Mighty Alternative Media

The falls were overflowing this weekend in Paterson. The rains and the floods made the waters fierce, which, combined with the arrival of sunny weather, brought crowds to the park. I am again reminded that making an audio recording of the falls is about as exciting as holding your mic up to television snow, and I think that’s how Williams conceived of their sonic presence—a constant white noise in the background, out of which sense emerges, and into which it just as quickly gets pulled under and swept away.
Today, I was visiting with Flux Factory, the group with whom I will be collaborating in June to conceive of a monument to Paterson. Race seems like it will be—as it had been for me—the elephant in the Passaic for this project; we were greeted with “are you lost?”, “what are you doing here?”, “here comes the spirit squad,” and “Mommy, where did all those white people come from?”
We bumped into Mighty Joe and his tricked-out bicycle, who welcomed us with a radiophonic urban alternative to 1010 WINS on his CB. We also met a guy who quit his day job in New York City to start a Socialist-Christian farm in a markedly unbucolic section of Paterson; empty lots and abandoned structures predominate, and he hopes to expand from his small backyard to some of the unused land that surrounds him.