rationale:

In the 19th century Korean musicians from Chulla Province "began to improvise melodies taken from folk tunes, calling them sanjo, which means "scattered melody." But sanjo cannot just be a scattering, it is also a gathering and bringing into rhythm. According to Johnathan Cott and David Lewiston's liner notes for P'ansori: Korea's Epic Vocal Art and Instrumental Music, sanjo generally refers to the organization and refinement of previously scattered materials" Musicians select from "various melodies, which are now assembled in certain shifting but fixed rhythmic patterns that are defined and accentuated by the changgo, the drum that engages in subtle feedback with the kayageum" (Cott and Lewiston). The rituals of scattering and gathering common to the global archive of rhythmic practice teach us to let go, and let the ideas flow. Boethius, who was also a rhetorician, describes dynamics and movement as the trace of that which exceeds words that is nonetheless present, because "presence gives to whatever may partake of it the quality of seeming to have being. But because it could not stay, it undertook an infinite journey of time; and so it came to pass that, by going, it continued that life, whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying" (cited in Huxley, p.185). The improvisational and syncopated work of skaldic and sanjo, which alternately scatter and gather source material in an ongoing process of creative production, dissipate new rhythmic structures readily apprehended by our senses and our whole being.

invention/composition:

step 1: clone

clone your (and/or a peer's) stream-of-bloggishness and, if already somewhat scattered, gather up highlights of some of your distributed work thus far and paste into a word processing file.

step 2: devise a metric

cut up your file into small discrete compositional "units"--for example, each date, or each blog entry, or a dramatic transition could "mark the time." Anticipate ways your peers might link to, weave with, and cite these compositional units. Or, impose a metric or grid, or even randomly cut into the flow. Either way, just choose/design your algorithm and start choppin'.

step 3: scatter!

Give each compositional unit a wiki page of it's own. Name and tag these pages as you fit. You may even want to provide directions, with links, that create ready-made sequences for readers/participants to follow.

go to tagging pt. 2