1. What do we gain through mixing/sampling? Can we avoid these processes if we want, or do they happen naturally as well as intentionally?
DJ Spooky believes, “At the end of the day, it’s all about reprocessing the world around you…” (29). This reprocessing seems like it would be typical of not only sampling music and sounds, but also of writing. It almost seems natural to reprocess when we slow down at some point during our day and let our thoughts review. Sometimes we do things differently the next day as a result of this review/reprocessing. Furthermore, I think everything DJ Spooky says on page 25 about sonic sculptures resonates with writing: As we develop our writing, we sample ways of doing something and creating, breaking free from old associations, forming new contexts and thoughts, learning a new language, and taking the ideas and folding them in on themselves. We’re constantly pulling from the old and adapting it to make something new. This mixing reminds me of writing exercises I had to complete a few years go where we were assigned to examine and then write in different authors’ styles (Hemingway, Stein, Faulkner, to name a few). Even if I didn’t have this assignment, though, it’s implied that I’ll pick up writing style from reading other authors and continuing to write.
Rhythm Science also made me think about the mix CDs I’ve made. It’s interesting to think of them as “a paradox of personal and impersonal” (29). Although I’ve never mixed the songs in ways that changed the individual songs, the songs I chose to incorporate on my CDs took those songs into new realms, producing new contexts and environments (57). With each mix, a new whole is produced even if the individual songs appear unchanged. With the new framing, though, the songs could be interpreted differently by the listeners. Again, writing can work the same way if one sentence gets put in another context – another story, another paragraph, another point of view.
Spooky’s mom asks a profound question when she says, “Who speaks through you?” (37). With intertextuality and the webbed (not necessarily linear) connections that exist in our minds and our compositions, pieces of others are speaking through us all of the time. Intentionally or not, we’re all DJs, all the time.
2. “Is identity for sale to the highest bidder?” (76). Spooky implies that identity is for sale in today’s open market world, and I think it is an idea worth pondering. Sometimes we work very hard to develop and/or maintain our identities. Adding in the concept that we can also buy identity puts a new twist on how we view identity, how we achieve identity, and how money plays (can play) a role in forming that identity.
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Hi Mary.
ReplyDeleteYou suggest that in a way DJ Spooky is describing something quite familiar, i.e. the adaptivity and borrowing inevitably involved in human thought and practice. It seems important here to insist on the obstacles to "naturalizing" this view. We do have an ideology of orginality, of innovation as tied to the subject; we also have a kind of reverance for tradition - perhaps less so in America - that makes it hard to think of remixing the past. I wonder if your comfort with these notions is something that is only possible at this point, after considerable work on breaking down the obstacles I mention?
Q2. A good point that identity can be hard fought for. I would say many people would not be so comfortable with the idea of identity for sale. Now, it might be true and still not be a good thing; that is, I might agree that spooky is right about identity but argue that it should be otherwise. Or it might be that identity is not this way...