In Ether's Homeland Security Office
Interrogation Debriefing Report
It's not easy to answer questions under such unnerving circumstances.
The voice in the telephone receiver which I hold directs me to address
the camera when I give my answers. I can't meet my own stare in the
glassy reflection of the lens. I can't lie to myself; for that would be lying
to the voyeur behind the camera as well. I can almost imagine somebody
seeing the same reflection I see in the lens on the screen of a television.
Are they watching their own reflection super-imposed over my image?
The fluorescent lighting doesn't help. It hums incessantly. An 80's printer
begins grinding somewhere outside of the cubicle. I fell anxious, and the
onset of a migraine doesn't make me feel any better. I begin to speak
into the lens.
"Our Mission Statement:
A crystallization of forces. Something has definitely been done.
The idea has been fertilized; the triangle has been formulated.
In each case the idea is of a certain stability which can never
be upset, bu from which progeny may issue. The Taro card
best symbolizing this confluence would be the three of
pentacles; three discs arranged in a pyramid resembling the
alchemical symbol of ETHER. The great work of alchemy,
and this card means work. Uncommon sense. Inhuman nature..."
At that moment I realized we had finally lost control of the
situation, and with this realization I finally looked at myself full
on in the eye refracted and distorted by the curvature of the lens.
Was that really my eye? The alien sensory organ stared back at
me through the mirror like some hyperreal foreign aperture of
a mind which I could never fully understand, a consciousness
with completely different perceptions and senses and a purpose
and intent utterly contrary to anything I could even begin to
contemplate. We were hopelessly entangled, now. I begin speaking
again, this time trying to explain things from a more innocuous
and benign angle. Paradigm shift.
"Experimental music isn't anything terribly new. I'd argue that every
form of music at one point in history during which it was initially
generated was experimental in that new techniques were utilized.
In the context in which IN ETHER exists we aren't even very
experimental considering the widespread proliferation of electronic
compositions in the marketplace today."
"Music itself must have been an experiment of some sort in the
beginning. What would possess the original tool users at the dawn
of our species to use their new promethean knowledge to produce
sound and then judge their aesthetic value by inclusion or exclusion
from early compositions? We don't know. To some extent we are
researching this as artists by using a very different set of modern
sound producing devices in the same manner, although I'm afraid
we must be somewhat biased by the last few thousand years of
music which have shaped and influenced the climate in which we
play."
The phone doesn't reply, but I know that they know. They
expected me to say something like this. I've been a fool. They
probably know more about this than I do. I continue:
"Of course there's no telling what music may have been like
before our limited history of, well, history..." Stupid stupid stupid,
I think to myself. I've already said too much.
"At this juncture in our discussion," interjects the telephone, "I
think it would be relevant to ask you what any of this information
has to do with the 'real world.' What good is any of this in
application?" The interviewer's voice pauses meaningfully.
"What does any of this work offer society at large?"
His words run through my head. The Real World. What should
we offer the "real world," what does it really offer us? I swallow
hard, and I can almost feel my discomfort being monitored and
cataloged by the person on the other side of the closed circuit TV.
Is it even really a person? Does the co-axial cable I see snaking
across the floor even go anywhere, or ist this just some bizarre
set-up? Is a computer trying to match my facial geometry in a
database? "What difference does it make?" I retort.
"It makes all of the difference, Number 893, "replies the static-
ridden disembodied telephone voice, "it makes the difference
between signifier and signified which you don't seem to be
making. You are answering as though IN ETHER encompasses
all music, when all music actually includes IN ETHER as a sub
set. Your answers are erratic and must be ordered with the logic
of language. Language is, after all, the only tool which we have
for communicating our varied perceptions and the logic of language
gives us a consensus form for reality. A reality, I might add, which
you seem to have separated yourself from, Number 893. I person-
ally believe that you are afflicted with bad mental wiring, and your
music demonstrates this. Please, try to be more concise with your
answers. From whence does this particular musical tradition originate?"
"It is not the fault of the builder when a drunkard smashes a brick
into someone's head." I reply. The whole discomfort ploy was old
news, it went out with B.F. Skinner and boring old MK Ultra. I am
tired and really don't give a crap about their games. I recognize
their entire con from my last overnight stay at the police station.
It's always the same deal; tell us what we want to hear and we go
easy on you, kid. The good cop bad cop routine, and pretty much
the biggest scam on the planet. The basic concept behind the
most world religions and political systems: there's our side and
then there's their side, make your choice and choose your own
damnation or salvation. Cheap blackmail, and not even very
straight forward, all innuendo. I don't care what they want to hear
from me, I'm going to stick to the truth insofar as nobody I work
with is implicated. I owe it to myself.
"We can make this much more difficult for you if you plan on
doing nothing more than spouting degenerate blather Number
893." The receiver screeches into my ear angrily. The volume
control on the phone is too loud and I can't find a switch or
slider to turn it down.
"I refer," I continue undaunted, "to your question regarding
application of this technology. The quote can attributed to
Andrew McKenzie in his Metanoia essay. It is an analogy
referring to the methods in which societies apply media.
I'd expect you to be familiar with his work if you feel that
you are at all qualified to conduct this... this interview."
"Please continue, Number 893."
"Mr. McKenzie was referring to the fact that it is impossible
for us to gauge the impact that every new media had upon
the minds of the society which generated it. We who reside
in 21st century American culture are exposed to a variety
of mass media daily, and as a consequence, for better or
for worse, we have developed information filters. The average
person will disbelieve at least one statement presented as
fact per television viewing period. We tend to take it for granted
that this is possible, but initially the 'arts' as the media used to
be known were inextricable from the masses' beliefs, culture
and religion. Most anthropologists tend to agree that early
music and painting and even writing initially had theological
and ritual purpose behind it.
"We are aware of the past," interrupts the telephone. I seriously
doubt it; government types are only conscious of the edited
versions of history which they've been fed. That's why they're
government types. "What we are concerning ourselves with
is the present, a context which you don't seem to be capable
of understanding in objective terms, Number 893. Perhaps you
could understand your present actions contextually if we were
to ask you what you see as IN ETHER's future."
What I see? How can this man (if man he is an not voice
synthesizer,) ask what "I" see in "objective" terms? Is this
"Information Awareness?" Is this what our government
"intelligence" is hiring with my tax dollars? I tell him exactly
what I see.
"I see a woman enthroned upon the clouds. The upper part of
her body is naked, but she wears a gleaming belt and sarong.
Her helmet is crested by the head of a child, and from it stream
sharp rays of light, illuminating her empire of celestial dew.
From this I gather the vision is somewhat elemental in nature
and symbolism; she is the watery part of air, and hence is
portrayed amidst precipitation and condensation. I feel a drop
in pressure as of a coming storm.
"In her right hand she bears a sword. In her left hand is the newly
severed head of a bearded man. At first she appears to be a clear,
conscious perception of The Idea, The Liberator Of The Mind, and
perhaps an answer as to what IN ETHER is and why we do what
we do, but then I see something more ominous in her nature.
"There is synthesizer equipment before her feet and below her feet.
Before her are the shiny consumer gadgets of a new millennium,
replete with all of the bells and whistles so appealing to the same
market target demographics that the Sharper Image aims for at
every respectable mall in the United States. I see D-Beams, neon
purple Kaoss Pads, compact rack-mount digital workstations with
shiny racing-car paint jobs and corporate logos, and from every
doodad and gimcrank stare cold, unthinking blue LED eyes. These
items are heaped in front of her almost as if they are a sacrifice
or an offering."
"Beneath her feet I see a veritable catalog of all the original analog
synths of the last 100 years. Theremins spill components onto
desiccated smashed Moogs. Arps are ground and trampled under
her clawed animal feet. The green power LED of a Korg flashes
brightly one last time and is extinguished, as ozone scented smoke
drifts from within it's wooden casing."
"All at once I understand what this image really means. The throned
woman is the visage of an unworthy purpose She is cruel, sly, deceitful,
unreliable and very dangerous. Her beauty is superficial; a camouflage
to disguise her true nature, the nature of copper; external brilliance
and internal corruption."
She smiles at my realization through broken, rotting teeth, and begins to
lift her skirts. She spreads her legs to reveal the abomination between them."
"Her vagina opens and closes like an obscene mouth. Thin transparent
hooked teeth like cat's claws are slowly being extruded from her labia.
They clench together violently, and a thick mucous begins to spill from
within her, pooling slowly on the electronics still crushed beneath the
bird-like talons of her feet. I feel profoundly disappointed. My head swims
with long-lost memories of forgotten debaucheries, mostly past shows.
No wonder I'd plugged such and such midi cable into the wrong socket.
It was a metaphor for my life: badly wired."
"Now I look into the eyes of the head in her lap, and they stare back at me
cold, glassy and dead. I can see my own reflection in those eyes, and in
that reflection I can see the dead man's eyes reflected back, and I can
almost imagine the image repeated so on and so on, back and forth for
infinity like the decaying multiple images of video feedback. Perhaps the
image decays like the old video trick, smaller and smaller microcosms
if image until there's nothing left but one photon. Does the photon even
remember or resemble the initial image? Was there ever any difference
between the observed and the observer? Am I the head in the lap?"
I look again into the camera lens, and into my eye, and I see the camera
reflected in the reflection of my eye, and once again I know that they know.
They know that I know that they know, and the telephone responds with
silence. After a long pause the interviewer answers:
"Thank you, Number 893. You are free to go."
There is a buzzing noise and the cubicle door pops open. I set down the
phone receiver, nod to the camera lens, and leave without a goodbye.
Ezra "Firecracker" Nye or/for IN ETHER, 03/03/03