Bill Rieflin
In Conversation: Too Many Squids with Bill Rieflin; Japan, 19th December 2018.
B I L L
tonight
was my favorite show of the entire tour.
for all the reasons we have been discussing.
simply put, it was alive, but in a way that
none of the shows have been alive.
a new life.
like a squid.
I O N A
What made tonight come alive?
The audience, the band, a collective synchronistic energy?
A squid makes its decisions in the moment - we could probably learn a lot from a squid.
B I L L
i think i might have too many squids.
could be the title of my autobiography:
Too Many Squids.
hmmmmm…..let me have a think.
and a feel.
here this is.
i’m sure there are/were a number of factors.
i think the setlist was good (it was mostly my
set, with a few crucial tweaks from RF. as a
sidenote, yesterday’s set was extremely difficult
to construct; i think it took me an hour and a half).
so, things onstage began well and continued in that
direction, even after the interval, which isn’t always
the case.
the only way i can easily describe what it was like
on stage is to say that it felt as if the band was alive.
alive in a way i don’t remember experiencing with
this band - or, at least, it was a new level of aliveness.
it felt like a living organism, responding in the moment
(rather than just playing the same parts we always play).
there was a freshness, a newness. it was playful and deep.
and i could feel it in each member.
regarding the audience, they were more demonstrative than
the usual japanese reserve. there was a couple kind of in front
of jeremy. the happiness in their faces was moving, nearly
bringing me to tears.
so, yes - the band was good; the audience was good.
another factor could be that the first thing in the morning
you could see mount fuji. that must have helped too.
I O N A
Thinking of that couple, I read that music’s expressiveness is response-dependent, that is dependent on the response of the listener. It reminded me of a debate between Tagore and Einstein; whether a table could exist without our perception of it. Applying that same theory to a different sense perception - in this case, hearing, can music exist without an audience to hear it? Or can music express emotion independent of the experience of musician and listener? Obviously music isn’t created in a vacuum but I love this idea that it could be music itself that carries the emotive qualities that we tune into (or not). I often ‘hear’ music in my dreams, to me this implies that music can exist in a space void of instruments and sense perceptions. But without ears to hear, is it music? Interesting... Thoughts b?
BI L L
audience is the mother to the music -
without an audience, there is no music. without ears to
hear, there is no music. i’m not sure this notion translates
into what would normally be considered a dialogue,
but feedback from the audience is key. the presence of an
audience is key. it’s probably more accurate to say that the
performers and the audience enter into a relationship,
and the nature/quality of this relationship determines
the results. so, in relationship terms, the performer and
audience together create the music.
perhaps the question is something
like ‘can music convey something objectively, or is the human
response to music driven by our personal associations which then
generates feeling/emotion?’
i’ll read on….
as you know, in very basic terms, music can be written to convey
something specific: happy (major keys); sad (minor key);
ambiguity (whole-tone scales), simplicity, complexity, etc.
composers have been doing this for centuries.
it’s a complex subject and additionally, as far as i can tell,
it’s culture-dependent, adding to the complexity:
what works in one culture doesn’t mean it’s going to
translate into another culture. but the way i see it, the
signs and signals we use and respond to emotionally are both
innate and cultural.
ultimately, i have to consult
my own experience. i think it’s also important to define terms.
for instance, what is meant by ‘real' emotional response?
how do i know when i’ve had one? is this different from
an associative emotional response? how are these things
even measured & evaluated?
a true story: i saw Swans for the first time when i lived in
california, about a thousand years ago (they still had dinosaurs
and electricity - go figure). but there was a moment in the show
when time itself seemed to have stopped. the fabled
extended present moment. it was an extraordinary.
afterwards, when describing this to the three people
with whom i went to the show, each of them said they
had a similar experience. so, was this an ‘objective’
experience? did the music itself convey this experience?
i say yes, but ultimately i can’t prove a thing. but i don’t
think that’s quite the point.
can music convey/express/transmit something intentional,
deliberately? or is the music-experience all a subjective
matter, dependent on personal association? i say both are
true, but both are not always true. i believe it’s important
to recognize that the experience of music is person-specific.
i’m going to hear things in a piece of music i love, that you
might not.
[i was/will write more, but i wrote this on the train to
nagoya and this is how far i got before we arrived.
there was lots of thinking and deleting and rewriting.]
Bill Rieflin; drummer, keyboardist, and guitarist in King Crimson, R.E.M, The Humans, Swans, Revolting Cocks.
1960-2020