Re: The Immeasurable Equation
Re: The Immeasurable Equation
Re: Copywright
You will note that this is the time when ideas flash into my mind, or maybe they are in the mind and needing flashing out!
Two things are troubling me.
l. Sun Ra archives
a. The Bob Campbell material
b. The poetry which Gartmut of Germany and I are accumulating
c. Alton Abraham's incognito insofar as calls regarding poetry
d. Our inability to set up archives in one place; and the
question is that what we really want?
Copywright of Intellectual Property
a. Richard Stallman
Some of you may know my friend Richard Stallman, who lives andworks at MIT;, on MacArthur Fellowship (genius award, some $250,000)
He, alone in the whole world, is fighting the copywrightsituation of computers. My family knows him well, but it is too early to wake him. If anybody from Cambridge, Ma knows him, please explain his philosophy. He lectures all over the world, and is now in Roumania. One of the original hackers in computer.
b. Pozzi Escot
Another brilliant friend from New England Conservatory. Sheis devastated, furious, outraged, emotionally drained...... why? Angel Records has come out with a CD on Hildegard von Bingen. Now in Tower Stores, with performers Pozzi has never heard of, even though she is International President of the Hildegard von Bingen Society. As Dr. K. knows, I just returned from seminar on Hildegard von Bingen in Germany which Pozzi organized.
She is livid, since she has devoted years of her life notatingin modern traditional musical notation Hildegard (1200, abbess, physicist, visionary, composer) work. Livid, not because Angel Records is using Hildegard's work in a 20th Century context..... but because, Angel is using a mathematical model which Pozzi designed to use on her many lectures on Hildegard: Mathematical Principals in Music.
Her lawyer has advised her that she has lost her copywrightprivileges when she contracted with her publisher to have her annotated Hildegard music published by a press in Philadelphia. My understanding is that the publisher is also suing Angels. Please watch this case, related to Sun Ra material, I think.
WHY AM I RAISING THIS ISSUE?
1. Bob Campbell has devoted as much of his life as Pozzi has to
Sun Ra. Should all his work be put on the computer (as it is already) and put on the Communication Highway? Open for anybody who wants it? On something my son with the National Science Foundation calls "Mosaic"? Or is the whole life-time work to be made available for some $25 from Cadence, and those who can read that very fine print in their catalogs?
2. And from my point of view: Why am I banging my head against
wall after wall, including SUNO to establish the Sun Ra archives, when Hartmet Geerken already has about as complete an archives as we would want, having devoted some thirty years of his life, in the archaic form (apologies, Hartmet, I am devoted to you) of ancient card catalogs which I used some 70 years ago in the Library of Long Branch, N. J.
Believe me you, Hartmet, it well served my purposes, since
I read almost every book in that library. And who really needs this Information Library, this global information library, when I can hardly keep up with my E-Mail list? Which my son tells me is only the tip of the iceberg on the Information Highway. But my son says, and I thought of it too, our President who looks very foolish these days, will go down in history, as getting the USA into the Space Age and assisting in the Communication Revolution in which whether we like it or not, we're in.
QUESTIONS
1. Bob Campbell and Hartmet Geerkin (through Dr. K.)
How do you feel about putting all the information you have on
the Informlation Highway network. Believe me, I don't understand what this means, or how it is done. But Richard Stallman says I am a hacker, which he says means believes in an open system. And isn't this the message that Sun Ra is trying to tell us.
" This world
Is not my home
My home is
Somewhere better
Many light years in space
My home
I know I'm a member of the Angel race
I know I'm a member of the Angel race
My home is somewhere else in outer space"
and then in the essense of Sun Ra
"Then another tomorrow
They never told me
Came with the abruptness of a fiery dawn
And spoke of Cosmic Equations
The equations of sight-similarity
The equations of sound-similarity
Subtle living equations
Clear only to those
Whose wish is to be attuned
To the vibrations of the Outer Cosmic Worlds
Subtle living equations
Of the outer realms
Dear only to those
Who wish fervently the greater life"
I shall be approaching 80 years of age very shortly, and have been on the road some three months reading the poetry to all who "wish fervently the greater life"
But how many people am I reaching? And so what if the archives are at the Library of Congress, the Institute of Jazz at Rutkers, or at SUNO, Sun Ra belongs on the Information Highway, for everybody, in some far off place, alone, alone, who needs Sun Ra music and poetry.
My son tells me that mainstream hasn't even become aware that we are in a period similar to the Great Industrial Revolution, but I can see in my own life, how you on the E-list have transformed me from a traditional grandmother of twenty grandchildren and two greats, into a travelling medicine man for Sun Ra potents.
CONCLUSION
I can only talk for myself. I have been invited to some kind of a meeting on the brain, in Chicago, early April.
I am always in touch with Alton Abraham, through his friend James Bryant, and I shall take up this information pertaining to the poetry. He's not at all a greedy person, who want all kinds of money for the poetry.
Alton Abraham, IMHO, was Sun Ra's alter ego. A very spiritual person, who like Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, was close to Sun Ra when both were very young, in the early 50's or late 40's. Both dreamed together, both read mystical books on Pythagoras, Hermes Trismegetis, and it was Alton Abraham who copywrighted all the early stuff. It was this action on his part that has made it possible for Jerry Gordon to put out the CD's.
Believe me, after Sun Ra went on his own later, without the copywright, there are all kinds of messes, which Bob Campbell can explain better than I. I have known personally Leo and many people want me to contact Haffa who has tapes of the Sun Ra concerts. And now that the family has been made Executors of the Estate, how do they fit into this scheme of copywrights and bootleg tapes of concerts.
I'm with the Grateful Dead philosophy. Since the music plays the band, all are welcome to record it and enjoy it.
But what have I to do with People of this Earth Who claim to Own Sun Ra's works?
In his lifetime He wanted no material possessions He lived the philosophy of Nothingness
Out of Nothingness Comes Everything
He died a pauper But that's the way He wanted it
Are we so foolish To feel we possess His music and his poetry?
This all belongs To the Collective Consciousness
And I for one Will try to get the poetry on The Information Highway For people in obscure places In some far off place To have access to it all
Bob and Hartmut, what are your opinions on this? If anybody will write, especially about the poetry, I shall be glad to present this is Alton Abraham in April 1995.
Trudy Morse PO Box 444 Garrett Park, Md 20896
And please send any poetry you may have, so that my collection will be as complete as possible. I am missing some of the Peter Hines chapbooks.
DATE: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 13:34:46 -0500 FROM: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU
Not long ago I tried phoning A Abraham about publishing some of Sun Ra's poetry in a literary journal. He never answered his phone & did not return calls... Good luck!!