D o p p e l g ä n g e r

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 17:31] all rights reserved

#

The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

+

"Doppelgänger, according to the Germanic legends, is a monster or fantastic being who has the gift of representing an identical copy of a person he chooses or who accompanies (hypothetically this means that each person has his own). The Doppelgängers have actions similar to those of the shapeshifters, since they´re supposed to imitate at all people copied, from the external features to even their own, and deeper internal ethos. The Doppelgängers usually have a mania of wanting to disturb the life of their counterparts (the current ones are usually those tormented).

Belonging to a succession of unusual characters (or thematics) translated into music by Otacílio Melgaço, the Double-goer is one that inspires us with peculiar curiosity. Perhaps because we can almost instantly find several possibilities of translating it also into countless contexts of our existence, from the most philosophical to the subjectively behavioral.

Sonorously it´s monumentally impressive; an enigmatic fusion of (to the point that sometimes they become indiscernible) strings, winds and percussion generating a paradoxical spectral density capable of taking our breath away. There´s the presence of perceptible Melgacian acumen when, for example, the whole Opus has an own duplicity; the same Piece is heard parallel to the lapse of a few seconds, so O.M. institutes for his composition a Double-goer too.

The minutiae has no end: the term can be heard, through a voice, as a premonitory annunciation, but when it´s listened again, it´s pronounced reversely. Metaphors are as provocative as sonic creation itself.

Plus: keep an eye on how Otacílio redirects the painting of Simone Martini (c.1844 - 1344), an Italian painter born in Siena. He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. The image of the cover is an interference in the work of the old master. The painting becomes a silkscreen. As did Andy Warhol, in front of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Mao Tse-tung and so many others. There´s, then, a reproduction of an original figure, its duplication (in the case of screen printing, it´s often done in an unpredictable way, through erratic changes). In modern art, raised to the pinnacles, to the series. Certainly there´s an acid comment that cites the contemporary world as, in several connotations, a frenetic sequencing of ´copy & paste´. The present somber tone is justified. But in addition, Niccolo Machiavelli's words might have come out of Melgaço's mouth: ´It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.´" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´If the theater exists to allow the repressed to live, a kind of atrocious poetry is expressed through strange acts in which changes in the fact of life show that the intensity of life is intact and that it would be enough to direct it better.´ (Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double)

1 -

Some relevant references:

In Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the concept of a doppelgänger double was described as a counterpart to the self. Edgar Allan Poe's story William Wilson (1839) describes the double with the sinister, demonic qualities of a pursuer or challenger of the real self's psychological equilibrium. George Gordon Byron used doppelgänger imagery to explore the duality of human nature. Dostoyevsky's novel The Double represents the doppelgänger as an opposite personality who exploits the character failings of the protagonist to take over his life. Charles Williams Descent Into Hell (1939) has character Pauline Anstruther seeing her own doppelgänger all through her life. Clive Barker's story ´Human Remains´ in his Books of Blood is a doppelgänger tale. The doppelgänger motif is a staple of Gothic fiction, arguably its central expression of character. The doppelgänger motif in contemporary literature is widely used in a loop novels Eugene Gagloevs
´Zertsalia´ (´Зерцалия´) (approximate translation - ´Country in through the looking glass´ or ´Country Mirrors´). Also see the Dutch novel De donkere kamer van Damokles (1958) by W.F. Hermans, or E.T.A. Hoffmann, Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815–16). John Donne, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and George Tryon also addressed the same subject-matter.

2 -

´That man, especially when he slept, when his features were motionless, showed me my own face, my mask, the flawlessly pure image of my corpse […] in a state of perfect repose, this resemblance was strikingly evident, and what is death, if not a face at peace – its artistic perfection? Life only marred my d-o-u-b-l-e; thus a breeze dims the bliss of Narcissus; thus, in the painter’s absence, there comes his pupil and by the superfluous flush of unbidden tints disfigures the portrait painted by the master.´ (Vladimir Nabokov)

A doppelgänger is a look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed (for those who believe) as a ´paranormal phenomenon´, and is usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. In other traditions and stories, they recognize one's 'double-goer' as an evil twin.

3 -

´Many people say, Who's my doppelganger?, when maybe they should ask, Whose doppelgänger am I?´ (Carson Cistulli)

Doppelgänger is often used in a more general sense to describe any person who physically or behaviorally resembles another person.

4 -

In a more general sense and taking into account the exercise of our acute self-criticism; Mr. Melgaço brings to light a stupendous echo, a terrific reverberation, a pressing double of Cistulli's question (and this is probably one of the key issues of the here and now and of the hereafter): are we doppelgängers of whom?" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

&

I - The application by English-speakers of this German word to the paranormal concept is relatively recent; Francis Grose's Provincial Glossary of 1787 included the term fetch instead, defined as the "apparition of a person living." A best-selling book on paranormal phenomena, Catherine Crowe's The Night-Side of Nature (1848), helped make the German word well-known. However, the concept itself, of alter egos and double spirits, has appeared in the folklore, myths, religious concepts, and traditions of many cultures throughout human history.

In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs. In one Egyptian myth entitled, The Greek Princess, an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a ka of Helen was used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war.

In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. In Finnish mythology, this is called having an etiäinen, i.e., "a firstcomer".

In Breton mythology as well as in Cornish and Norman French folklore, the doppelgänger is a version of the Ankou, a personification of death;

II - Heautoscopy is a term used in psychiatry and neurology for the reduplicative hallucination of "seeing one's own body at a distance". It can occur as a symptom in schizophrenia and epilepsy. Heautoscopy is considered a possible explanation for doppelgänger phenomena;

III - In the field of digital marketing, the term has a specific meaning which is related to branding. When someone creates a negative portrait of a particular logo/brand of an entity, it is also known as doppelgänger.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

\|/

Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.