This, Not That

Ryan Norris makes music as Coupler and has released a number of records with the likes of Third Man Records and my own yk Records. He's also been in The Privates, forrest bride, Hands Off Cuba, HeCTA, Lambchop and tons more. He's also the first person who ever introduced me to Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies and remains one of the people I find the most fascinating to hear talk about music. I actually recorded a chat with him not too long ago and still think about it often.

But that's all to say, he has a wealth of creative experience and I am, personally, a fan of how he expresses it. He recently posted this excellent piece about the art of editing - This, Not That. (or Editing as a Creative Act): A Provocation.

This "provocation" weaves through the idea of creation as reduction. It has a style and a cadence that is uniquely Norris. I actually recommend listening to the "Article voiceover" option, that he reads himself. I could pull quote many bits of it but I'll leave with this one:

The illusion great works present is of a springing forth fully-formed, inevitable, devoid of the messiness of this-not-that-ing. Unfinished works appear somehow different, yet in certain ways similar; pure, unaltered, primal, fundamental, brutal, prior to the edit. They pose versions of the same question; are they form without void, absent the negotiation of this-ing and that-ing? Were they never dipped into the muck?