"For over five decades, Elliott Sharp has been on a quest to take the music he hears in his inner ear and bring it to life in the real world. In this vivid memoir and manifesto, we share the adrenalin rush of New York's Downtown scene of the '80s and beyond, where--against a backdrop of junkies frozen 'in a perpetual fall' and escaped tarantulas skittering across club floors--Sharp becomes a pivotal figure at the junction of rock and the avant-garde. Moving deftly between the abstractions of Spinoza and fractal geometry and the gritty physicality of guitars, saxophones, silicon hardware, and offbeat instruments of his own devising, Sharp makes music solo and in a dizzying range of aggregations and collaborations with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Nusrat Fateh Ali-Khan, Sonny Sharrock, Hilary Hahn and blues legend Hubert Sumlin. We watch as he dodges fake cowboys' real bullets by the side of a highway near Colby, Kansas; segues from Zen tea to single malt with an elfin John Cage; trades licks with Bedouin sumsumiya players in a goat's-hair tent in the Negev; and looks up from his teenage strumming of 'Gloria' in Manny's Music on 48th Street to find Jimi Hendrix smiling benignly upon him. A mix of tales from the road and sky with thoughts on music, art, politics, technology, and the process of thinking itself, IrRational Music is a glimpse inside the smooth cranium of one of our most exacting, exciting creative artists"--Back cover.