Wishing He Would Just Drone On and On

It’s 11:30 Friday night at Hollywood United Methodist Church, and a soft organ tone is droning. That tone will grow over a very long time. It will expand, we expect, as it collects more and more tones until it explodes into a wild dance of harmonics, overwhelming ear and consciousness. There are about 25 of us settling in. Someone has brought a sleeping bag. Charlemagne Palestine has begun his all-night concert.

Palestine is a master of the drone. He is best known for his technique of vigorously strumming the piano with such force that it seems to set an entire concert hall, and all the bodies in it, to ecstatic vibrating. But Palestine is most amazing when a juicy pipe organ and a large resonant space are available.

Palestine began his obsession with vibrating drones while at CalArts in the early ‘70s, then made a name for himself in New York with his very long piano concerts in SoHo. But for the last 15 years, he has been an expatriate in Europe, with next to no presence in the United States. This concert--which is part of the Beyond the Pink festival of performance art and which also includes some intermittent stately movement from dancer Simone Forti--marks his return to L.A. after 20 years.

Palestine’s technique is to place small pieces of paper between the keys of the organ to sustain notes. He has closely studied the inner lives of resonances produced by overtones colliding, and already by midnight we get an inclination of the profound depth of such sound.

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For the next half-hour the drone continues to get richer and deeper. Palestine--who is wearing a florid short-sleeved shirt and has on a North Carolina baseball cap over his ponytail--walks down from the organ loft to a piano at the front of the church on the level of the audience. The piano is covered with stuffed animals. These are Palestine’s--well, I’m not sure exactly what they are to him. But he is known for them.

Palestine begins to strum the piano, adding new vibrations to the ongoing organ drone. After about 10 minutes he stands, picks up a teddy bear and, holding it in front of him, sings to it a kind of lullaby that fits into the drone.

When Palestine returns to the organ, around 1 a.m., the serious droning begins. And after half an hour of it he wanders back into the audience suggesting that we follow him to the loft to hear better.

There are now about 50 people present, and most of us huddle together on the chorus seats. The atmosphere has changed, now much more intense.

And it is getting louder. A couple of people take out earplugs. The volume is not, at least not yet, painful, and the overtones are definitely starting to dance within the thick, loud chord. Then suddenly, around 2:20, Palestine stops. He explains to the audience that it just doesn’t feel right, this night, to go on to dawn. Maybe another time.

I hope there is another time. Even without reaching nirvana, Palestine did achieve something special. He’s a one-of-a-kind artist, and it’s good to have him back.