoked to be able to bounce ideas off of someone and not have to feel so much like a dictator with luvsound. I'm looking for more ways to relinquish creative control with that project - and to some extent in my work as a computer musician as well - because that's always been a productive thing for me to do. It's why I love playing in a band, and with other people as well. I'd rather be challenged in what I do than skip along merrily in the same way indefinitely.

6. kelly: what is your favorite dinner? what is your favorite candy? what does your hair look like today? … and do you believe in miracles?

erik: Oh dinner ~ so easy for me to answer this right now. I've totally fallen in love with my weird health-food efficiency meal-of-choice recently. In an effort to avoid dying of a heart attack at 30, for the last two years I've been working very hard on some areas of my health I'd been neglecting. So, during 2009 I spent several months recording meticulously every thing I ate, recording the nutritional information, and slowly adjusting it all to get me ingesting something decent while facilitating my incredible laziness for food preparation. Speaking of miracles - in November of 2009 my sister introduced me to the miracle that is quinoa. NASA is considering it for use in space colonies because of its health benefits. For vegetarians, it's a crazy source of protein and other good stuff, and for lazy assholes like myself: you can microwave it. Really! I know, gross right? Not even a little bit. So here's my quinoa salad favorite dinner could-eat-for-any-meal recipe.

Two or three cups of cooked quinoa.
~2 tbps tahini.
Dollop of hummus to taste.
Handful of raw shredded kale.
Optional can of tuna for extra bonus protein.

Mix it all up, eat it all up, and throw an apple or two on the side and there you go!

My candy is popcorn these days. My hair is in need of a cut, and I believe in quinoa.

7. kelly: i’ve known you to explore interests over the years in Buddhism, Icelandic sounds, tea, poetry, and dinosaurs. okay, dinos is a stretch, but perhaps you’ll humor us with words bout the others.

erik: Those have been interests! Iceland is still a dream - I'd love to visit some day - and while I think the way I practice listening now has taken the place Buddhism had for me growing up and in college a bit, it's a tradition I'd like to spend more time with.

8. kelly: influence. i recently checked out a powerpoint-style show you’d prepared about those who have influenced or inspired your creative jam. i realize you could go on for days about this, but uh, maybe you could give us a narrowed down overview.

erik: This is hard! Since the presentation mentioned some people that have inspired me as in improvisor, maybe I'll point to a few towering figures in my development as a composer: John Cage and Bernhard Guenter. If I don't stop there, I never will ...

9. kelly: do you like grass? trees? the ocean? what do you think of "settling down?" i mean, do you suppose you will anchor yourself in one location ever?

erik: I've thought I knew what the future had in store for me before - before I left NYC for example, I never expected to live anywhere but NYC for the rest of my life - but we'll see what happens. I doubt I'll stop traveling unless I'm no longer physically able, but I may stop moving my home around so much one of these years ...

10. kelly: it would be delightful for you to provide eleven words that describe you, Erik Schoster, a most peculiar being who is no doubt a polar bear + turtle + pond + enigmatic seed ~ ~ ~ + what else? ooooh, and i’d like to know what advice you’ve got for the kiddies. lay it on.

erik: For composers? I'll just echo something Clarence Barlow said, because I think he got it right: read books on aesthetics and acoustics, and learn to program. For anyone? Fail. Fail often. As much as possible. How about eleven numbers I find beautiful for no particular reason, but tend to gravitate toward in my work?

... 11, 5, 3, 7, 6, 2, 110. Oops, that's it I guess. Maybe 8. Maybe.

11. kelly: if i gave you $111,111, what would you do? wooooooo, peach pie!

erik: Pay my Dad's medical bills and send the rest to the Julian Assange Defense Fund if there was anything left ...

kelly: word up, my friend. love u so.

Monday, December 13, 2010

on anger ~




"There are so many other non-self elements that you can touch and recognize within yourself ~ your ancestors, the earth, the sun, water, air, all the food you eat, and much more. It may seem like these things are separate from you, but without them, you could not live."

"To grow the tree of enlightenment, we must make good use of our afflictions, our suffering. It is like growing lotus flowers; we cannot grow a lotus on marble. We cannot grow a lotus without mud."

"Practitioners of meditation do not discriminate against or reject their internal formations. We do not transform ourselves into a battlefield, good fighting evil. We treat our afflictions, our anger, our jealousy with a lot of tenderness."


"From time to time we have to make a decision, and sometimes the decision is very difficult. We are forced to make a painful choice. But if we know what is most important to us, what we most deeply want for our life, the decision-making will become easier, and we won't have to suffer a lot."

"Writing a book on yourself is a way of looking deeply to recognize the roots of your suffering and find ways to transform them. It will help you become a free and happy person, able to make others around you happy also."

~ all excerpts from ~ ANGER ~ by: Thich Nhat Hahn

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