Stephen Chase

@stephenchase.bsky.social

286 Followers 413 Following

musicking, wandering, occasional mumbling https://linktr.ee/stephenchasesound (Also part of @nairnbooks.bsky.social)

Photo of a riderless bicycle at night, with glowing lamp
pic of Serious Music by Percival Everett with 2 cats more interested in other things
The young Sonny Blount
Pic of March to June books: #LostChildrenArchive #TheOriginal #AWorkingMother #OnthecalculationofvolumeIV #AnimalStories #NowISurrender #ThirstyAnimals #Brodie #Witchborne #SpentLight #MansWarAgainstNature #JohnClare #StirringsStill #WilliamBlakeAndtheSeamonstersofLove #HowardSkempton
Fbok post from 26 June 2016: "Currently reading John Ashbery's 'Quick Question', here are some of the poems included within: 'Cross Island', 'The allegations', 'Who were those people', 'Absent agenda', 'This economy', 'Northeast building', 'False report', 'Saps at sea', 'The fop's tale', 'Instead of losing', 'You what?', 'Can we start again?'"
JA on the set of Hawaii
Patrick Cavanagh and Anthony Cronin, Bloomsday 1954
A list of pieces, far too many pieces...
Pic of me not playing the guitar in front of a Sheffield Doc Fest audience. Pic by Patrick Shen
Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf & Mozart's K425 in a paper bag
Pic of some scores finished/in progress/etc.
Carl Mydans' photo of Nabokov leaning out of car window taking a break from writing Not sure why I've done this as I really like the little I've nabbed of 'kov
treble clef stave featuring a large question mark
Pic of the CDs by Sylvia Lim & James Creed
Pic of Moray Firth from Nairn Beach
Day Light On the silvery tree bark, now the sun / gleams and flickers to catch the eye; / imaginings likewise glimmer to fly / backwards and forwards, on their run. // Echoes of thought brim like charity, / admit how generous the trees can show; / throughout the day they come and go, / in truth of nature, so evenly. // Squirrels will race and birds a-twitter, / branches as home, to flit and play; / the tracks all joyful in open way / swift breezes set the leaves a-glitter. // For sake awake to miss out nothing / the tunes for mortals, breathing deep / as yet before now downwards to sleep / the birds nearby, close in their offing. (JH Prynne from Foremost Wayleave)
Clarence Barlow/Calcutta hybrid pic
Cover of the immediate pieces anthology: "immediate pieces, scores to pick up and play"
Pic of the books I've been reading: Doric Plumage, Slags, Coming Through Slaughter, Chilco, Rabbitbox, The Deserters, Feldman in Love, The News from Dublin. Still working my way through the Toibin stories, not sure how far I'll stick with it. I think the Prynne is reading me more than I it.
Mauricio Kagel and Charles Amirkhanian seated either side of flowers - pic c/o Other Minds
Duolingo exercise where the challenge is to translate „Die Hexe hört gern Jazz." The left over words hint at an alternative world where Lisa Simpson has taken some of the life choices of John Coltrane a bit too seriously ("I'm clean Lisa now")
Text score: the thinking of the tympanic using sound (or light) / communicate across a large open space a game of battleships / use morse code to communicate grid positions / other signals to communicate ‘hit’ or ‘miss’ [Cole Bros. rooftop with Ross Parfitt, 16-ii-11]
Album cover for Ice Cream for K. Rowe Bash St Kids running after ice cream van amended in a John Baldessari dot style
Book: #MortonFeldmanInLove
Everything Will Swallow You by #TomCox The Employees by #OlgaRavn Hypothermia by #AlvaroEnrigue The Stone Door & Down Below by #LeonoraCarrington Stolen by #AnnHelenLaestadius Small Things Like These by #ClaireKeegan Dancers on a Plane by #JohnCage #MerceCunningham #JasperJohns
Time to Your Elf by P D Workman
Copying up scores
1950s pic of Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, John Cage, David Tudor and Morton Feldman
Recipe from David Tudor's collection: "LIME PICKLE (Native process) Roll the lemons or limes with the hand well upon a stone or board, and throw them in water; put them in an earthen vessel, and sprinkle over with fine salt; let them remain for 2 or 3 days, turning them occasionally; when the lemons have become soft, expose them to the sun on a cloth; after they appear ripe, steep them either in vinegar or lemon juice, preferably in the latter. (the juice being first boiled ?)"
7" record spinning
I can't see any cats (or owls for that matter) in the picture. The sea is possibly too choppy, which would be a little annoying for most.
Pic of the items described in text *poorly reproduced here #blurryphotos : graphic score & CD cover
Universe scene from Werckmeister Harmonies
Photo of a window at Nairn Books, "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. Protest is not Terrorism"
Pictured: Unmeasured by Christopher Fox/Kate Ledger, Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator by Leo Chadburn, Bach Tunings by Marc Sabat/Sara Cubarsi & Xenia Gogu; John Cage Chamber Works by Apartment House; Voices by Jurg Frey/Exaudi Chromatic Renaissance by Exaudi Gombert/Apartment House; Asymptote Versatile by Eliane Radigue Black Country New Road Unpictured: Best Wishes, by Kar Pouzi; Linda Catlin Smith: The Plains by Cheryl Duvall; HIKMAH by Pat Thomas; Memory Spaces by Chiyoko Szlavnics; Piriforms by Laura Steenberge; Dissenting Voices by Christopher Fox; SOVT by Sarah Hennies; Hermit Card by Territorial Gobbing; Black Country New Road
"Midnight had tolled and the door opened to a stranger bringing in the New Year. She shrieked and held out her hands which he took and held for a long time. Amagoya shuddered. That night a dead Spaniard in bar; the Norwegian Giant who sat in the fire. How blasphemed and vomited into the geraniums outside front door."
'The Moral Theology of the Devil/Clothed with the Sun' by Linda Kemp, 'Fower Pessoas' by Colin Bramwell, 'The Weight of a Feather' by Stephanie Ni Thiarnaigh, '36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem' by Nam Le, 'Good & Evil' by Samanta Schweblin, 'House of Day House of Night' by Olga Tokarczuk, 'Erik Satie Three Piece Suite' by Ian Penman, 'On the Calculation of Volume'(s) I-III, 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft, 'Man-Eating Typewriter' by Richard Milward, 'Gliff' by Ali Smith, 'Question 7' by Richard Flanagan, 'Collected Short Fiction' by Gerald Murnane (slowly wending my way through), 'We Could Have Been Friends My father and I' by Raja Shehadeh
Sarah Catherine Martin His daughter, Sarah Catherine (c1768-1826), assembled the nursery rhyme Old Mother Hubbard. She suffered the attentions of a very young Prince William Henry and never married but while a visitor at the Devonshire house of her sister, Mrs Pollexfen Bastard, she assembled the rhyme about her sister's housekeeper for the entertainment of fellow guests though she may not be responsible for the first few lines. It was so successful she published it in 1805 as The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog.
Improvisational score (Tooting Junction) for performers with recorders/tin whistles/other wind instruments interpreting braille letters as instrument finger positions
Handwritten text score 'tootings' ('tooting broadway' and 'tooting bec' for Mick Beck)
Warhol torn can series
List of occupations from the 1881 census, of which the 8th is ticked: "Colourist of artificial fish; Knight of the Thimble; Disinfector of railways; Examiner of underclothing; Invisible net maker; Electric bath attendant; Proprietor of midgets; Fifty-two years an imbecile; Knocker-up of workpeople; Maker of sand views; Gymnast to a house painter; Turnip shepherd"
Lighthouse optic
Poster of Houdini, who devised the upsidedown escape from a straightjacket in near Greystones with the city's own Great Randini
pic of poetry volume, The Moral Theology of the Devil/Clothed with the Sun by Linda Kemp
handwritten text score sketch: 'somewhere further you can go' [percussionist and pianist parts presented parallel to each other] "percussionist: 2 items that produce rich, resonant inharmonic sounds *** play one item over and over for a long time, aiming for a consistent repeatable sound ~ pause ~ play the other item over and over for a long time, aiming for a consistent repeatable sound ~ pause ~ play one of the items again over and over for a long time, transforming/merging gradually into the other item until the first item has disappeared *** *** pianist: The available resources of your instrument (can include inside/outside piano and preparations) *** match/merge with the sounds you hear as closely as you can ~ pause ~ match/merge with the sounds you hear as closely as you can ~ pause ~ find sound that causes the percussionist's sound to be heard to be in friction/in tune with itself (for LMY at 90, October 2025) (“Even while laying down the rigorous mechanical laws that determine every event, he feels the need to allow atoms to make unpredictable deviations from the straight line, thereby ensuring freedom both to atoms and to human beings.”)"
good luck all of us wish everyone all the best: that the blow aimed at them might just miss; that, although hit, they don’t visibly bleed; that, while bleeding, they don’t bleed to death; that, if they bleed to death, they don’t feel pain; that, racked with pain, they find their way back to where the first false step has not yet been taken – each one of us wishes everyone all the best. (Ernst Jandl translated by Edward MacKinnon)
Extract from one of the Jandl Songs
#JamesOpstad #MarcSabat #Bach #Magnus Granberg #Skogen #JuliaEckhardt #MortonFeldman
Conlon Nancarrow