You can’t take pictures like these now!
So the first thing everyone needs to realize is that these were taken in 2002. At that time, I was able to move around and photograph all I wanted. When these same (?) folks, known as the Danza Azteca de Anahuac, appeared on Taos Plaza in February, 2009, they told me not to take pictures, and I immediately complied. Anyway, seven years ago this was fine, and I had a great time capturing the pre-Columbian spectacle:
What does this sound like? Well, I had my recording device in full view, and nobody told me not to use it, so I do have a snippet of audio for you. (This is from last month.) If you have your speakers turned up loud enough, you can hear the ankle bracelets shaking:
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Wow. A glorious antidote to all that white man crapola, yes? And to think all I had to do was walk downtown…
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
i’m curious if they gave you a specific reason/rationale for not allowing pictures. don’t misunderstand: I AGREE WITH IT ENTIRELY. i’m surprised they allowed your audio recording. capturing a moment (visual or sound) has a way of diminishing the ephemeral reality of it… there’s a quote from a short film by David Cronenberg: “When you photograph the moment, you photograph the death of the moment.”
)
in a way recording technology has done a lot to destroy the true sacredness of performance. personally the best stuff i’ve ever done on my synthesizers over the decades i never recorded – it was far more important to simply be in the focus of the creative now and participate in the process with full consciousness and just not give a fuck about trying to “save” it for later or others to hear (frankly nobody would want to hear the extreme electro-noize i make anyway
I know what you mean about not recording. I’ve recorded almost nothing of thousands & thousands of hours of free-form jamming on various instruments… Not that the world is in any worse shape for this, however.
And to be fair, the fellow on the Plaza who asked me to put my camera away probably didn’t see my audio recorder.
from a 1983 Keyboard magazine interview with Vangelis (Greek synthesist, most famous for his scores to Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner):
“INTERVIEWER: Do you play often without turning the tape on?
VANGELIS: Many times. Sometimes when I play I don’t mind if I don’t keep it. Sometimes I do things then that may be better than the things you hear. But even though they are lost, so what? Actually, they are not lost. We THINK they are lost because we can’t hear them again, but they are actually there all the time.”
I feel right at home with that statement. Everything I’ve ever played is still out there!