Some thoughts on percussion

This machine changes the word to persuasion. When I tap, the screen taps back letters with a cerebral, semiotic resonance that follows the attack. This is a cool resonance, not like a Dayereh or a Dilla loop. When I pause, the curser flickers in a kind of metronome. This rhythm, human adjacent, suggests the limitations of binary computational systems. Eli Keszler, we could call him a Derridean drummer, quietly prowls the edges of drum logic, gesturing beyond. Is it in vibrational relations that meaning or resonance is conceived interstitially? Is it fair to posit that percussion is only partially received and always already in relation? Is there a percussion of us? Unknowingly sitting next to each other in an auditorium in Puebla for a conference subtitled no one is innocent, we listened to a Kantian on object oriented ontology. Again, after an art talk, around a pool table where each shot reconfigures the conditions of our playing. Again at a talk with Silvia Federici, on the commons, scoring another beat. You mentioned percussion and I said ‘3 years ago in Venice there was a Columbian artist that-' you come in ‘I spoke with Marcos yesterday' You continue, 'his work would be the most -'‘ ‘literal’ we say in union. A polyrhythm we’re standing too close to when we miss a beat in Venice and then harmonize in the Mission. What happens when our rhythms get quantized by algorithms? Berardi says breathe, we can’t keep up. Jalal Toufic says “On 3 January 1889, on coming across a horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, in Turin, Nietzsche reportedly threw his arms around the horse’s neck to defend it, and collapsed. Had this philosopher who signed the following day several of his letters with ‘The Crucified,’ and who was discerning enough not to view himself as the owner of ‘his’ body come across Twelver Shi‘ite participants in the yearly ten-day commemorative event ‘Âshûrâ’, would he have intervened likewise between them and ‘their’ bodies as they whipped and slapped the latter, exclaiming all the while, in the words with which Saint Francis addressed and referred to ‘his’ body: ‘Brother donkey!’?” Is percussion simply the sound of will? Are there are always repercussions? The recoil of something after impact. The withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster (Jalal Toufic). I wonder out loud, to no one in particular, is percussion only discernible against the ecological score of particular contexts, and what then are the requirements for resonance? A man, a tree, an axe. Percussion has to distinguish itself from it’s surroundings; the jungle, the metropolis. I think of Mirtha Dermisache and her asemic writing. Score-like, with something akin to physical resonance. Rocks in moving water. Cecilia Vicuñas books look like foot prints on the earth after a shimmering dance, something important evaporated. I think of Zapotec weavers, stories scored with their percussions. I think about metal workers and ways to give form. What conditions are needed for percussion to persuade? My daughter plays with oobleck, a simple, non-newtonian fluid made with cornstarch and water. When you strike it with force it hardens impenetrably and when you play with it kindly, it gives to your touch. I think of Gaspar Nali from Malawi.