It seems one could spend a considerable amount of time discussing Glas structurally, paying close attention to the layout of the text, the various fonts employed, the spaces separating blocks of text (the "cleavages"), and even suggesting a structural similarity between the act of textual juxtaposition and the act of listening, all without actually paying close attention to the words on the page. I conceive the argument I'm making here as half of a double movement, the other half of which would engage the text more specifically. At bottom I'd like to show how a particular way of reading Glas can illuminate certain consonances between what happens when we read and what happens when we listen.

In the essay "Declarations of Independence," Derrida begins with much the same disclaimer as in "Force of Law: the 'Mystical Foundations of Authority,'" also first delivered as a talk to an academic audience within the United States. While in "Force of Law" Derrida says at several places in the opening pages of the essay that he has not yet begun--which, in an essay on the concepts of law, justice and right, and the moments in which they are founded, seems at least appropriate--in "Declarations of Independence" Derrida couches what he is going to say in terms of an excuse. Indeed, at the outset of both texts there is a nuance beyond any performative/constative distinction [1] that suggests to the reader not necessarily that Derrida is saying more than he appears to be saying--or for that matter less--but rather that the ear ought to lean toward the possibilities in language that at the moment we read (both in the sense of reading words on a page and in listening to someone speak) instantiate resonances beyond the simple either/or within the insufficiently literal or figurative economy of signification. He writes, in "Force of Law":

For me, it is always a question of differential force, of difference as difference of force, of force as différance (différance is a force différée-différante), of the relation between force and form, between force and signification, performative force, illocutionary or perlocutionary force, of persuasive and rhetorical force, of affirmation by the signature, but also and especially of all the paradoxical situations in which the greatest force and the greatest weakness strangely enough exchange places. (7)

Like Barthes' listening, this way of reading also entails a risk. To fully grasp the scope and rigor of a text--Glas, for example--one must read the juxtapositions between the "main texts" (and I say this knowing the term's limitations) and the "subordinated texts." The associations and connotations that come up between these texts implicate the subjectivity of the reader and place her/him within a specific cultural context. The rationale here runs precisely counter to Hegel's disclaimers in the "Preface" to Phenomenology of Spirit, that the "Preface" is not the actual argument--not the "self-moving activity," which is the important and serious part of the text--that comes afterward in the succeeding chapters of the book. Hegel writes, "for whatever might appropriately be said about philosophy in a preface--say a historical statement of the main drift and the point of view, the general content and the results, a string of random assertions and assurances about truth--none of this can be accepted as the way in which to expound philosophical truth" (1). The Barthesian way of listening that I am suggesting we transpose onto the way we read a printed text would read the spaces between the "Preface" and the "Book," between the "main text" and the endnote, parenthesis, quotation, Works Cited page, title, epigraph, exergue, or fragment. These all constitute significant parts of the "text." In terms of Derrida's Glas, then, such a way of reading might prove indispensable to begin to unpack some of the more nuanced textual collisions performed by both the cleavages between the two columns and the textual ruptures within each column.

Tortoise are unique among what's been described as slow-core; they're confronting you with puzzles that don't solve themselves all at once. They bring together elements that can't work together, but do. Like the way M.C. Escher manages to break the planes of Euclidean geometry on a page: You know it shouldn't exist, but it does. And rapturously.

In 1955 and 1958 respectively, stereophonic tape recorders and record players began to replace their monophonic counterparts, which at the time were the industry standard. It wasn't long before stereophonic sound became the standard for recorded music. Since then, audio engineers have experimented with stereo recording with hopes to give the listener the impression of "actually being there." Since we hear in stereo, the more a recorded sound can emulate that difference between what each ear hears, the more "realistic" it will seem. The emphasis on the accurate representation of sound in space will become important when stereophonic sound supplants any reality and becomes, in a sense, the creator of that space.

Within the aural environment of a stereophonic recording, panned elements create the illusion of three dimensional space by playing on the differences and samenesses of the noises funneling into one's ears. [3] (This argument has more relevance the more the two sound sources--(i.e., "left" and "right")--are isolated. While headphones provide optimal separation, two speakers immediately adjacent to each other attempting producing a stereo sound image will lose most of the desired effect.) What is important to see here is that absolute difference (two independent and non-relational sounds traveling to each ear separately) and absolute sameness (monaural recording) both fail to create this illusion of space. In a sense, one side needs to be tethered to the other, enveloped by the other, and vice versa. The relation here does not necessarily have any precondition that we could define; it is rather within the realm of the listener to make that connection. This is to say that what is meant here by "difference" and "sameness" will in the end be determined not by some notion of melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic consonance or dissonance, but by the connections made or not made by the listener at the moment he or she listens. The logic here will stand to reason later on not only within an analysis of stereophonic sound, but one of sampling, splicing, and mixing.

(Parenthetically, I'd like to mention that the concept of "sympathetic vibration" has analogous or metaphorical relevance here. [4] I have witnessed this phenomenon and have heard of it from coworkers within the sound industry. Materials have a certain frequency of vibration or resonance whereby a tone emitted at that frequency by another source will induce vibration in the material and will produce a standing wave between the sound source and the material vibrating. If the tone produced at the sound source has a continuous amplitude over time, the amplitude of the standing wave will increase because of the sympathetic vibration of the material. At a certain point, the material will vibrate enough that its molecular bonds will begin to break down. This is why marching troops in the military will break step when crossing a bridge. The practical applications of this phenomena have yet to be appropriately theorized. Television shows on The Discovery Channel have illustrated the U.S. government's use of sound as a weapon. (For a sci-fi example along these lines, see Dune.) I have also heard--and this is part audio engineer folklore and part truth--of induced bowel movements in drummers who are close to their monitor (speaker on stage for performers to hear both themselves and the rest of the band) producing a substantial amount of lower frequencies (20-80hz).)

I'd like to turn briefly to an early Tortoise piece entitled "Spiderwebbed" recorded on their debut eponymous CD released in 1994. "Spiderwebbed" begins midway through a pattern of notes--textually speaking much like a William Faulkner story--played on a lone bass guitar that repeats for most of the rest of the song. Enter bass guitar number two at 00:34, fading slowly up to the level of the first, which provides a counterpoint to the first pattern. Both bass guitars play only once at the same time: the downbeat or beat one of each phrase or measure. At this common moment bass guitar number one plays a single note and bass guitar two plays a chord. One minute into the song we begin to perceive a drum beat that sounds as if it's being played on one drum kit by one person. At 2:00, more percussion instruments--the congas are immediately discernible--provide the counterpoint to the first drum beats that began at 1:00. At 3:30 another drummer enters the mix as all the rest have, slowly achieving a comparable volume. This third drummer plays a kit comprised, it seems, of instruments--bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat--that sound much more similar to the first drummer than the second. This layering and repetition is common to much of Tortoise's music; the word "fugue" would not be inappropriate in attempting to describe many of their compositions.

At about 5:30 the bass guitars begin to fade, so as to allow the percussion instruments to enter the spotlight (we now seem to have all three players providing counterpoint along the same groove). At 6:30, the first and third drummers are panned hard left and right, respectively. This hard pan exposes the incommensurability of the two rhythms independent of one another--the first is playing one full beat ahead of the third, making the downbeat of the first the upbeat of the third. Only when these beats were mixed in with each other--only when their difference was blended in their sameness--were they consonant. What made the beats of the first and third drummers seem consonant was the joining element of the melody, which, at the moment of the hard pan, falls into arhythmic and amorphous noise. The melody had provided a beginning and an end to each phrase, each measure as I heard it. The first drummer and the chord formed between the two bass guitars on the downbeat of each measure solidified this way of hearing by giving me a 4/4 rhythm with a clear downbeat, a beginning and an end. As the third drummer fades, the first is panned back to the center and then fades himself. The last instruments to fade are those of the second drummer, the one playing the congas, bongos, and other drums. The lesson I wish to glean from this song is that rhythms that might not work together can when I make the connection between the rhythm and the melody (We can even say here that in order to make this connection, I need to focus my attention on nothing in particular--that is to say, my ability to reconstruct this particular rhythm depends both on my own expectations and an openness toward how I am choosing to interpret the different sounds I am hearing) . It is when these elements come undone toward the end of the song that we fully realize the importance of something holding together what is on the left and right tracks of a stereophonic recording. In the same way that there is an aural juxtaposition between the left and right tracks of a stereophonic recording, we can also examine what we might call the linear reconceptions within both the left and right tracks--the fragments sewn into the sonic fabric of a song.

Considering that the second CD Tortoise released--Rhythms, Resolutions, and Clusters--is comprised of digital reorganizations ("remixes") of material originally recorded for their first LP, and that they released another CD in 1996 entitled Remixed, the digital organization of their most recent release should come as little surprise. According to Christoph Cox, TNT "is an almost entirely virtual entity, constructed from slices of sonic material fed into a hard disk over the course of a year at the apartment/practice space/studio [John] McEntire shares with bandmate John Herndon" (26). McEntire goes on to say that each band member would go into their studio with an idea and record something, someone else would do the same, and "then we'd try to sort out all the pieces after the fact and turn it into something cohesive" (26). This made things rather difficult for a band that planned on touring to support what would become TNT:

Now on the brink of a five-month worldwide tour, Tortoise is in the curious position of having to learn its songs from the record--to "cover" them, as it were--highlighting the postmodern reversal that turns live performance into a simulacrum of the recorded original, the real into a copy of the virtual. "None of those songs were really played by the group together at one point, ever. . . ." (26)