The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil,

Movement Suite

Jordan Deal

Abstract

The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil, Movement Suite explores the subversive and disruptive slick nature of a concept I am developing called chaos force. The piece is divided into three movements. The first movement is a short, poetic written manifesto contextualizing the current of chaos force as it exists in Black sonic temporality. The second movement is a sound score, followed by the third movement—a sound piece that spans twenty minutes.

Chaos force is a current which sits between two polarized magnetic forces and propels matter outside of its orbit, into the void, towards endless potentiality. This current can then be transformed into subversive material which problematizes, interrogates, and disrupts duality and oppositionality. In this piece, I explore mythbuilding, memory, rhythm analysis, and vocal and movement-based improvisation as generative tools to harness and disperse chaos force. Within this Black sonic temporal performance, I use amorphous structure and improvisation to imagine anti-colonial postmodern sonic futures integrated into worldbuilding, social refusal, and political fugitivity.

The sound piece is loosely devised for piano, voice, and digital synthesizer, with the addition of horn and percussion. This work aims to actively create, swallow, and destroy structure in real time using contradiction in rhythm, harmony, and spontaneity. Spirit inhabits this sonic world and speaks in tongue, devouring at its own pleasure and desire. Its landscape is both a love poem for the Black imagination and sex with the slickness of oil.

Keywords: Improvisation, Chaos Force, Experimental Score, Black Sonic Temporality, Black Performance, Experimental Performance, Social Refusal, Political Fugitivity, Worldbuilding, Mythbuilding

Epigraph

My proposal is that Blackness, similar to oil in its natural state, is a force that disrupts and interjects beyond boundaries and borders. When channeled in temporal performance, both maintain an uncapturable spirit. In this work, the text, language, and the sacred remain in a state which is slippery, unconstrained, and abundant. In fusing oil and Blackness, I aim to channel an entity that preserves the spiritual interiority in performance that reveres my (and its own) rowdiness and refusal.

Through text and sound, I embody the character of “black oil,” allowing the poetics to arise from its messiness. In this collision of ideas, I explore an emotional and multidimensional approach to communicating, storytelling, and resisting under the continual duress of state surveillance and control. Each movement is imagined as a visual landscape with physical characteristics, pulsating with breath. This method is inspired by Édouard Glissant’s approach in L’intention poétique (Glissant 1969), where meaning in the text becomes an elusive spirit, empowering the reader to utilize all of their senses and experiences as they read, engaging them in a dialogue. With this in mind, all three movements of this work aim to facilitate a dialogue between the reader and the black oil spirit. The work employs sonic and visual language which embodies elemental and magical forces, grounding itself in colloquial speech and fluid stretches in rhythm and time signatures (dimensions). Between these spaces of sound, silence, and structure, I propose to “let us black conscious it to erupt!”

This movement suite explores the subversive and disruptive slick nature of a concept I am developing called “chaos force.” Chaos force is a current which sits between two polarized magnetic forces and propels matter outside of its orbit, into the void, towards endless potentiality. This current can then be transformed into subversive material which problematizes, interrogates, and disrupts duality and oppositionality. I am interested in rendering what is otherwise rendered non-existent—particularly Black, Indigenous, trans, queer, and feminist embodied knowledge and technologies of resistance. In performance, this current translates into improvisational techniques and sensitive responsiveness that exaggerates the social conditions of a site and refusal as an intimate and decolonial practice.

In this work, I lean into the reworking of the text as an opportunity to ground the viewer in material amongst the otherwise abstract and surreal landscape. In this final version of the first movement, this process—revealed in my notes, reflections, and outbursts—is cumulative and reconstructive in its own reworking. In revealing the multiple congruent timelines (time signatures) of my body within the text, I hope to reaffirm this slick, action-oriented, and improvisational approach as it transitions from text to sonic temporal space. I encourage the reader and listener to embody this elemental desire of “wetness” as they engage with the work, and call forth a presence that slows time and plunges into the subterranean realm where The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil thrives!

There is not a linear direction that takes place from the text to the sound piece. Rather, each mode feeds and generates the other, exchanging phrases, words, and descriptive narration. The central character present in both is the embodiment of black oil. There is something I am after here: when a world collapses, how does sound follow? How does the intuitive (and therefore embedded in memory, ancestral knowledge, and spiritual channeling) act as a technology of wading through the subterranean (the domain of structural foundations)? What currents can I tap into to liberate myself from conceptual and material boundaries in performance and action? I encourage the reader and listeners to engage with all three movements non-linearly, experiencing them individually and alongside each other. It is in this process where the work becomes a living, breathing, social entity—unraveling the myth of black oil.

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The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil

First Movement: A Manifesto

there’s a liminal space involved

composed of

what doesn’t mix.

the condensation of matter-lessness composes articulations of a world that exists within the

anomalies of space.

like between

“THE LOVE WE MAKE”

BLACK ANGELS WRESTLING GOLIATH

QUANTUM MATHEMATICS EMBEDDED IN QUEER SEX PARTIES

Its own legibility offers us new worlds

It is in this black void the accumulation of this leftover spills

a requiem that absorbs and intertwines itself with her, THE LAND.

this current can only be used for

DISPARATE IMAGINING

so here’s a mantra to self:

Be amongst it / wet / dry sea / wet / how does it feel when you plunge into dirt?

Be within it / though we are folded outside of its touch

Breathe it / but only sips,

as the smoke enters your lungs to retrieve the grief,

as you dream about dropping ass before the judge.

before your neck bends at the base of their foot,

Before you hit the joint yet another time,

cause due madness comes in swift moments of,

a silence.

a silence.

And BE LOUD ABOUT IT!

reverb < rever < reconstruct < reconcile < reduct < reshape < rebound < reject.

reform < refine < rethink < rejoice < redundant < release < refuse < re-risk it.

retake < redefine < relearn < redundant < refine < to find < to be of reimagining.

To lose it < to lose self < to lose rights < to lose to loss < to lose land < to lose nation < to lose mother < to lose sovereignty < to lose the sense of sovereignty < to be in love with the illusions of borders < to be of boundaries < to transform boundless < between you and madness < you see your other. you see yourself.

The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil

Second Movement: Score for Music Performance

[transcription of image score]

Open with bowed guitar to set rhythm.

Both piano and guitar provide additional rhythmic layering, but only if buried in the ground, to charge.

Add othering instruments after. Voice becomes a horn, turned into speech. Speech becomes the vital beat that brings ferocity and consciousness to the realm’s creation. Fire and earth molded into a single instrument, that is. Ruthless and driven with fierce compassion. An astrological and alchemical mixturelessness, that cannot be touched. Like black as oil, washing over and making known to other matter its unbearable uniformity, its ‘slickness.’

this sound can’t be recorded, so distortion is inevitable.

this sound can’t be heard, so comprehension is not expected.

I must become oil, and swallow its distortion, breathe fire, and render its complexity to silence. in camaraderie with the force of chaos.

-

as the dust settles, and the particles part…

(sound performance picks up from end of first movement)

it’s after the end of the world,

don’t you know that yet?

calling all the slick hoes

(slick hoes! calling all the slick hoes!)

after the end of the world!

(the end of the world!)

(calling all the slick hoes after the end of the world!)

The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil

Third Movement: A Sound Piece

The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil, Movement Suite - Third Movement

Reference List

Glissant, Édouard. 1969. L’intention poétique. Éditions du Seuil.