by Mark Richard-San

Fuck Words of Wisdom

Human beings hear with the greatest clarity between 500Hz and 4000Hz. So it comes as no surprise that this is the general working range of the human voice (though we must make allowances for Barry White and that hideous freak of nature from the Oak Ridge Boys). Just as the eyes and brain work together to "tune in" facial features, so it is with the voice. People who design sounds for a living understand that there's something special about how the ear hears voices. Imagine Alvin and the Chipmunks as a surf band with all their guitars tuned up an octave; this isn't the stuff of hit records. We hear the voice distorted and it makes an immediate impact. We become curious.

Distorted voices are a subject of fascination for me. Elton John tells us that sad songs say so much, but to my ears, music with voices too fucked up to be understood is much sadder still. Because of my predilection, I was naturally drawn to Scott Herren's new record as Prefuse 73, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives. One of the key tracks on this record is "Nuno." Here, Herren tips his hand, giving the listener insight into what he's trying to accomplish. The only discernable phrase among the cut-up rap in "Nuno" presents the first prong of Herren's thesis: "Fuck words of wisdom." Here is one side of the coin, the proactive rejection of language as a limited form of communication, possibly one inadequate for expressing the complexity of consciousness. This phrase could be seen as a noble striving toward a more sophisticated kind of discourse, like William Burroughs' studied critiques of language. Or it could be a confession of weakness, a failure to express what Van Morrison called "the inarticulate speech of the heart."

But that's only part of the story with "Nuno." The title of the track refers to the Portuguese proto-IDM artist Nuno Canavarro, whose amazing 1988 album, Plux Quba, was reissued by Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label a couple of years ago. Plux Quba is filled with haunting manipulated vocals, where words are stripped of specific meaning but not emotional content. Tapes of singing children are splintered and reassembled randomly, and vocal leads could just as easily move in either direction. To clarify his intention on "Nuno," Herren even goes so far as to sample the lost, whispering voice from Plux Quba's "Wask." The linguistic failure on Plux Quba has less to do with the nature of the medium than it does an internal deficiency. To be heard and understood would solve the problem of the album, but in that world, language is impossible. The result when language breaks down, either from conscious rejection or failure, is the same: utter loneliness.

An album that's said to have inspired Plux Quba reinforces the idea that failing to communicate misery is worse than the misery itself. Composer Robert Ashley pieced together the 45-minute "Automatic Writing" as a way of working through his own problems with "involuntary speech" (he described his malady as a mild form of Tourette's syndrome). When Ashley's voice became an instrument for something that neither he nor those around him could understand, he was forced into isolation. Hence, the almost unbearably internal mood of this absorbing piece, which combines alien utterances, a whispering voice in French, organ chords and, off in the distance, the muffled sounds of an unnamable pop tune. Hank Williams Sr. may have been so lonesome he could cry, but he at least could take comfort in telling people about it. In their respective pieces, Robert Ashley and Canavarro do not have that luxury, at least not in terms of direct articulation. The very subject matter of these communications is the difficulty of communication itself.

One night, in particular, informs my experience with the loneliness of the garbled transmission. It was my first experience at a rave, at a warehouse space in San Francisco. On this night, the first round of ecstasy had no effect on me (the one time I'd taken it previous had also been a dud) so I decided to up the dosage. Within a few minutes of taking the second hit, a horse-sized pill from a different source than the first, I started to feel something very wrong. It was a rapid accumulation of anxiety and physical discomfort, filling me bit by bit like water moving through the compartments of an ice tray. Within a minute or two, I vomited, and then my eyes rolled into my head (as those around me would later tell me) and I collapsed.

When I became aware of my surroundings again, the friends I'd come with were gathered around trying to "talk me down." By this time, they were completely gripped by the powerful upside of E, and it was impossible for them to empathize with how terrible I was feeling. Like Lily Tomlin's fried hippie in Flirting with Disaster, my companions felt like experienced trip guides, and they all figured they could give me something-- encouraging words, a glass of water, a hug-- that would get me back on course. Yet, as good as their intentions were, they couldn't have been more wrong. There was no feeling better. I just had to ride it out.

The strongest image I have from that night is four or five familiar faces gathered close and speaking. I could hear the individual words, but had no sense of what they were saying. The part of my brain in charge of transforming sound into meaning had shut down completely. Likewise, when I tried to speak, I would forget what I'd said a split second after each word. I assumed-- correctly, it turned out-- that nothing I was saying made any sense. I was completely trapped inside my head as I experienced some of the worst feelings of my life.

The drug wore off, as drugs do, and life went on. But I am still seized with anxiety whenever I think about that night, and the isolation that came when communication was impossible. Some time later, I heard "Touch" by Curd Duca on the Mille Plateaux compilation Modulation and Transformation 4, and it made sense to me instantly. I'd already heard plenty of Oval, but this was the first time I can remember hearing the ideas behind "glitch" music applied to the human voice. A CD containing what might be an ethereal version of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" skips and renders the text incomprehensible; only occasionally is order restored. The clicking stops, and we hear a single word, the time-stretched "tooouuuuch." Contact: the missing connection if found, giving the track its considerable release. And, as the lyrics read, it feels like heaven.