"Rocks in the Sea" by Mario Rechtern and Eric Zinman.

Good old Zinman just sent me an essay he wrote with Mario Rechtern as liner notes for Rocks in the Sea, a release Cadence has agreed to issue later in the year. They would like to dedicate the piece to Linda Sharrock, their friend, who is ailing and may be done as a singer and on the final leg of her journey. Let us all keep her in our thoughts.

ROCKS IN THE SEA

Mario Rechtern reeds
Eric Zinman piano
Didier Lasserre drums
Benjamin Duboc bass
Recorded in Paris, May 2009



"Rocks in the Sea" is like the classic stories we dream about: Jason and the Argonauts, Iliad, The Odyssey, Ovid's Metamorphosis etc.... There is no battle field, no competition.....only enthusiasm for our shared appetite and journey together.

There is an aspect of Benjamin and why Mario initially called him the 'rock in the sea', not all of us. He has this very firm way of making statements about anything that he says concerning his emotions or emotion evolved plans/projects, that does not allow contradiction or doubt.

Benjamin agreed and upon hearing the music he insisted it is "ROCKS in the SEA".

To some neither seems desirable..................neither the argonauts, who are led by Jason on a bootless journey, nor the sirens.........but if this "rocks in the sea" refers to our conviction and the way we yield and wield our interactive force by being clear in what we play and feeling the weight in the ocean as it moves around us then maybe I understand.

The sirens are a song that we hear after which we're never the same again. That's the way evolution goes and some people are damned afraid of growing ........ If the sirens are a consuming aspect of our desires as men are led to their death by this attraction, then like all journeys and investigations we develop strength and strategies against that which consumes us, filling us with more substance and weight of character in the struggles of life.

Men fear matriarchal power, perhaps this was the divide in civilization between the southern and northern Mediterranean."more sex than man can handle"is exactly the term written on patriarchal flags against matriarch powers embodied in the sirens and many nymphs, but can women handle this surplus of sexual power that they have?

Some describe the bodies of the sirens as faces of women with bodies of monsters with the bones of their prey at their feet while others describe the sirens as birds of paradise who sing with astonishing beauty and attraction. What is one's gold can be another's poison. .....The idea that when Orpheus sang his poetry, the trees and rocks bent and gathered closer to hear him .......shows that poetry once yielded great power.

That's where I want to go to.-- poetry has so much power that it can neutralize them fears about unknown powers of sexual sovereignty within these so called "scary" archaic women and neutralize means to give them a direction versus better and more subtle communication: the trees and rocks gathered closer to hear him!

That's what I call cooperation. And if the rocks gather closer it is rocks that open up. We musicians try to ply what is inside the rocks , not their outside shape. We try to get into the things and people. Inside the sirens are human as everyone else.

This fear of sirens by the Jason Argonauts has a racial and xenophobic quality: to trash them as bad and ugly and dangerous, what is unknown, strange and powerful and liquify it,"seduced by sirens or Circe or other nymphs to more sex than men can handle....."

These men might have been led to the need to control the sexual power of these archaic mythological female figures and their own paranoiac phantasms about womanhood of ancient matriarch systems reaching into the Mediterranean world having parted on the trip to patriarch modernity of the Iliad,the Odyssey and the whole Mediterranean ancient Greek colourful half god heroes mythology (half gods- legends like Hercules etc ).

And this incredible poetic output of these times which came to an end with the written text, originally only narrations traded from mouth to mouth, stand for,.....

Well it is not even that scary, as the "poor male" overwhelmed with so much sex he cannot handle, puts them to trash--these women-- to ugliness and insatiability: there is NOT MUCH SEX.

NOT MORE THAN MEN EVER COULD HANDLE, BUT AS MUCH AS these hopeless men without a solid centre are TRYING TO PUT into.Trying to grab for possession and being rejected/ eaten.Thats the clue of that story.

There is temptation to EROS (not necessarily sex) by these women,which must NOT LEAD TO SEX since Eros is life energy that stands against the death bringing energy of these Argonauts, protagonists of the coming patriarch wartime machinery which did not end up to these days.

This hippy slogan make love not war says it clearly and also the mistake: it is not about making love it is about LIVING, where love -not making love- is a red thread going through.- the stimulus and fruity juice of life.- the alternative of power, (Pentesilea tried to stop this power war man business by denying any sex as long as there is this war business since this is the only language men do understand.

When I remember what we heard at Benjamin's place, there is this thing in my mind of this very excessive saxophone part while you were rolling in the ocean on piano and Benjamin was moving the beams of the ship and Didier was stirring the foams of the sea,threading its depth.... it sounded like the ship drowning any minute turning over and getting swallowed by the sea and its torments, breaking down,as the lines of the horn were going up and down and under but at the end coming out safely yet by surprise there where the sea suddenly calmed and straightened out, rescued by the sailors teamwork....the authentic Argonauts of the moments of the poetic dream....

So this is a perfect example of what I wrote already earlier on new language collaborative about drowning and rescued by drums cello piano and love . This is no program music , but these text visions are instant composition cryptics passing through my/our mind provoked by stories we tell each other before playing and which take possession of us, each one in a different way....

While playing and identifying with these energies we ride on or are possessed by being tuned in.- moments where i am so thankful of help and presence of you being companions sailing through the open music seas,to hold on me and hold me on with, for the vessel to pass its adventurous roll through the straits of sea (meeresenge) avoiding its rocks in the way by being the rock themselves made of hope and confidence in unison TOGETHERNESS ... etc etc the pirates still are onto these days to whatever the future may bring....". composed and edited by Mario Rechtern and Eric Zinman, additional editing by Lo Galluccio