Sunday Funnies: Rick Moody on UbuWeb

One of the nice things about Ubuweb is that it’s always adding something new. For example, several contemporary writers who believe in Ubuweb’s mission are adding themselves to the roster, including Pushcart-recognized Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm and Garden State. Moody’s audio work on Ubuweb isn’t what you’d expect — although, to be honest, I don’t know what I expected; but Moody has always been a radio lover, and has used radio as a means to explore new work, and as a way to bring commentary and artistic experimentation to as many ears as possible. Listening to his audio experiments on UbuWeb, I was struck by the raw intensity of the “music”, and was also struck by the words of some pieces, with which Moody attempted to “ape the spirit of the original music” or bend the meaning of the words to create altered, fictional realities. The work is strange and quirky, but somehow comforting. It’s as if chaos has been bottled into jars for an ethnographic museum; ears move from piece to piece, lingering and considering, then moving on. A frequent contributor to the now dormant “The Next Big Thing” from WNYC, Moody’s experimentations on UbuWeb not only offer insight into his varied creative interests, but I think his experimentations offer insight into his novels as well, all of which I’ve always felt were populated with varying degrees of noise and silence. On Ubuweb, Moody’s collaborative audio work ranges from recorded poems to mixed musical “noisings” to remixed and cut answering machine messages. Sometimes I did feel like I was listening in on something I shouldn’t be, as with Long Short Wave, which literally was the tuning of a radio dial and reminded me of the opening scene in Contact. However, other pieces gave me a sense of comfort and connection that I can’t quite explain. Rick Moody is only one of many voices on UbuWeb’s Sound Files page. Ogden Nash is there too, along with Anne Waldmen, William Burroughs, Diane DiPrima, Gertrude Stein and more. It’s all definitely worth a listen.