“screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,
screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world,
blood streaming from my belly and shoulders
flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways
by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.”

– Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from Paterson

There are two things that jump to mind as the inspiration for this site. One of the two came when I was about 17 or 18 and was exposed (by Shipp) to a contemporary composer named Eric Whitacre. We’ve posted some Whitacre on here before – not in his entirety and not the pieces of work that mean the most to me. We’ll get around to that eventually. The quality of Whitacre, or the quality of my experience with Whitacre is what I created this site for. Whitacre shattered me on the anvil of sound. It was a thunderclap that clove my spirit and allowed me to weep, shake and break apart in the sky. It showed me rapture.

That being said, I mention my experiences with Whitacre to give context to what I am about to introduce. This post is about the first of two experiences that gave impetus to this site: Radiohead’s Idioteque Live on Saturday Night Live. It’s hard for me to write about. It approaches a certain part of me that is selfish and wants to keep experiences of vision, real insight and real heavenly connection private (it is hard to take pictures of the most beautiful places, or think about giving pleasure to someone else, unrelated to the situation, while making love). I have a philosophy though (that sharing those things that are of the most importance breathes air into them and keeps them living) and I’m sticking to it.

It’s also hard to share because it touches on madness. To admit to having fits of ecstasy, convulsing, heaving, pounding fits is incredibly intimate. To be shattered. To drown the conscious mind. To work oneself into madness. To fly down a night highway past pulp mills lit like nuclear plants while you shake and shake and shake. Like a shaman in a fever. And like a desert prophet. It is hard to admit.

I shouldnt need to reiterate this by now. But this may be the most important thing that I have posted or will ever post on the internet. This video is quite literally canon for Shipp, Mangan and myself. To see Yorke working on himself, to see him collapse out of his cerebrum and into his soul, that is what it is to be moved.