When I was packing for my trip to Poland and was deciding which books to bring, looking at the many I had purchased but not yet read, I ended up bringing mostly those which I had read before but had wanted to read again. Amongst those were the collection of Feldman essays, Give My Regards to Eighth Street, an absolutely wonderful and deep collection of writings I return to every once in a while. It seems like every time I go through this book or the Zimmerman collection of Feldman’s Essays, it’s always exactly what I needed to read at that time. Never more than ever I think.
I came across this link from a website (perhaps the Sequenza21 wiki?) that is a search of archive.org for MP3’s of Feldman conversations. It is located
here and I have been enjoying listening to Feldman and Cage very, very much. After coming across these and putting them on my PDA to listen to, I put down the Tai-Chi book I was reading and picked up the Feldman book to read, and really haven’t put it down since.
Feldman has played an incredible part of my life–musical and otherwise–both in the sheer beauty of his music and also in his thoughts about music and the music world. I remember reading the Zimmerman collections of Feldman’s Essays in college and finding myself connecting very much with Feldman’s attitude on it all. Reading him now and listening to him speaking, I feel like a certain part of me has somehow really woken back up, as if I was just a little tired for a long while and now that I’ve yawned and wiped my eyes, I’m begining to wake up and see out into the world again.
So I’m lost in Feldman again, in his spirt for music, art, life… but don’t worry, I might be lost in Feldman, but I’m as here as ever, if not more so from it all.
Another Felman Interview I found, which I much rather enjoyed.