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[Love & Anger]
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HAROLD BUDD INTERVIEW PART 2. COPYRIGHT 1987 GREGORY TAYLOR
____
It seems to me that the whole Postmodern notion that culture
presents us with options in the absence of editorializing-
that that we're expected to choose among-is at work there.
On one hand, that is wonderful. On the other hand, one
longs sometimes for easy guidance.
-even something to rebel against.
But that is a kind of focus itself....
Yes. When I was coming of age, there was so much to dislike
that once you found some kind of art scene that just flew in
the face of all received convention, you could just fall in
love with it. It was all a kind of secret information-and
it may not be quite so simple as all that now. It was espe-
cially secret information for me, growing up in Los Angeles
and California-which still in some ways remains a very small
and parochial town-particularly in regard to New Music.
It's difficult to imagine that being true now.
I can assure you that there's not been a whole helluva lot
of change. Well, I'm going to back up on that a little bit.
There's a whole lot of people here doing some very interest-
ing work-but this is still a dreadful place to be a modern
artist, I must say-unless you're a painter.
It is possible that-with all its faults-the system whereby
one lives and works in New York or noplace or commutes has
not been fully supplanted by the kind of fragmentation and
regionalism that you've implied in your discussion of the
radical shift in access to information.
I see how you could mean that and be right, but regionalism
is from now on impossible. Forever. There is just too much
information available to maintain the kind of isolation that
regionalism needs. There is absolutely no hiding from any-
thing that's happening. Regionalism at one time was a kind
of muscular way of citing your own independence from a scene
that was happening somewhere else. I don't really see how
that can occur anymore, since even self-imposed isolation is
almost impossible.
That brings us rather neatly around to the notion of educa-
tion. Back when "The Pavilion of Dreams" was first
released, you were a teacher at Cal Arts. Could you talk
about teaching a little bit?
I was there from 70 until 76. Look, it's very simple. I
really didn't teach. It was more that my students hung out
with me.
In the sense of the Medieval notion of education as a kind
of apprenticeship, that's not such an unusual idea....
Yes, I see what you're saying. The difference in this case
is that I didn't lay down any laws about what the truth of
the matter was. My students came to me-since everybody had
a choice, those people came to me because I was associated
with a certain kind of music and a certain kind of attitude
to working, as opposed to other members of the faculty or
other faculty at other schools.
It's that issue of access again.
Yes, exactly.
I guess there is a kind of collaboration in the process of
one's education as well.
Oh yes. That's true with the act of listening as a way to
learn as well. The thing is that I never felt the urge to
lay any kind of heavy aesthetic trip on my students. I
don't know how to put it, exactly-there wasn't any kind of
convincing about the matter. It was "I'm delighted to see
you. I think that you're really going to make some wonder-
ful music here," and-I didn't exactly say this explicitly-
"If you really want to get associated with what I'm doing,
I'm sorry. You're not going to learn very much about Webern
or Schoenberg." I always figured that I had the attitude-and
it was an attitude that I always tried to convince my stu-
dents to adopt if they would, please-that what they were
really doing was bringing what they were trying to work
through-trying to look at things, trying to feel things,
seeing how they go-all kinds of very complex issues-and tak-
ing these things to someone who was by default older and
just more experienced. I always thought that that was
really what the proper role of a teacher should be. I
didn't think that a teacher should give lessons or tell what
should be done, or anything of that nature-just simply be
present to bounce ideas off of, while being a little bit
older.
It sounds as if you might have been trying to recapitulate
the experience of your own education.
No, not really. I had already left all of that entire
scene. I had completely cut myself off from that. My
teacher was very different than I was. He was also very
good and I learned a tremendous amount from him. I learned
harmony and traditional counterpoint just about as well as
could be learned. At a certain point that just became
irrelevant for me. That doesn't mean that he was
irrelevant in any way. When I decided to become a composer
myself, none of my reasons for doing that had anything to do
with what I had learned. It is like having had a very nice
Math teacher when you're a kid and then becoming a chemist
instead. You take a lot of that basic information for
granted. The other thing about being a teacher is that
you're just constantly bombarded by ideas from people who
are really smart-your students. All of my students are now
the age that I was then. I look at what they're doing, and
some of them are really making their own mark-doing music
that is often radically different than my work: Peter Gar-
land, Eugene Bowen, Michael Byron, Chas Smith, Michael Fink,
Michael Bennett. But the whole idea was that we had a com-
mon attitude, and I'm sure that's the only reason that they
tolerated me for all that time: The notion that everything
that has happened in the past doesn't make a bit of differ-
ence. I said, "I'm not going to punish you for not learning
the past; let's start at square one and see where we're
going to go and-all things going well-please come up with a
kind of music that's going to change your life. Do some-
thing. Stun me."
What have you done since that time, then?
I've done just about everything but teach. Luckily, I was
in a kind of college (Cal Arts) where when you were hired,
you were expected to be a teacher and an artist-to work.
But once that was over, I thought that the art part was of
paramount importance to me. I was really without a plan,
except to follow the stalk-the one that smells most
delicious-and you go in that direction. That was ten years
ago.
You have been really fortunate to be able to pursue that.
Certainly, Not everyone has the chance to do that. I assure
you that I didn't have a plan or a goal for this. What I
really wanted to do was to do something that I really
believed in that I wouldn't have to be embarrassed about
later on.
We've talked about collaborating with other musicians and
the exchange of ideas with one's students. How does it feel
to collaborate with a producer? You seem to feel very
strongly about the notion of getting a piece of recorded
work perfect. You've produced a fair amount of your own
work in addition to working with Brian Eno. "Lovely
Thunder" strikes me as an unusual recording, and I'm
inclined to see some of that sense of difference as being
tied to Michael Hoenig's role as producer. Some of the work
that Michael Hoenig did in Koyaanisqatsi strikes me as hav-
ing the same kind of dense, theatrical space in it that I
associate with your collaborations with Brian Eno. What
sort of relationship do you have with Michael Hoenig and
with his own work as a musician?
First of all, Michael is a friend of mine, and we get along
really well as persons. He has a fabulaous studio in the
little Tokyo section of Los Angeles where we worked on much
of "Lovely Thunder". In addition, he is an absolutely bril-
liant engineer, and he wound up doing a large amount of the
work that I am simply not capable of doing on my own. He
discovered a lot if ideas-maybe it would be more to the
point to say that he made it possible from his technologi-
cal vantage point for me to discover a lot of things that I
couldn't have predicted would come up.
By definition, then, that's quite a successful collaboration
from your point of view.
Very much so. I must say, I've been extraordinarily lucky
all along the line. Everyone I've worked with has turned
out to be a great friend and they've always been in places
where something good has come out of working with them.
One of the things that I think I hear in "Lovely Thunder"
that strikes me as unusual in terms of your other work
derives from hearing what I've come to associate with your
way of working done with a very different-.
I know what you're about to say, and I completely agree with
you....
I think that I hear the music that you've worked on for some
time mapped onto a very different set of electronic timbres.
Yeah, that's it all right.
I think that "Lovely Thunder" is a good deal more
confrontational-is that the right word?
Well, it is an album that someone who knows your work could
potentially dislike, either for being so spare, for sounding
so different, or for being so dissonant. For you, that's as
confrontational as you get.
Outside of "Lovely Thunder" and working with the Cocteau
Twins, it has been two years since my last recording, Aban-
doned Cities. There is also "The Pearl"-which I knew then
and know now, is the end of that entire world. Eno and I
are never going to do another piano album together. We have
already done it. I like the ethos of "Lovely Thunder",
where it isn't charming or necessarily seductive.