https://soundcloud.com/lschwart/mixolyread-into-e-drone?in=lschwart/sets/aurika

Live at the Visual Art Studio, September 6, 2019. Robin McLeod electric guitar, Louis Schwartz amplified acoustic guitar, Gardner Campbell bass, Dave Ellis percussion. Composition and recording: Louis Schwartz. Mastering: Gardner Campbell.

To date my only gig with Aurika. The regular bass player returned for the next months’ gigs, and just when it looked like a sub-spot might come my way again, it was pandemic time.

I have vivid memories of playing this night. The venue was small and the four of us were pretty tightly assembled in the corner next to the shop window that looks out on Broad Street, just a few blocks down from VCU. When you’re that close together, listening is not just listening, and getting the feel of a jam is not just a metaphor.

About 5:36 into the track something starts to happen. I heard something in Louis’ playing, a little arc of a plaintive melody. A little yearning moment. Robin was mirroring the arc in a descant. Dave started to leave more space for the melodies, focusing on the backbeat, and then did a quick little fill. And that’s when I knew, I felt it: I will help to shape this moment, now.

5:48. I start to go up chromatically, higher and higher, with more rapid notes. And as I do this, I hear that we have all heard what I have heard, and that we all know, right then, that we will shape this moment, now. Hammering ostinatos in the guitars, crushing tight chords, percussion focusing and reinforcing what I’m doing, up we go, and I hear it again: I will help to shape the end of this moment.

I play three long descending notes as Robin and Louis trill on either end of the hinged moment. Dave hears exactly what I’m doing, moves from one more measure of flurried notes to a strong and final

One

Two

Three….

Then a pickup eighth note and we’re back in.

6:12-6:13 or so, and the moment is done. Robin’s trills ascend and we follow.

I remember this moment happening. I remember the decisions I made, and when I made them, and yet it also sounds to me now as if my decisions were coming from somewhere else. It’s not just that we were all playing together, all listening together. I feel as if we all heard one thing, and by playing along, we transcribed what we heard into what we played. That seems a very fanciful description–very woo-woo, as I read it now. But you tell me: how can I have been there, and done that, and remember doing that, yet feel such a mystery about the agency of it all?

It was indeed an ecstasy, a standing beside myself.

I hope you can hear at least a little of that as you listen.

To Louis, Robin, Dave, to the Visual Art Studio, and to a warm September evening on Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia: my thanks. May we meet again in the aftertimes.