Former La Casan Andrew Heathwaite still has blog edit privileges. Therefore, hi!
And also, he just made an album in the month of February! What excitement!
There are some first steps here into a new style, exploring tuning, time and form in an electronic-pop medium. Free to stream and download online:
Maybe good music to listen to while perusing the La Casa chicken picture archives?
On September 2, 2010, Andrew, a then two-years-&-one-month resident of La Casa — in other words, a La Casan — did that thing that every La Casan eventually does, perhaps th last thing that any La Casan can possibly do. He moved out of La Casa!
Out of La Casa & into a little rental house on Franklin St. Now Franklin St is a strange little street — a dead end poking almost obnoxiously into Crystal Lake Park. Obnoxious from th point of view of th park district, who’d like to see all th houses on th street torn down & th street turned into a parking lot! But for th few residents who live here, in these 8 houses, it’s a strange & magickal anomaly. And also not La Casa.
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Ok, first person now. I moved in with my partner Carey & her soon-to-be-ten-year-old daughter Kaleigh (who, as I type this, is spending some days in Springfield with her Dada and her friends — Springfield is where she moved from on September 2, 2010). So we’ve been settling in. There are domestic things to figure out — child care, unpacking, washing dishes, making “supper” (that’s what they call it around here), digging garden beds for winter greens! And there is love, passion, creativity here. Carey & I continue to fall deeper in love and surprise each other. Yesterday we harvested nine pounds of edible mushrooms! And Kaleigh & I invented a board game last week called CrazyPlay!!, which she took to Springfield with her and is hopefully surviving lots of games (it needs to be laminated, but we haven’t laminated it yet). We’ve also drawn & painted together, made bound books out of scrap paper, taken walks with Sophie, cast magic(k) spells with sticks. And it’s not always easy. As we settle into a new place with new people, there cannot not be turbulence. But there is also patience and love to soothe it.
C & K get up a lot earlier in th morning than I do. I’m getting used to it.
Today, with Kaleigh in Springfield and Carey at work, I’m doing some things that are important. Blogging is on my list (check!), and so is composing music, turning th compost (check!), taking a bath, re-reading a Gregory Bateson article, doing yoga in th park, & washing some dishes.
I miss my friends at La Casa. It’s nice to find excuses to go over there. It can’t happen every day, which makes it special when it does happen. When I lived there, I wasn’t in th habit of giving everyone a hug every time I see them, but now I am! I look forward to future La Casa events: potlucks, concerts, workshops, birthday parties…. It’s a nice circle to be in.
Much love,
Andrew, La Casan at Large.
ODDMUSIC URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
– presents –
odd instrument garden
at La Casa Grande Colectiva (a collective residence)
906 S. Maple St, Urbana
Sunday June 27 at 5pm
FREE!
Donations gratefully accepted to support our “artist in residence” program.
You’re invited to an open house in th form of a temporary sound garden. Odd and 1-of-a-kind instruments growing together in a “garden” for you to see & try out. Come at 5 to see th “garden.” Then stick around, because at 5:30, we’ll have a “garden tour,” & you can hear all our odd instruments at play: a full concert in th odd instrument garden.
= = =
Oddmusic U-C is building a library of unusual and usual musical instruments at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and facilitates events to connect experimental composition, microtonality, & instrument-building with radical social change.
(((An upcoming event involving La Casa residents & friends. Note that it is taking place at a house that is not La Casa. Consider yourself invited!)))
House Theater Dec. 10, 11, 12: “The Truth about Injustice Always Sounds OutRageous”
Sounds outrageous and outrageous sounds, brought to you by House Theater and UC-ODD MUSIC project. We invite you to an hour and a half “Letter to the Editor” on the system-designed killing of 15 year old Kiwane Carrington Oct. 9 2009 entwining experimental compositions in sound, dance, and poetry performed in a living, bedroom, bathroom of an Urbana house.
You’re invited! You don’t need to know us to come!
There will be three identical performances. Pick one or several:
Thursday, December 10 @ 7:30pm
Friday, December 11 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, December 12 @ 7:30pmWhere: 2106 S. Race St., Urbana (home of Ben Grosser, Kate McDowell, and Jasper)
How much: suggested donation of $5-$10, or pay what you can
Who: compositions by Grosser, Schuessler, Rzewski, Enslin, Simpson, Gaiuranos, Barton, Heathwaite, Parenti, Nix, Michaelis, Lieder,Chynoweth, Cage, Glick, and more…
RSVPs are appreciated but not required. Drop an email to grosser@bengrosser.com.
As many of you know, Jacob and Andrew have a project going at the IMC called Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign:
Oddmusic U-C is building a library of unusual and usual musical instruments at the UC-IMC and facilitates events to connect experimental composition, microtonality, & instrument-building with non-sectarian radical social change. We insist upon “music” as a type of “odd,” desirable when it avoids the same old society telling itself what it already knows.
Last month, we had a grand(e) opening, and this month an opportunity has come up to relocate our collection to a brand new space that’s cheaper, more commodious, brighter, and by at least one guest’s account, friendlier! Last Sunday, with help from our friends Mary Ann(e), Don, Snow Leopard, and Mary Margaret, we successfully moved into our great new space. We’re continuing to host office hours every Sunday evening from 7pm to 9:30, so feel free to come by this weekend and see what we’re about. We’re now in the basement of the Independent Media Center (at Elm and Broadway in Urbana), room 21A, just down the hall from the Bike Project.
For more, see our blog and (or) sign up to be on the Oddmusic listserv.
COME see the Independent Media Center’s new Oddmusic Instrumentarium, first steps toward a compositional co-op & library of acoustic oddities.
DO BRING an instrument (saucepan, egg-shaker, flügelhorn, udderbot…) for listening with. Some instruments provided.
Featuring new works, new premises:
– a tour of one-of-a-kind and locally-invented instruments housed at Oddmusic
– Jacob presents a new performance on udderbot
– Andrew debuts a 22-tone acoustic guitar
– FALSE STATEMENT BULLETIN 04 Live Edition
– A workshop in singing/playing/listening OVERTONES
FRIDAY, AUG. 14
8PM
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER
202 S BROADWAY, URBANA
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Go Puppets! Theater, last Monday June 22, presented The Moustache Dreams or The Dash of the Stache at the annual Mike n’ Molly’s Moustache Competition in Champaign. While the judges deliberated (selecting one moustache-bearer to hold the honor of supreme moustache & to host next year’s uproarious annual pageant), we four took the stage and performed for myriad adoring fans. They had no idea what to expect from us, & neither did we from them. Judging from the exuberant [drunken] cheers, it seemed to go over well!
Written & performed by Lorene Anderson & Michael Iscariot. Additional performers: La Casans Andrew (on the left) & Jacob (center).
If you haven’t heard, certain jolly folks all over the world celebrate Bloomsday today, named after Leopold Bloom from James Joyce’s epic experimental novel Ulysses. The events of Ulysses take place on June 16th, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland, so every June 16th, Joyce fans dress up, recite from the good book, have a drink in a pub, & do things Joycean. At the very least, I recommend getting your hands on a copy of Ulysses & checking it out. I read it a few summers ago, & very much enjoyed it.
If you’d like something to do in Champaign county to celebrate Bloomsday, consider this event at the U of I, taking place in the daytime, & this Facebook event, taking place later in the evening. I don’t know the organizers of either, but hope to appear at one, two, or zero of them (leaning toward two). La Casa doesn’t have anything Bloomsy going on this year, but maybe I can turn some fellows into Joyce fans & see about next year.
–We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirtuality? Lord Jesus! Lord Salisbury. A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
Some of you have already heard about the weirdwonderfulness going on at the Independent Media Center these days. Jacob & Andrew have started renting a space & lovingly devoting it to ODDMUSIC. We are presently collecting musical oddities (such as microtonal midi controllers with hundreds of buttons, defretted guitars, and musical saws) to make available for public use. We envision, among many things, an instrument library, developing right here in Urbana.
I mention this now because a.) we just started a fancy new blog, & b.) we are hosting office hours every Sunday night this week from 7pm to whenever. Folks have come by to play on our strange instruments, talk oddmusic, & scheme for future musical provocations.
Do consider yourself invited! We plan to be there next Sunday (& times in between, of course, at odd hours), so please stop by & see what the heck. Oddmusic is located on the second floor of the IMC. We’ll leave the back door open for you – not the Bike Co-op door, but the next one over on the left. Walk up the stairs & follow the wafting tunes.
Heather took Jacob & I on a date last night. First, we hit up a reading of a classic hypertext novel written by Urbana folks; then we nommed on some coconut ice cream from the food co-op & caught a show by Trutheater Theater at the IMC. Yay.
The Unknown, written collaboratively in the 1990’s, tells the story of a book tour that takes on the excesses of a rock tour. I happened to find it a few years back, in connection with 20-consonant poetry, a quirky poetic form that has its writers use every consonant in order before repeating any & produces texts such as “I quit my job: a crazy wage slave, dead hunk of pox.” When I moved to Urbana, I composed this 20-consonant poem in an email to Rob Scott:
for urbana, you doozy:
how you pique my vox kit.
joy:
i juggle la casa
I had no idea, when I got interested in constrained poetry & the work of William Gillespie, that I would eventually move to his town & hang out with his friends. A nice little surprise, that.
So William & Scott hosted this reading (the third author, Dirk, not present), with the book projected on a screen. The Unknown consists of several short chapters connected by hyperlinks, telling interweaved fictional stories of the three authors in no particular order. Scott did the clicking; William dinged on a glass to accent the hyperlinks. They both read aloud. We, the audience, shouted out hyperlinks when we felt so inclined, & we navigated the book together. Sometimes, we’d happen to come back to a page we’d been to before, & the authors would pick up in their reading where we left off.
Afterward, the authors fielded some questions, about “electronic fiction” in general & this book in particular. I enjoyed a little reminder that this work exists, & surely enjoyed hearing it come to life in a group setting. Check it out & see what you think; the whole novel is available on the web, & has been since it was first composed.
La Casa Grande Colectiva 