Dear Serge,
by David Olds
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I had always thought (without thinking) that musique was concrète when it
drew on concrete, extant sounds to build an imaginary world. Now I realize I
was missing half the point. Always rooted in the natural sound world, you use
your sound-painter’s colourbox to extend the world we know into that
dream state you are so fond of naming. Of invoking and evoking. You make
imagined sounds concrete.
You lure me into an illusory world, half-glimpsed through sleep-closing
eyes. Desert sands; a sandy beach washed with silken waves; an invitation
from the Sand-Man (or is it the Pied Piper?) to enter the endless sands of
Time… And then, on the edge of dreams, just before I slip into a
peaceful rest, I‘m overtaken by lurid rhythms, pulsing signals just
beyond comprehension. Words heard, but not absorbed. Inarticulated speech.
Sound, not Meaning…
Chronaxie, Toronto, 1985;
Lueurs, Montréal, 1987;
La porte des
sables, Banff, 1989; Murmure, Toronto, 1989;
Prélude aux
méandres, Montréal, 1990.
These pieces (these places, these occasions) have been mileposts for me on
my labyrinthine journey towards a truly inner ear. They loom like spectres on
the landscape of my aural memory. The invocation of that horn still haunts me
six years after I first heard those ‘glimmers’ and ventured
through that beaded curtain into your personal vision of an REM-driven world,
toward the exuberant sounds of joyous children, melting into something of a
‘tangerine dream’… I am touched afresh with each
listening.
David Olds, Toronto
[ix-93]
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