Meredith Monk: A Twitterscript

by Susan Leem, associate producer

Meredith MonkLast Wednesday, the artist Meredith Monk joined our host Krista Tippett for a 90-minute conversation via ISDN. We live-tweeted highlights of this interview and have aggregated them below for those who weren’t able to follow along. Look for our show with her in the coming weeks, and follow us next time at @BeingTweets.

For those not familiar with Ms. Monk, she is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer who has been creating multi-disciplinary works since the 1960s. She is best known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of extended techniques.

Also a practicing Buddhist, she is a member of the Shambala sangha. Her most recent album, Songs of Ascension, is inspired by a Zen abbot who described Songs of Ascents — songs which Jews were believed to have sung in biblical times on pilgrimages to Jerusalem and to the top of Mount Zion.

  1. For the next 90 minutes we’ll be live-tweeting Krista’s interview with composer/vocalist/performer/ Meredith Monk —@meredith_monk 1:02 PM 11 Jan
  2. “Singing was a natural kind of language for me. I read music before I read words.” —@meredith_monk 1:10 PM 11 Jan
  3. “I think of the voice as a very kinetic instrument. I think of the body and the voice as one.” —@meredith_monk 1:12 PM 11 Jan
  4. “Auditions are hard on the human level…I was looking for people who could sing well, and had a radiant generosity to them.” —@meredith_monk 1:14 PM 11 Jan
  5. “Auditions are hard at the human level. I like to give back to people.” —@meredith_monk 1:15 PM 11 Jan
  6. “I’m really trying to do something that makes the voice universal and transcendent.” —@meredith_monk 1:16 PM 11 Jan
  7. “I had the revelation that the voice could be like the body. Like the spine, it could turn, it could fall…” —@meredith_monk 1:20 PM 11 Jan
  8. “I had the sensation of something ancient, primal, visceral, preverbal expression.” —@meredith_monk 1:21 PM 11 Jan
  9. “As an artist so interested in uncovering the invisible, mysterious, inexplicable, things we can’t label.” —@meredith_monk 1:24 PM 11 Jan
  10. “I was thinking of the voice as the messenger of my soul.” —@meredith_monk 1:24 PM 11 Jan
  11. “Performing is such an amazing template of human behavior: of generosity, sensitive to the environment and to other people.” —@meredith_monk 1:28 PM 11 Jan
  12. “We’re taught to be distracted and diverted from feeling the good pain as in open-heartedness of the moment.” —@meredith_monk 1:30 PM 11 Jan
  13. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life making pieces about things you can’t make pieces about.” —@meredith_monk 1:34 PM 11 Jan
  14. “The act of making artwork was the act of contemplating something.” —@meredith_monk 1:35 PM 11 Jan
  15. “How do we spend time on this planet? How do you do work that’s of benefit?” —@meredith_monk 1:35 PM 11 Jan
  16. “Why does worship always go up? There’s this idea of heaven going up.” —@meredith_monk 1:38 PM 11 Jan
  17. “In the Buddhist tradition there’s circumambulation, that’s a different form, going around.” —@meredith_monk 1:39 PM 11 Jan
  18. “I love the idea of working with strings, the bowing arm is so much like the breath.” —@meredith_monk 1:40 PM 11 Jan
  19. “Maybe I should’ve called it ‘Songs of Going Up and Down’” —@meredith_monk on her new work “Songs of Ascension” 1:43 PM 11 Jan
  20. “Play is something to really think about. That sense of playfulness is another aspect of being alive, awake.” —@meredith_monk 1:45 PM 11 Jan
  21. “When it comes down to it, you leave love behind…the Beatles had it right.” —@meredith_monk 1: 48 PM 11 Jan
  22. “If I do use words, they’re used more abstractly…The word dissolves into pure sound.” —@meredith_monk on song writing 1:55 PM 11 Jan
  23. “The older I get, the simpler the work gets…the most essential is what reaches people the most.” —@meredith_monk 2:00 PM 11 Jan
  24. “Curiosity is a great antidote to fear.” —@meredith_monk 2:00 PM 11 Jan
  25. “All of us as human beings are part of the world vocal family.” —@meredith_monk 2:04 PM 11 Jan
  26. “The human voice is the original instrument. You’re going back to the beginnings of utterance…The memory of being a human being.” —@meredith_monk 2:04 PM 11 Jan
  27. “Most of my songs deal with emotion…between the cracks of emotion.” —@meredith_monk 2:10 PM 11 Jan
  28. “It was like two young children just loving each other so much” —@meredith_monk on singing for the Dalai Lama 2:16 PM 11 Jan
  29. @rosannecash - Meredith Monk (@meredith_monk) loved your interview with Krista and would love to meet you! 2:19 PM 11 Jan

Photo of Meredith Monk by Jesse Frohman.