five disjecta (after Beckett)

four disjecta (after Beckett) have no direct relationship to the publications entitled Disjecta, though the notion of rehabilitating the abandoned certainly resonates. The notion of disjecta, of that which is leftover or discarded of, say, language, is central to Beckett’s aesthetics. It further begs the question: of what are disjecta the leftovers? What is the real and what are its remnants? Beckett draws our attention to such questions in Company: ‘Such the confusion now between the real and—how say its contrary?...Such now the confusion between them once so twain.’ In my four disjecta I try to follow Beckett’s line of questioning, his aesthetics of reduction, and in particular, his slow edging away from the logic of linguistic thought towards a deliberate ‘imprecision’ of textual meaning that places words and their aftermath in a coterminous relationship. In this regard, the disjecta emerge out of the tensions between oratio recta and oratio obliqua. The building blocks upon which they are composed are the less tangible elements of normal compositional materials such as organised pitch, rhythm and harmony. These pieces rely solely on music’s ‘scattered ruins’, ephemera such as the upper partials of a fundamental note, illusive timbres and textures, fingerboard noises and echoes (sonic aftermaths). Stable notes often disintegrate and splinter, defined rhythms meld into oblique, circular gestures, passages are played but only partially heard. Parts of the instruments that have never spoken before try to utter something…whatever they can. These six residua and four disjecta try to speak directly but have not quite got the wherewithal to do so…‘Only a small part of what is said can be verified.’ (Company) 3