I Dig Her Deeply, and No Wonder

Hey! It's been awhile. But let's catch up, shall we, with that gang of superpowered misfits busily engineering the New York new music scene down in the secret underground bunker of New Amsterdam Records. I talked about the new Victoire release in my print column not too long ago, but there've been a coupla discs released since then that we really need to talk about.

For one thing, even longer than we've been waiting for that Victoire disc, we've all been waiting for David T. Little's noisy Newspeak to drop their first record, so the release of their new sweet light crude means we can finally EXHALE, and so now how is it?

Well, I'm not crazy about it, but that doesn't answer the question, since after all do I not like it because it really isn't good or do I not like it because it's just not my thing? Now THAT'S a puzzler, because there's a lot here that is Not My Thing—the sound here leans often towards the heavier genres of popular music, which are most effective when they've got that Wall Of Sound density, aren't they? Those turgid fuzzed-out textures you have to dig into to make everything out? When everything is articulated clearly, demanding instead of just allowing you to hear everything that's going on, we're falling into the genres I'm not crazy about, where the word "rock" is preceded by "prog" or followed by "opera."

But—no, it's not just that. Harmonically, melodically, these pieces leave me, for the most part, unmoved. And these genres don't always gel—there's always the hazard, when crashing all these musics into each other, of coming up with something that combines not the Best of Both Worlds but instead strays into "Most Unwanted Song" territory—nor do these pieces really hang together; I didn't feel, at the end, as if they'd added up to anything bigger.

Which is too bad, because these players are so great! In the aforelinked Victoire review, remember how I complained about their fiddler? Listen to Caleb Burhans play Missy Mazzoli's In Spite of All This and hear the difference a first-rate violinist can make. In Pat Muchmore's Brennschluß, Mellissa Hughes (of The Little Death) delivers her text like a total pro. How many singers can also Talk that convincingly?

Actually, of all the pieces on this program, it's Burhans's Requiem for a General Motors in Janesville, WI that I find myself returning to the most—it's the least fussy thing on the program, and for that reason the most successful as a rock composition. (Although this is clearly reflective of my listening again, I have to say that Oscar Bettison's B&E (with aggravated assault) also holds up pretty well, as the most progg'd-out piece on the program, so, who knows.) Here, anyway, is David T. Little's title track, in a video directed by NewAm regulars Satan's Pearl Horses, which is so 90s that I think I might love it:

As always with NewAm, you can listen to all of every track before you buy the album, here.

In that same envelope, I also got a copy of the new New Amsterdam disc from janus, a trio—featuring Amanda Baker, Nuiko Wadden, and Beth Meyers on flute, harp, and viola, respectively (although they also pick up a few other instruments and speak and sing along the way)—that I really hadn't heard as much about, which is crazy, because this disc is an Incredibly good listen.

(Can I point out here that the fact that the trio is named after a two-faced god reminds me CONSTANTLY of that SNL sketch about the R&B trio called Gemini's Twin? Okay sorry, continue.)

i am not, it's called, and it was recorded by Lawson White, because Lawson White records everything, apparently. Not only did he produce sweet light crude, he recorded the Isabelle O'Connell [SP?] album (Reservoir) whose sound I was raving about that one time, and he did Katrina Ballads for Ted Hearne, which sounded so clear without seeming naked, and he did Cathedral City for Victoire, which like sweet light crude was a little too clean for my money, i am not is not just clean, it is BONE WHITE, and it's terrific. Maybe it's because the album is strung together with interstitial movements composed by White's co–So Percussionist, Jason Treuting—crunchy, savory bites of music, kind of like those little rice crackers my dad's always eating?—that the album hangs together so well despite the range of different composers' voices; at first, I wanted to credit the harp-trio format, with its limited resources, for unifying the palette, but of course with the extra instruments and electronic accompaniments they employ on this record the actual possibilities are limitless. Those resources just happen to be very, very cannily exploited.

Here's janus playing the track Keymaster by (OF COURSE) Caleb Burhans:



I know what you're thinking and yes, it's super Philip Glassy, but it has its own smarts and its own charm—I love the sound of the viola harmonics–versus–flute unison at the beginning of the piece, and the simple fact is that this kind of writing is totally native to these instruments. Cameron Britt, Anna Clyne, and Ryan Brown each turn in a lovely movement as well, and Angelica Negron of Arturo en el Barco fame contributes the especially fascinating Drawings for Meyoko. Huh? What's that you say? Arturo en el Barco does not enjoy what you'd call "fame" yet? Oh, sorry, I temporarily mistook this for a just universe ruled over by a benevolent deity! Now click here and download some free Arturo en el Barco—okay thanks—and then click here to hear & buy i am not.

And then this OTHER recent New Amsterdam release, Penelope by NewAm co-founder Sarah Kirkland Snider. I'd not only heard a lot about it, but I knew Snider was a solid composer, having heard a particularly well-crafted piece of hers during her Yale days (conducted by her future husband, Real Steven Mackey!) on one of the New Music New Haven concerts; Signal is a great band, of course; and I'd loved Shara Worden's singing with My Brightest Diamond and Clogs. Still, there's no guarantee that all these parts will add up to something awesome. Is there anything more cringe-inducing than hearing an overqualified singer struggle to wring something worthwhile out of a song earnestly overcomposed by another talented musician? All the talent in the world don't count for nothin' if you can't write a ditty.

Well GREAT NEWS, y'all: Snider can, it turns out, apply her classical chops towards the creation of an amazingly solid pop record. It's seamless! Snider's hand is incredibly well-hidden here—this could be a singer-songwriter disc that just happens to have especially savvy harmonies and arrangements. Of course, it also helps that librettist Ellen McLaughlin also knows how to write a subtle refrain. And that the album was warmly, clearly produced by, OH LOOK, Lawson White again.

So I have greatly enjoyed listening to Penelope, but more than that, I have actually turned to it for when I am feeling down. It is a balm! It is tha bomb. Now, as I said, the whole album is surprisingly solid, so I really can't single out one song as being the one that you absolutely have to listen to, but also yes I can, it's this song, "Lotus Eaters," which I've been humming to myself for the past several weeks, in a weak and quavering voice, as the autumn sun descends closer and closer to the southern horizon and the days grow dark and cold:

This video I'm actually not that crazy about, despite the often exceedingly lovely photography—it just seems a bit "on the nose." BUT THAT SONG, right?? Buy it, and/or the rest of the rest of the album, here, and be glad you did.

(And remember! Now that NewAm has Naxos distribution, all of these albums are available not just at their website and iTunes but wherever fine compact discs are sold. Jinkies!)

Composerly Memes

laskdjfals;fjals;dfjsalfkj I have been SO LAZY lately, I scarcely blogged a blog all summer. My big excuse is that I finally wrote my first article for a glossy magazine and I've been stressing over that but really it's a short article and a pretty puny excuse. Also I helped my brother move to Texas! Scroll down the right-hand column to see the bitchin' lamp we got for his new office. But that is also a puny excuse since the whole time I was in the car I was revising that article.

By the way all of my interviewees for that piece were SO GREAT, I can't believe how much amazing material they gave me. It was pretty painful to distill pages of brilliant comments from James "La Cieca" Jorden and Zachary "Z-Wolf" Woolfe into the itty bitty handful of quotes I could actually shoehorn into the article. Which brings me the other thing I've written lately, this pair of reviews for La Cieca, of discs from the James Levine 40th Met anniversary boxsets: Berg's Lulu, Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. You'll want to click through; some great comments await. A sample:

So provocative! Clicky clicky.

Cieca's comments also got me to thinking again about the ways in which composers are and aren't oppressed by mainstream classical institutions. Apparently Caleb Burhans' string quartet for JACK was actually Boo'd, at Darmstadt? Which is on the one hand distressing (were they booing it on the grounds of style alone? or was the piece actually bad?? neither of those is a very happy possibility!) and on the other hand, forget it, JACK, it's Darmstadt-town. Somebody told me that the Kronos Quartet was boo'd there before they even sat down; after the performance, they shook the dirt off their tevas and never looked back. If that story's true, MORE POWER TO KRONOS. Y'all don't need those bitches. (I mean, can you IMAGINE booing someone BEFORE THEY PLAYED?)

In some respects, what seems like systematic institutional discrimination is really just built in to the institutions—the perennial complaint, for instance, that only "academic" composers are recognized by academia; well, duh!—and there's no way around that tautology except to wait for that battleship, whether it's The University or The Symphony or The Festival Scene, to slowly turn your way. (Okay actually there is one way, and fortunately a lot of people are doing it nowadays, which is to get your friends together and pilot your own sleek little dinghy into those uncharted waters you've got your eye on.) And sometimes you will actually, personally be kept down by composers who find your music ideologically unacceptable, such as in (PDF) this article John Halle wrote about what a jerk Mario Davidovsky was to him. He makes a pretty convincing case!  Mario Davidovsky:  jerk.

A combination of the above factors has produced a surprising number of bitter, bitter boomers and post-boomers. What's great though is that those people's students, having been told that there are no stylistic Wrong Answers, are increasingly setting out in fleets of those metaphorical dinghies. Look at Corey Dargel! I know I keep harping on him, but that's just because he's one of my super duper favoritest composers in the world right now. Or in other words, if he would like a pull-quote for his press materials: Each new song from Corey Dargel only reinforces my sense that he is one of the most compelling and important composers emerging from the New York scene. I'm still kicking myself for having missed the reading from his new opera (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), The Three Christs, this past Monday, and someone should probably kick ME for having totally failed to review his new record yet despite its having come out like last year or something. (I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL REVIEW IT, I'VE JUST BEEN… BUSY.)

But one interesting thing about his success is how few of the conventional trappings have surrounded it. Yes, he has written for starry new-music institutions like the American Composers Orchestra and the newer but no less starry International ICE Ensemble, but mostly he's been putting on concerts in nightclubs, by himself or with a handful of friends, and putting out largely D.I.Y. records on independent labels. He basically embodies the notion that you young composers don't need to chase the DMA, the prizes, and the professorship in order to be able to make the music they want to make.

(Lest we romanticize the situation over here, let us also note that for many composers, while "making the music they want to make" might be very important, things like "comprehensive dental insurance" might also be very important, and it's pretty nasty to have to trade that stability for the opportunity to make meaningful art.)

And so while I am totally OVER hearing established, middle-aged composers with tenure or glamorous commissions or whatever complain about what victims they are because they got one bad review someplace (I'm not even going to name names here; you can fill in the blank), I do have to cringe whenever I hear America's most Dargelicious composer picking up their old refrain, with tweets like this about the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's open commissioning thingie, Project 440:

Because FIRST of all, isn't that kind of a mean thing to say about the composers who made the finals? Actually, now that I look at it, the rhetoric he's using borrows a lot from the old modernist bullies—the finalists are "mundane," not "innovative" enough.

On the face of it, this would seem to be the "tautological" complaint. Why isn't Orpheus (most famous for recording, like, Handel's Water Music and the Mozart wind concerti) commissioning more out-there music? Well, they're not a new-music ensemble; they really don't hang out on the cutting edge. But have they really chosen such boring composers? If I could pick four winners out of the final 12, here's who I'd probably go with. This decision is totally subjective and shockingly non-binding:

1. Timothy Andres, composer/pianist, bright young star on Nonesuch Records.
Facile comparison: John Adams.
I'll admit I've never been shocked by Andres's music, but it seems like a good fit for Orpheus, and frankly, it's incredibly well put-together. Listen to this stuff, both of these pieces are really kinda moving:

2. Tyondai Braxton, rock star, plays with BATTLES on Warp Records.
Facile comparison: Frank Zappa.
I was never a huge fan of the BATTLES LP, but I have to admit Braxton's style meshes incredibly well with the sound of a chamber orchestra in these clips. Exuberant to the brink of kitsch; maybe even (dare I say!) subversive?

3. Alexandre Lunsqui, Brazilian awesome person.
Facile comparison: Dude, I don't know. Somebody from Europe?
Okay now HERE are some unfamiliar orchestral effects. This is crazy! What's even going on here! This is very exciting! Alexandre Lunsqui should be famous!

4. Andrew Norman, Modestonian pianist/composer.
Facile comparison: STOP IT, LEAVE ME ALONE, I DON'T KNOW
I am IN THE TANK for Norman, having admired his music immensely since I was a young 'un (btw I'm sorry this list is All Male and includes not one but Two pianists from Yale), and he's such an intensely self-critical and publicity-shy composer that it causes me a spasm of physical pain to hear someone gripe that he isn't enough of an "innovator" to deserve his little bit of success, but all the same, I hope you'll agree that it's not just me, that his music is quite well-wrought, lively, and satisfying to the ear:


I mean, right?? These are all good composers! Everyone one the list whom I DIDN'T name is a really good composer! They would all write something awesome for Orpheus! Let's just relax, everybody. Young composers, I want to see a little bit less of this

and a whole lot more of this:

Right?

Discuss.

Epi-Scene

I had a dream about Hilary Hahn the other night. In my dream I was reading an article in a scholarly journal, collected in a library binding, which cited a conversation that she had had with Anne-Sophie Mutter, but there was no transcript of this conversation beyond the excerpts printed in the footnote of this article, and so I went to Hilary Hahn's apartment to talk to her about it. There was another girl there who was just a dumb fan, and was NOT there out of serious musicological interest, like me, but Hilary Hahn was very polite to both of us, and played a little for us on the violin, and then showed us a bizarre string instrument I'd never seen before, sort of a cross between a ten-course lute and a viola da gamba. What does this dream tell us? First of all, it tells us that I have THE MOST BORING FUCKING DREAMS OF ALL TIME. Seriously, if I dream about a famous concert violinist again, she'd better KILL AND EAT SOMEONE in that dream. "Scholarly journal," jesus. But it also tells us something about the power of good marketing. I don't own any Hilary Hahn CDs. There are a great many musicians whose actual work is far more present in my life than Hilary Hahn's. There are CERTAINLY more musicians who are marketed more aggressively, and whose personalities are more present in the culture. But Hilary Hahn is the one whose image appeared in my weird dream. Why is that? I think it's because Hilary Hahn has been successfully marketed to me. Hilary Hahn is probably the sort of thing I like, and so Hilary Hahn turns up wherever I look when I go to look for things I like. She is all up in my imagination. If I haven't yet decided I need (e.g.) her Schoenberg concerto in my life, well, it's probably just a matter of time. In other words, I blame Amanda Ameer. She's Hilary Hahn's promoter, and is therefore the one person—other than (obvs) hardworking, talented, lovely Hilary Hahn—most responsible for the fact that Hilary Hahn has seeped into my subconscious. I really hope that all you artists and promoters out there are reading her blog as faithfully as I am, but just in case you aren't, check out her recent blog-dialogue (DIABLOGUE?) with Nico Muhly on the subject of The New-Music Scene. Her thing is here; his thing is here with a follow-up here. Read all the comments, it gets pretty heated. DRAMA. What's funny is that, presenting each other with a really open-ended question, both AA and NM came up with VERY SIMILAR answers. (Were they reading off each other's test papers??) They both said, "Scene? NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS." Also they said, "Who is this Darcy James Argue??" It sounds as if somebody has got to THEIR subconsciouses, too! New Amsterdam is EVERYWHERE. There are a handful of very influential music critics who love and love to support New Amsterdam and New Amsterdam knows how to reach them. New Amsterdam knows how to reach US. Okay now, did you read those comments? New Amsterdam cofounder Judd Greenstein and publicist Steven Swartz, who both deserve a lot of credit for the marvelous ubiquity of their label, both wrote in to defend themselves—which makes sense, since AA & NM were both fairly critical of various aspects of the scene that JG & SS have worked to build. But maybe they should be congratulating themselves instead: is this some kind of (friendly, admiring) "backlash"? Is this the consequence of going from "something spontaneous," as Nico says ominously of Bang on a Can, to "an institution"? Because if so, that sounds like—well— It sounds like success! New Amsterdam is a brand. It has a strong reputation, and a readily identifiable sensibility. It is AGGRESSIVE about supporting members of its community of artists. Have its responsibilities shifted, now that it's an institution too? Probably. New Amsterdam has to be as true as ever to its sensibilities that define it, and not only maintain but probably raise the standards that have given rise to its burly rep. But the greater responsibility lies with the dissidents that New Amsterdam will, inevitably, earn itself. If you don't like this scene, if you don't fit into this scene, you need to start your own! MUSIC ITSELF needs you to start your own. You have friends, right? Put out your own damn records! Support the composers who slip through the cracks! Do your own thing—but collaborate, cooperate, compete! (This advice does not necessarily apply to Nico Muhly personally, who already does in fact put out his own damn records, in a matter of speaking.) The tools you need are all around you, and journalists and bloggers are all looking for something new and great. I know I am. New Amsterdam is a scene, an institution, and also a model—they did it; they've succeeded; so can you. P.S. Darcy James Argue is a JAZZ COMPOSER, people, go to his BLOG, it's really good, and there are free mp3s RIGHT THERE. You can find out for yourself whether you like it. (I think you will like some of it.) P.P.S. This YouTube of NewAm artist Caleb Burhans playing 1st violin in Nico Muhly's arrangement for that Grizzly Bear song cracked me up so hard:Ha ha ha whoever posted this video hates him SO MUCH. As I write this, it is the only video uploaded to this account, which means they started their YouTube account JUST to hate on Caleb Burhans (as, in the future, there will be a YouTube account dedicated to hating on each and every one of us, I suppose). Said the aforementioned DJA, "Someone needs to write a concerto for Caleb called "h8 u pluck bro." AGREED.

D.S. al Coda

Jesus these New Amsterdam people are the END. The living end. First I hear Corey Dargel's NewAm debut is going to be out at the end of this month (more on this soon), then I hear they've signed composer/bandleader/blogger extraordinaire Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, and then, I hope you all caught this Times article on the scintillating composer/performer/doctor/lawyer/Indian chief Caleb Burhans, whose itsnotyouitsme project is also down with the NewAm fam. The best part of the profile:

Mr. Burhans took a job as a substitute in the Rochester Philharmonic, which was sometimes rocky. Once, when Mr. Burhans turned up at a rehearsal with his hair dyed purple, the orchestra’s managing director asked him to do something about it before the concert. Mr. Burhans turned up in a witch’s wig, cut short. The next week he tried to dye his hair a conventional red, but because of the purple die, it came out crimson, so he shaved his head. “I found out that one of the trumpet players was going around saying that I was making a mockery of classical music because my hair was purple,” Mr. Burhans said. “And I had a really intense conversation with the managing director, where I said: ‘You know, I’m just trying to help classical music, because if we don’t get more people like me coming to these concerts, this orchestra is going to die. The only people who are coming are old people, and you’re shooting yourself in the foot.’ And he said: ‘Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.’ “But I made a sign that said, ‘I Make a Mockery of Classical Music’ and started wearing it around.”

I loved this quote because, among other reasons, the visual self-presentation of classical music is such a peculiar one. Lately people are rethinking this notion that a classical ensemble has to be a mob of old folks in black tie, for better and for worse. It makes sense, to a certain extent, that you want your orchestra to be wearing a uniform. After all, the goal of a classical ensemble is uniformity of sound, that no individual obtrudes from the texture. There's also the notion that, just as the players onstage are supposed to disappear into the ensemble, the ensemble should diappear into the sound of the ensemble, that you should forget about the people you see in front of you, and think only about what's going in your ears. The ideal of most classical performance is to communicate the composer's ideas; the performer is not a creator, but an interpreter.

But there are problems with all of these assumptions. Every act of interpretation is also an act of self-expression, though this may be more obvious in some contexts than in others—if you stand under a girl's window with a guitar and sing "And I Love Her," your hope is not that she will run off and marry Sir Paul McCartney. (That would end badly for all involved.) And classical music's attempts at a null visual component have themselves become strong visual signifiers, the black tie and tails increasingly out of place in concerts for jean-and-t-shirt audiences.

So while I'm tempted to say, oh, come on, don't be in an orchestra with purple hair (wasn't that an episode of Daria or something), it's about twenty times as silly to pretend that the audience is going to somehow enjoy the concert less because of one purple head in the band. Let's loosen up a little.

I'm just going to warn the classical music kids—who, and I am including myself in this, do not tend to have the greatest fashion sense in the world—that there are also style choices that are worse than the no-style-choice of classical convention. I think I saw one of these sweaters onstage at a new music concert once, and the huxtability of the performer seriously distracted from the music he was playing.

But the real reason I like this quote is, hello, T-SHIRT IDEA!!! From now on the Daniel Stephen Johnson CafePress store is going to be selling these puppies in a variety of styles and colors. Or better yet, one of these! This is the front and this is the back. All items are modestly priced, unless you are Caleb Burhans in which case they are free if you ask politely, and all proceeds go to support my CD buying habit. Thank you that is all.

Catching Up

Skip the next two paragraphs. They are boring. In fact, feel free to skip this whole post. The next one will be better. Today I'll just talk really fast and get a lot of stuff over with at once. So I haven't written anything for this blog in ages and that's for a lot of reasons but mostly I just haven't gotten very excited about anything. Things I did get worked up about but neeeever quite got around to blogging included Nico Muhly's Merkin Hall concert a month ago, the one I was talking about here, and the super-fun afterparty, which was actually just the gang from Nico's show crashing the New Amsterdam Records afterparty, because Corey Dargel and William Brittelle's record-release show (for Brittelle's high-concept new-music rock-opera Mohair Time Warp project) was exactly the same night and Bedroom Community & New Amsterdam Recordses are BFF, so it was a veritable who's who of whatnot, starring such boldface names as Valgeir Sigurðsson! Nadia Sirota! Judd Greenstein! Missy Mazzoli! Caleb Burhans! Corey Dargel (obviously)! and though I didn't get to talk to Corey Dargel I did get a chance to talk to Darcy James Argue, whose blog I have always admired but usually can't really say anything intelligent about because I know next to nothing about jazz music, but I'm trying, I promise I am, and finally I broke down and as you can see added him to my super-exclusive blogroll because he is one of so few people actually talking sense about new music nowadays, and also he was totally adorable in person. There was also someone there who looked exactly like Scott Johnson but I didn't want to ask him if he was Scott Johnson because if he wasn't I would have felt extremely stupid. That said, all of you need to buy the Tzadik reissue of John Somebody if you haven't already. The whole crowd was very cool, and in fact I will one-up Anne-Carolyn Bird's announcement that New Amsterdam Records dot com is her new Facebook for professional networking and say that I intend to do all of my networking, professional, social, and sexual, at New Amsterdam Records dot com, and I suggest they retool the site accordingly. Not only would a new-music dating website fill a major niche, it would prevent confused listeners from wasting google queries like this one. (A: No.) My biggest celebrity sighting of the evening though was at the intermission of the concert, where I saw (was it him? it WAS!) my boyhood hero, the rock star whose music has meant more to me than he could possibly ever know, Mister DAVID BYRNE. Like I get starstruck pretty easily, I'll admit but when I lived in New York I could handle running into Lou Reed and Jim Jarmusch &c. pretty well, but there was DAVID BYRNE, who not only did I buy his Talking Heads records and solo records but I like watched and rewatched True Stories to the point where I am still regurgitating snippets of disjointed dialogue at my friends. Like the song says, it's a scientific lifestyle! He was hanging out in the lobby, apparently by himself, like he was just a dude. I wanted to run up to him and thank him for all the joy he'd given me; however, not only was I not sure it was him at first, but I quickly realized that if I were David Byrne I would carry around a thing of pepper spray at all times for the sole purpose of incapacitating people who felt the irrational need to run up and express how important I had been to them when they were in college. So I walked past him without looking at him directly and instead pretended to be reading a poster on the far wall, hoping to make celebrity ID based on peripheral vision alone, but when I looked at the poster closely I realized that there were about ten words printed it and I couldn't pretend to be reading it for very long, so I looked around like I was searching for something while I figured out my next plan, and then a nice usher lady came up and asked if she could help me. Oh, ah, no, thank you. (But it was totally him.) The other thing I kind of wanted to blog recently was the death of another one of my heroes, Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg is famous for taking garbage and accidents and turning them into art; what's far more important, though, is that he made it into art that was a pleasure to see, while still retaining that strange energy of accidental, garbage beauty. Like that famous erased DeKooning—even when he destroyed a work of art, it came out looking great. His work was mysterious and passionate and inimitable and oh-so-often imitated. But like jazz or dance, visual art is something I know almost nothing about—fortunately the Times got somebody to write an appreciation who does know what he's talking about when it comes to visual art, namely... David Byrne. Please read that link. I don't have much to add, except to wince whenever people use the word "deconstruct" this way, and then to quote Donald Barthelme, who describes what is, honestly, not my favorite Rauschenberg, in a way that I think is a useful description of what a Rauschenberg achieves. Here's the piece in question, and here's what Barthelme says (Not-Knowing, p. 19):

We can ... wonder for a moment why the goat girdled with its tire is somehow a magical object, rather than, say, only a dumb idea. Harold Rosenberg speaks of the contemporary artwork as "anxious," as wondering: Am I a masterpiece or simply a pile of junk? ... What precisely is it in the coming together of goat and tire that is magical? It's not the surprise of seeing the goat attired, although that's part of it. One might say, for example, that the tirecontests the goat, contradicts the goat, as a mode of being, even that the tire reproaches the goat, in some sense. One the simplest punning leve, the goat is tired. Or that the unfortunate tire has been caught by the goat, which has been fishing in the Hudson—goats eat anything, as everyone knows—or that the goat is being consumed by the tire; it's outside, after all, mechanization takes command. Or that the goateed goat is protesting the fatigue of its friend, the tire, by wearing it as a sort of STRIKE button. Or that two contrasting models of infinity are being presented, tires and goats both being infinitely reproducible, the first depending on the good fortunes of the B. F. Goodrich company and the second upon the copulatory enthusiasm of goats—parallel production lines suddenly met. And so on. What is magical about the object is that it at once invites and resists interpretation. Its artistic worth is measurable by the degree to which it remains, after interpretation, vital—no interpretation or cardiopulmonary push-pull can exhaust or empty it.

In other words, it's like that Speaking in Tongues collage Byrne talks about in his appreciation, with the images dividing and multiplying and obscuring each other and complementing each other, but it happens with meanings as well as pictures. (This vast network of subtexts of course undergirds all of Byrne's work, too.) You can waste a long, long spray of words describing what their relationships are and still never describe the thing itself, and forget about articulating the sheer visual beauty I was going on about before. Something huge and great and wonderful left the world forever two weeks ago today.