Gertrude Stein
by Mina Loy
Curie
of the laboratory
of vocabulary
she crushed
the tonnage
of consciousness
congealed to phrases
to extract
a radium of the word
Jody on her process in composing what she calls her Something Songs:
Generally, I sit down with my iPad, a microphone and a line of a text I am reading at that moment. I will read the line over and over and then record. The music is quite obvious from the prosody. I don’t plan anything. I record loops, and then once all of the loops are recorded, I create what I consider to be the most “compositional” aspect of the song: I mix the loops to convey the mood or meaning of what I myself am trying to understand of the text. So, they become hyper-text-snippets.
I am under the delusional impression that somehow, I have given a personal reading of these texts by creating these songs. It’s likely a delusion, and its clearly a solipsistic activity, because I’m pretty sure about 4 people total have ever listened to them on my website. But I’m ok with that.
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Jody Pou is an American writer who has lived in and out of France for many years. She is also an accomplished lyric soloist whose career has focused primarily on Baroque and Contemporary music. She has premiered many pieces, sung with many ensembles and in many festivals throughout Europe and in the US since her career began. In 2007, she sung the soprano role in a staged production of Ligeti's Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures at the Paris Opera. The same year in New York City, she created the netlabel, shskh.com, commissioning pieces by a diverse array of musicians and composers, including Garth Knox, Etsuko Chida, and Igor Ballereau. It is here that one can find her interpretation of all of Webern opuses of piano with voice, as well as a volume of Baroque songs and Jazz standards. Her books, Will (Les Petits Matins, Paris, 2009) and I thought j'irais en bloom (Le Bleu du Ciel, Bordeaux, 2014) are both written in English and French mixed. Other texts have been published in various journals, notably Tilt, with audio on quaderna.org, and she will be featured in the Migrant Women’s Poetry anthology which will be published in 2017 in Japan. She is also a painter.