I have been a hack for nearly 50 years now. Because most of those years were during the age of newsprint, large swathes of Brazilian rain forest now lay barren as a consequence of my commercial renderings. Most of the stuff was crap that I didn’t bother to read the first time, much less a second time. I occasionally stumble across something on the Internet that I wrote years ago and don’t recognize it as my own. I was reminded of this last week after I got an e-mail from a German broadcaster named Rainer Schlenz:
I’m journalist working with the nationwide airing radio station
Deutschlandfunk. I’m gathering music pieces in the context of 9/11 at the
moment and read your article in sequenza 21 about Michael Gordon’s
composition “The Sad Park”.I just would like to say that compared with other articles from all over
the world your text appears to me the most profound comment on this great
music.By the way the other pieces I will use for my feature are:
Steve Reich: WTC 9/11
Julia Wolfe: my beautiful scream
David Lang: Men
Terry Riley: One Earth, One Love, One PeopleIt will be broadcast on 10th September, 10:05 pm CET, that means 04:05 pm
New York time. (Available live on the web at www.dradio.de.)
I searched S21 for “The Sad Park” and started reading the review he mentioned and was well into it before I realized that I had written it. I’m pretty sure it’s not “profound” but it’s not terrible. I could send you to the link but since it’s on one of our ugly old pages I thought I would reprint the whole thing here…right after the break.