Feb 24
Robert Ashley, Perfect Lives
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Robert Ashley, Perfect Lives
Can you elaborate what you did when you say you did a person of the Perfect Lives Epoisode id like to hear about it
It was very simple. I got the book, timed myself reading out the entire episode, and made an oscillator-synth-drone backing track that roughly corresponded to where I think the dramatic pauses are. I then read the episode out as appropriate over the backing track. There was no equivalent of the pianist. This was a burn-like festival where you bring your own events. Nobody asked me to do it.
"If what's remembered is more recent, is it more yours?"
Perfect Lives: The Bank (Victimless Crime)
Perfect Lives, Act 3: The Bank (Victimless Crime)
After discovering Robert Ashely a few months ago I have really been burying myself in his work. When I’m under psychological distress, I can calm myself down with an immersive experimental or avant audio experience. Negativland records, Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy, the Fiery Furnaces masterpiece Rehearsing My Choir, Moon Wiring Club mixtapes and Firesign Theater records, Vivian Stanshall’s Rawlinson End collections; if I can have something richly engaging happening in my ears, my brain can gnaw at it like someone crunching ice cubes or a dog with a bone, which allows my body to exhale and wash dishes and plan out the week beyond sunrise on Monday morning
I still haven’t sat down and actually watched all of Perfect Lives yet. I want to get deeper into the audio end before I add visuals. I don’t want to be distracted. But this kind of 1980s avant-garde video/TV project is also deeply comforting to me. It’s a Sunday night and there is nothing else on TV and all we get is Minnesota PBS, and maybe you’ve got a little bit of a fever, and this comes on and your brain starts getting bunched up and then straightened out, like playing with the drawstring of your hood— dark, light. Dark, light. Dark, light
Why can’t I find refuge in hallmark romances or mobster movies or endless police procedurals like a normal person
Closest thing I have to a costume idea this we'en: Robert Ashley in Perfect Lives.
(Screenshots shamelessly swiped from @iforgottohitplay)
Perfect Lives: The Park (Privacy Rules) (1984)