As far as I know, no one before me made
books to use as musical instruments. I'm
saying this in part because I suspect that by
doing so something will come to my attention
that proves the statement wrong. I'm also
saying it because even if other people have
made musical books, in my own terms making
these books has been pure invention,
something that came to me on the most basic
existential level as creation ex nihilo.
One of my first acoustic books began with
quiet, delicate poems that lead by their own
logic through visions of peace and serenity,
exploring many different types of music along
the way. The second grew through a changing
understanding of the nature of celebration of
life and spirit in the world. The last one
mentioned here responds to ultimate evil,
which I have had to live with, avoid, and
confront throughout my life. During World
War II, my father was an army chaplain and
my mother an army nurse anesthetist. The war
threw them together on a train from Munich
to Rome after they had witnessed what seemed
the most harrowing extremes of depravity and
perversion, particularly working, at different
points on the line, with the survivors of the
concentration camp at Dachau. Between the
time they met and the time I was born,
destruction proved it had the potential to
spread further, that it could put the means of
destroying races and even humanity in the
hands of any lunatic generals backed by
enough wealth to produce nuclear bombs. As
with virtually any anti-nuclear activity or work
of art, this book is a totally adamant
affirmation of life, affirmation made without
flinching in the face of the most vicious and
stupid perversion humanity has created,
and such affirmation must in some sense
factor in the base of any form of joy in this
period of history.
The history of books, poetry, and all arts
has followed strange paths, as has human
evolution. In the later moments of that human
evolution, books have played an integral part
in the process of changing us and the world.
Visual poets speculate on the origins of their
art, which is as much as to say the origin of
book art. My sense of this is that the first texts
our prehuman ancestors learned to read were
the constelations of the night sky and the
tracks of birds and animals. Perhaps a memory
or an intuition of this comes through in the
Chinese story that writing originated in the
conjunction of bird tracks and the light of a
star. The main contenders for the first books
fashioned by human hands seem to be
petroglyphs, scarification, and tattoos - and
these, too, could have prehuman origins.
Weaving and other textile making created
early forms of writing. Whatever the case,
changes and inventions have worked through
the essence of the books that have evolved
along with us. Many forms persist - people still
read bird and animal tracks and watch the
cycle of constellations and planets as they
move through the sky. Books contextualize
our lives, and presumably they will continue
to evolve along with us, even though they will
morph into forms we cannot now imagine.
The process is part of what makes us human.
And when the human world ends, people will
probably still be touching the origins of books,
no matter how they have changed, as they
make the last one.
