Altered Sound

[cue midnight toll]
Hello, and welcome to the End of the Year episode of Altered Sound. This is your host, Lu-Ke-Tan, and you’re listening to PRA radio, a fine example of Portland indie media, streaming live online at praradio.org. Podcasts of this episode and previous episodes can be downloaded for free at alteredsound.com

Today is December 28th, the last Thursday of 2006. If you are listening to us live and reside in the Portland area come join the PRA radio crew as we ring in the new year at Disjecta, this Sunday December 31st.
The three word title for today’s episode is : “Clocks, Marx, & Work”

This time of year lends itself to reflections. Reflections on the past, on the future,
on the present, and on time itself. The most obvious audible representation of time is the clock
[cue in clock ticking]
Tick-tock, tick-tock, a regular pattern repeating indefinately-
[cue out clock]
and that’s a fairly good explanation of time as we have seen fit to quantify it. We classify our existence on a heirarchy of ever smaller divisions of repeating patterns:
there are 12 months in any given year,
a fixed number of days in each month,
24 hours in every day,
60 minutes in every hour,
60 seconds in every minute-
and the division can be continued indefinately.
It’s interesting to take a step back and see which classifications of time are based on the physicality of the world we live in, and which are artifacts of our conscious reality.

The ‘year’ is a fairly obvious classification of time based on the physical world. Whether you become aware of it’s existence through astronomy and the regular rotation of the earth around the sun or through agronomy and the regular recurrence of the seasons, it is hard to deny the notion of a ‘year’. It’s exact length, the start and end dates, may all be arbitrary and relative, but there does seem to exist a recurring pattern on the axis of time that roughly corresponds to our concept of the ‘year’.

Likewise, it seems the same can be said of a ‘day’.
Darkness, light,
darkness, light,
the rotation of the earth on itself.
It’s length, start, and end may all be relative and arbitrary, but there is no denying a recurring pattern corresponding to our concept of a ‘day’ occuring inside the recurring pattern of the ‘year’.

I don’t know the answer to this, nor do I know enought to extrapolate on it, but it is interesting to pontificate on the idea of what macro pattern the year is a micro pattern of. Perhaps we are too small, our lifespans too short, to observe the repetition. Perhaps it corresponds to the revolution of our sun, our solar system, around a more encompassing heavenly body.

And what sort of recurring patterns are contained within a ‘day’? The 24 hours in a day, the 60 minutes in an hour, are all obvious cultural constructs. They are not based on any particular repeating pattern of the physical world, but rather exist as artifacts of human consciousness they serve as a tool for discipline and regulation.

If one were to take a Marxist point of view of things, the division of time into hours serves the capitalist in the commodification of labor- and the division of hours into minutes and then into seconds assures him that he gets exactly his money’s worth. It allows the life of a human to no longer be gonverned by the seasons, by the rising and setting of the sun, but rather by the owner of the means of production, by numbers on the dial, The physical nature of time is thus superceded by the owner of labor power, by the owner of the laborer. One could thus argue, and perhaps rightfully so, that the division of the naturally occuring pattern of the day into man made hours, the enforcement of a calendar and the clock, onto the axis of time, results in the enslavement of one human being by another.
Workers, time,
time, clock,
time clock,
work.
Work…
I’d like to to take this time to introduce to you something that will hopefully become a recurring feature here at altered sound, our “Historical Songwriter Spotlight”. Today’s Historical Songwriter Spotlight is focused on “Henry Clay Work”. Henry Clay Work was born in the year 1832, in Middleton Connecticut, and became on of America’s most succesful songwriters of the civil war and post-civil war era. Millions of copies of sheet music for his songs were sold during his lifetime, and many have become parts of the tapestry of American culture. Work’s song “Marching Through Georgia” is still played by marching bands all over the world, and is often used as a fight song at Princeton. Have you ever seen, or heard, or heard of, a grandfather clock? Well, what used to be known as longcase clock, or a floor clock, got the moniker Grandfather Clock from a Henry Clay Work Song. Work’s song, “Grandfater’s Clock”, tells the story of a clock that ceased functioning when it’s owner died. The song was so popular that all longcase clocks soon came to be called
grandfather clocks.

It stopped short never to go again
when the old man died.

Today’s composition contains clock samples captured while visiting my mother in Georgia, selections from Marx and Engel’s “The Communist Manifesto” read by Jon Ingram from librivox, and a midi version of Henry Clay Work’s “Grandfather’s Clock”.
Get out the headphones, relax, and most of all, I hope you enjoy. This is Lu-Ke-Tan with Altered Sound. Thanks for listening.

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