Blank Forms Aspirations Of Madness

Edited by Lawrence Kumpf with Joe Bucciero. Contributions by Masayuki Takayanagi, Louise Landes Levi, Jo-seph Jarman, Catherine Christer Hennix, Charles Stein, Henry Orlov, Maryanne Amacher, Alan Cummings, Bill Dietz, Peter Kastakis, Art Lange, Leo Svirsky, Satoru Obara, Tomoyuki Chida. Aspirations of Madness, Blank Forms’ fifth collection of archival, unpublished, or newly translated texts, takes its title from a series of interviews with Japanese free jazz pioneer Masayuki Takayangi that were published in Japanese in 1975–76 and are published here in English for the first time. The interviews provide a rare look at Takayanagi’s eccentric practice and personality, both long under-recognized by audiences outside (and often, inside) of Japan. The postwar Japanese history that Takayanagi describes also surfaces in this publication’s opening piece, a poetic tribute by the writer and artist Louise Landes Levi to one of Takayanagi’s contemporaries, the poet Kazuko Shiraishi. Aspirations