In December I did a bit of walking in the California desert; nothing too extreme, and some of it very tame indeed, but I did find it moving and uplifting and all the things the desert is supposed to be. And once in a while I was struck by the profound silence of the desert.
 |
| Photo by Caroline Gannon |
In my experience this kind of desert silence is actually quite rare. Often the sounds of wind, traffic and even low flying aircraft disturb the supposed tranquility.
At this point in history it’s hard to find untouched desert, or even to know what untouched desert looks like - you can be stuck in a traffic jam trying to get into Joshua Tree National Park - but in general I’m happy to be where the desert and the human intersect; the unusual structures, the desert art, the occasional gas station dinosaur.
Nevertheless, when I got back to England I found myself poking around for literary sources about silence and the desert. There’s Edward Abbey, of course, but I also came across these words attributed toJean Baudrillard, ‘The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.’
As usual I find myself in less than perfect agreement with old JB, and I’m not sure the body has an inner silence. If it did, stethoscopes would be redundant wouldn’t they? And of course I thought about John Cage’s, admittedly now contested, experience in the anechoic chamber, of hearing the sound of his ‘nervous system in operation’ and his ‘blood in circulation.’
I have, from time to time, wondered what (if any) music ‘goes with’ walking in the desert: maybe Steve Reich’s The Desert Music, perhaps Painted Desert by Robert Quine, Ikue Mori and Mark Ribot, for that matter Cage’s ‘In a Landscape.’ But in general I don’t need a soundtrack when I’m walking, although I’m well aware that others do.
And then, as it goes with these things, a copy of ‘Weird Walk’ Number 6 arrived.
It's a zine that calls itself ‘a journal of wanderings and wonderings from the British Isles.’ So no deserts in there, but it does contain an article, by Archer Sanderson, ‘a regular feature (in which) we explore an artist or genre well-suited to soundtracking lone perambulations.’ The current article is titled ‘Doom Strolling: The Solo Rambler’s Doom Metal Primer’ and the text says, ‘Doom can be paired with a host of environments, though epic, widescreen scenery seems to be a potent choice.’
Sounds great for the desert, no?
Now the fact is, I think I prefer the idea of Doom Metal to actually listening to Doom Metal, and although the article references one or two bands whose music I do kind of know - Sunn 0))), Earth, Napalm Death - it concentrates on Cathedral, Bell Witch, Pallbearer and a duo called Divide and Dissolve, all of whom were closed books to me.
I've done some research and some online listening, and I've discovered that Divide and Dissolve make quite an interesting noise, while also according to interviews referencing ‘decolonisation, the destruction of white supremacy and (the) prison industrial complex and the survival of indigenous sovereignty.’
Nevertheless I haven’t been able to find any explicit reference in any of these bands’ music to the desert or indeed to walking, though I may have missed it. But you don’t have to be too literal about these things, do you? You can always listen to Cage’s 4’ 33”.
