After college I moved into a Chevy 1500 cargo van with a bunch of microphones, a cheap digital camera, and some instruments. I intended to roam the country and record things.
A year and some tens of thousands of miles later, I sold the van and started sleeping in a bed again. The footage and field recordings I'd gathered became the basis for The Secret History, at 55-minute series of electroacoustic multimedia pieces for small ensembles of laptop, projector, and acoustic instruments. It was performed in 2011 at the New England Conservatory.
Ride EP is a collection of the best and least copyright-infringing portions of this larger work. Here you can stream the EP, order yourself a copy, and find out lots more about the project.
1. NJTransit to Coney Island - 4:03
2. I'll Fly Away (Look What Ethan Spilled) - 4:05
Short Rides (The West, Mostly)
3. frontier 1 - :25
4. oregon 1 - :15
5. oregon 2 - :52
6. night - 1:07
7. california - :15
8. crosses - :52
9. MBTA - 1:25
10. lights - 1:01
11. wyoming - :56
12. colorado (frontier 2) - :42
13. Industry - 4:43
14. Enso - 6:06
2. I'll Fly Away (Look What Ethan Spilled) - 4:05
Short Rides (The West, Mostly)
3. frontier 1 - :25
4. oregon 1 - :15
5. oregon 2 - :52
6. night - 1:07
7. california - :15
8. crosses - :52
9. MBTA - 1:25
10. lights - 1:01
11. wyoming - :56
12. colorado (frontier 2) - :42
13. Industry - 4:43
14. Enso - 6:06
+ bonus material, including:
A NEW PRAYER FOR THUNDER GOD
A NEW PRAYER FOR THUNDER GOD
web exclusive:
FILM
(warning: brief violence, nudity, and disturbing images)
about the tracks
1. NJTRANSIT TO CONEY ISLAND
I filmed the footage for NjTransit to Coney Island on a cheap digital camera while riding on the train lines named in the title. The clips were originally silent, so I had a lot of fun scoring them. In this piece's world, there are at least three classes of relation between image and sound. Some things sound like you would expect them to sound – going through a tunnel sounds reasonably like going through a tunnel (although that audio is actually culled from the machine room of an oil change station in Maine). Other things sound not like they are but like what they represent to us - as another train passes, we do not hear wheels, steel and wind, but the thoughts and conversations of the people it might contain, in this case represented by a variety of samples including the words of two men arguing over a game of Mah Jong in central China as well as spoken settings of West African dance forms. Finally, there are things that don’t sound anything like they would in real life, but sound something akin to what they look or feel like - swooping power lines become swooping mandolin lines, a field of gravestones becomes wet snow falling on unfallen leaves in Vermont. I don't mean to deliver any coherent message with this one: njtransit to coney island is content simply to exist - or rather, travel through - the world it creates, creating a story whose narrative I'll leave to you to determine. Ultimately, it should just be fun, so whether you choose to experience it as multimedia storytime, as exercises in sonic semiotics, or just as a weird jumble of sound and video, be sure to enjoy the ride.
I filmed the footage for NjTransit to Coney Island on a cheap digital camera while riding on the train lines named in the title. The clips were originally silent, so I had a lot of fun scoring them. In this piece's world, there are at least three classes of relation between image and sound. Some things sound like you would expect them to sound – going through a tunnel sounds reasonably like going through a tunnel (although that audio is actually culled from the machine room of an oil change station in Maine). Other things sound not like they are but like what they represent to us - as another train passes, we do not hear wheels, steel and wind, but the thoughts and conversations of the people it might contain, in this case represented by a variety of samples including the words of two men arguing over a game of Mah Jong in central China as well as spoken settings of West African dance forms. Finally, there are things that don’t sound anything like they would in real life, but sound something akin to what they look or feel like - swooping power lines become swooping mandolin lines, a field of gravestones becomes wet snow falling on unfallen leaves in Vermont. I don't mean to deliver any coherent message with this one: njtransit to coney island is content simply to exist - or rather, travel through - the world it creates, creating a story whose narrative I'll leave to you to determine. Ultimately, it should just be fun, so whether you choose to experience it as multimedia storytime, as exercises in sonic semiotics, or just as a weird jumble of sound and video, be sure to enjoy the ride.
2. I'LL FLY AWAY (LOOK WHAT ETHAN SPILLED)
Featuring Eden Macadam-Somer on Violin and Lautaro Mantilla on guitar
When writing electroacoustic music, I’ve always been inclined to think in twos – the marriage of digital technology with acoustic performance invites the consideration of other dyads, like teachers and students, tradition and its contemporary interpretation, or the imaginary and the actual. However, while the dynamics between these and many more sets of twos are suggested in the musical conversation between string quartet and laptop, there are no firmly assigned roles in this piece. One could imagine the strands of Scottish fiddle tunes captured at the dawn of recording technology or words spoken in Appalachian dialects as the authoritative voices of a tradition clumsily reproduced in the live string parts, but the acoustic instruments, whose sound and material stays more or less consistent relative to the kaleidoscopic shifts of the computer part, could just as well represent the continuity of tradition beneath the quicker vicissitudes of time and fashion. Similarly, the lineage between older recorded musicians and younger live ones is reflected in the range of technologies employed here, from fiddle tunes recorded on wax cylinders and delivered through digital media to vinyl records scored by knives and pencils. Recordings are often made for the express purpose of capturing authenticity, but which is more “real” – the shards of our memory, disembodied voices cast through a PA system, or the wooden instruments played before you by actual human beings? There’s a lot packed in to these four minutes, and you’re equally welcome to listen to it as commentary on the nature of tradition and memory or as a bunch of weird sounds mashed together. Either way, enjoy!
I'll Fly Away (Look What Ethan Spilled) was first performed in March 2009 at New England Conservatory's Brown Hall by Eden Macadam-Somer, Lautaro Mantilla, Sarah Jarosz, and myself. On the current version, I replace Sarah on mandolin. Many of the quotes are from Talking NC's documentary Mountain Talk, and a few were from the documentary Hands on a Hard Body by way of the radio show This American Life. I'm not sure who the individual auctioneers are, but I tracked down their recordings from the 1998 Men's Division International Auctioneers' Convention. Many thanks to Eden, Sarah, and Lautaro, who courageously agreed to play the thing never having heard it, Warren Senders, who assisted in the construction of a homemade banjo sampled on the recording, and most of all, to the entire Collings-Hawkins clan, including both the adults who struggled to get that jam session off the ground as well as the kids who kept interrupting it. Ethan, I hope you cleaned up that hot stuff.
Several tunes are quoted more or less note-for-note in this piece: I’ll Fly Away by Albert E. Brumley, The Warrior’s Grave by James Scott Skinner, and The Mill of Newe by Alexander Walker.
Featuring Eden Macadam-Somer on Violin and Lautaro Mantilla on guitar
When writing electroacoustic music, I’ve always been inclined to think in twos – the marriage of digital technology with acoustic performance invites the consideration of other dyads, like teachers and students, tradition and its contemporary interpretation, or the imaginary and the actual. However, while the dynamics between these and many more sets of twos are suggested in the musical conversation between string quartet and laptop, there are no firmly assigned roles in this piece. One could imagine the strands of Scottish fiddle tunes captured at the dawn of recording technology or words spoken in Appalachian dialects as the authoritative voices of a tradition clumsily reproduced in the live string parts, but the acoustic instruments, whose sound and material stays more or less consistent relative to the kaleidoscopic shifts of the computer part, could just as well represent the continuity of tradition beneath the quicker vicissitudes of time and fashion. Similarly, the lineage between older recorded musicians and younger live ones is reflected in the range of technologies employed here, from fiddle tunes recorded on wax cylinders and delivered through digital media to vinyl records scored by knives and pencils. Recordings are often made for the express purpose of capturing authenticity, but which is more “real” – the shards of our memory, disembodied voices cast through a PA system, or the wooden instruments played before you by actual human beings? There’s a lot packed in to these four minutes, and you’re equally welcome to listen to it as commentary on the nature of tradition and memory or as a bunch of weird sounds mashed together. Either way, enjoy!
I'll Fly Away (Look What Ethan Spilled) was first performed in March 2009 at New England Conservatory's Brown Hall by Eden Macadam-Somer, Lautaro Mantilla, Sarah Jarosz, and myself. On the current version, I replace Sarah on mandolin. Many of the quotes are from Talking NC's documentary Mountain Talk, and a few were from the documentary Hands on a Hard Body by way of the radio show This American Life. I'm not sure who the individual auctioneers are, but I tracked down their recordings from the 1998 Men's Division International Auctioneers' Convention. Many thanks to Eden, Sarah, and Lautaro, who courageously agreed to play the thing never having heard it, Warren Senders, who assisted in the construction of a homemade banjo sampled on the recording, and most of all, to the entire Collings-Hawkins clan, including both the adults who struggled to get that jam session off the ground as well as the kids who kept interrupting it. Ethan, I hope you cleaned up that hot stuff.
Several tunes are quoted more or less note-for-note in this piece: I’ll Fly Away by Albert E. Brumley, The Warrior’s Grave by James Scott Skinner, and The Mill of Newe by Alexander Walker.
lyrics
hey kai, ask uncle daniel… ya… hey kai, ask uncle daniel, allmydaysallthetimeanyhow… hey kai, ask uncle daniel what is this? I’ll fl- microphones. my grandmother hoo hoo twelve-and-a-half ah ah they don’t seem like microphones! she’s always talking ‘bout people being stout - or gaint. stout - or gaint. uh… she used words like “peckerwood.” to a “peckerwood!” home on um god’s ce- ha I can’t –lestial shore um I’ll if I get lost with it I have no idea how to get back on um it’s
half staind at nine dollar now ten ten bid now ‘leven ‘leven dollabill now twe- here hey! witiga ten dollabill forthat witigaten hey witigatenthere twelve-and-a-half! witigiten twelve-and-a-half and twelve-and-a-half here now! hit thirty here now two-and-a-half iddigathirty-two-and-a-half here now five iddigathirty-five bid thirty-two-fifty here now five iddigathirty-five wattabuy
my feet hurt.
they got to hurtin’ pretty bad.
put it in a poke put it in a poke they goad it no (poke) goad it no uh oh a dope! you’re talkin’ ‘bout like a sodie-pop sodie-yeah-water yeah sodie-water yeah dope store ‘n’ buy a coke poke goad oh a dope! goad it poke yeah! coke goad it yeah poke sodie-coke-water yeah dope poke coke oh a dope! poke poke goad it oh a dope! poke goad it coke poke goad it oh a dope! goad it do- (never nothin’ stops, it’s like a-sangin you know we’re kinda like we’re sangin’ lita says we’re sangin’ not talking)
alright! the auction’s on how much for it where d’you wanna go there someone give a ten dollar bill will you give five I bid five dollar thanka now seven-and-ahalf thanka now ten then ten will you give a ten dollar ten bid thanka now twelve-and-a-half fifteen! at twelve fifteen fifteen thanka now seventeen-and-a-half fifteen seventeen-and-a-half and now twenty-dollar-bill there now will you give for it?oh she’s a good-hearted woman in love with a stingy old man let her bid sir!hey! waddayoupay you’re a good man! hibidigaten fiftey! hibidigatenaten now twenty twenty and twenty-five sir yes sir! twenty hibidigafive now thirty twenty-five thank you! thirty thirty-five hidigibafive thirty-five you-in-the-back thirty-two-and-a-half help you sir you help me thirty-two-and-a-half thirty hidigiba thank you! thirty-two-and-a-half now five thirty-five thirty-sevenanahalf thirty-five sevenannahalfidigathirty-five you a good man thirty tight but you a good man thirty-five sevenannahalf idigafiveidigafive thirty fiveidigafiveidiga seven-and-a-half sold it! thirty-five dollars gentleman here who’s wife just passed out something special (five idigathirty-five now thirty-two now thirty here now widigiba five five bid at thirty-five now forty?)
not so hard, do it kind of soft… kai can I have turn with that now? so can we try it again (yeah) I think I can actually get this eventually… ethan I’m gonna turn this off but- kai can I please have a-
that’s not too high is it? next it is… I’ll fly away ohmom!darling mom!I’llethan spilled some hot stuff!fly awaymom, look what ethan spilled!inthemorning when Ilook what ethan spilled!die hallelujahmomby and bywhy don’t you just go down a whole key?I’llon the kitchen!
um
hey kai, ask uncle daniel… ya… hey kai, ask uncle daniel, allmydaysallthetimeanyhow… hey kai, ask uncle daniel what is this? I’ll fl- microphones. my grandmother hoo hoo twelve-and-a-half ah ah they don’t seem like microphones! she’s always talking ‘bout people being stout - or gaint. stout - or gaint. uh… she used words like “peckerwood.” to a “peckerwood!” home on um god’s ce- ha I can’t –lestial shore um I’ll if I get lost with it I have no idea how to get back on um it’s
half staind at nine dollar now ten ten bid now ‘leven ‘leven dollabill now twe- here hey! witiga ten dollabill forthat witigaten hey witigatenthere twelve-and-a-half! witigiten twelve-and-a-half and twelve-and-a-half here now! hit thirty here now two-and-a-half iddigathirty-two-and-a-half here now five iddigathirty-five bid thirty-two-fifty here now five iddigathirty-five wattabuy
my feet hurt.
they got to hurtin’ pretty bad.
put it in a poke put it in a poke they goad it no (poke) goad it no uh oh a dope! you’re talkin’ ‘bout like a sodie-pop sodie-yeah-water yeah sodie-water yeah dope store ‘n’ buy a coke poke goad oh a dope! goad it poke yeah! coke goad it yeah poke sodie-coke-water yeah dope poke coke oh a dope! poke poke goad it oh a dope! poke goad it coke poke goad it oh a dope! goad it do- (never nothin’ stops, it’s like a-sangin you know we’re kinda like we’re sangin’ lita says we’re sangin’ not talking)
alright! the auction’s on how much for it where d’you wanna go there someone give a ten dollar bill will you give five I bid five dollar thanka now seven-and-ahalf thanka now ten then ten will you give a ten dollar ten bid thanka now twelve-and-a-half fifteen! at twelve fifteen fifteen thanka now seventeen-and-a-half fifteen seventeen-and-a-half and now twenty-dollar-bill there now will you give for it?oh she’s a good-hearted woman in love with a stingy old man let her bid sir!hey! waddayoupay you’re a good man! hibidigaten fiftey! hibidigatenaten now twenty twenty and twenty-five sir yes sir! twenty hibidigafive now thirty twenty-five thank you! thirty thirty-five hidigibafive thirty-five you-in-the-back thirty-two-and-a-half help you sir you help me thirty-two-and-a-half thirty hidigiba thank you! thirty-two-and-a-half now five thirty-five thirty-sevenanahalf thirty-five sevenannahalfidigathirty-five you a good man thirty tight but you a good man thirty-five sevenannahalf idigafiveidigafive thirty fiveidigafiveidiga seven-and-a-half sold it! thirty-five dollars gentleman here who’s wife just passed out something special (five idigathirty-five now thirty-two now thirty here now widigiba five five bid at thirty-five now forty?)
not so hard, do it kind of soft… kai can I have turn with that now? so can we try it again (yeah) I think I can actually get this eventually… ethan I’m gonna turn this off but- kai can I please have a-
that’s not too high is it? next it is… I’ll fly away ohmom!darling mom!I’llethan spilled some hot stuff!fly awaymom, look what ethan spilled!inthemorning when Ilook what ethan spilled!die hallelujahmomby and bywhy don’t you just go down a whole key?I’llon the kitchen!
um
3-12. SHORT RIDES (THE WEST, MOSTLY)
My camera only recorded 30 to 90 seconds or so. This resulted in some very short pieces.
My camera only recorded 30 to 90 seconds or so. This resulted in some very short pieces.
13. INDUSTRY
“But the tendency of the free market is not towards equilibrium, but towards the extremes of boom and bust.” So goes a valuable critique of Adam Smith’s theory of a magically ascending society, and so begins Industry. The basic tenets of Smith’s vision are familiar: Greater production will create a wider market while higher wages create greater demand, and so left unchecked, the natural forces of the market will expand the economy and create an “endless chain” that will start society “on an upward march.” The limitless growth Smith envisions hinges upon the principle that higher wages will result in lower child mortality among workers, thus ensuring an ever-expanding workforce and a correspondingly exponential demand for products. This smooth incorporation of the living and dying of actual human beings into abstract social theory betrays a lack of humanism that always unsettled me, although most major economists since Keynes remain strangely unperturbed. Even critiques of Smith – like the one above, by Richard Heilbroner – seem more concerned with further theorizing than with the inclusion of people into theory. If it is the case that returns to labor and capital do notin fact tend towards equilibrium and instead vacillate between explosion and crash in their overall upward trajectory, what does that mean to the living, breathing human beings who constitute the gears of this violent machine?
“But the tendency of the free market is not towards equilibrium, but towards the extremes of boom and bust.” So goes a valuable critique of Adam Smith’s theory of a magically ascending society, and so begins Industry. The basic tenets of Smith’s vision are familiar: Greater production will create a wider market while higher wages create greater demand, and so left unchecked, the natural forces of the market will expand the economy and create an “endless chain” that will start society “on an upward march.” The limitless growth Smith envisions hinges upon the principle that higher wages will result in lower child mortality among workers, thus ensuring an ever-expanding workforce and a correspondingly exponential demand for products. This smooth incorporation of the living and dying of actual human beings into abstract social theory betrays a lack of humanism that always unsettled me, although most major economists since Keynes remain strangely unperturbed. Even critiques of Smith – like the one above, by Richard Heilbroner – seem more concerned with further theorizing than with the inclusion of people into theory. If it is the case that returns to labor and capital do notin fact tend towards equilibrium and instead vacillate between explosion and crash in their overall upward trajectory, what does that mean to the living, breathing human beings who constitute the gears of this violent machine?
Crucial answers to that question are found around the edges of society, stewing in the inner city, forgotten in small towns, huddled on reservations. I found some of them in the tent city under the Canal Street overpass in New Orleans. Armed with a microphone and flash drive, I interviewed many of those still homeless after Katrina, and some of the resulting recordings appear in this piece. Much of the social commentary here comes not from Adam Smith or Richard Heilbroner but from a man who identified himself only as Dennis High-Top and who was kind enough to talk to me at length about his former work as a carpenter, his current life on the streets, and the all-too-common difficulties he faced securing a job and moving into permanent housing. I also drew heavily upon other field recordings I had made from abandoned farming equipment found out in the woods of central Pennsylvania (see above) and the sounds of an oil change station in Maine.
When it comes to laptops, I tend to be less interested in creating new electronic sounds than in harnessing electronics to deliver “real-life” noises that sound new (or maybe unsettlingly, unplaceably familiar) when divorced from their original context. I go further in editing my samples in Industry than in any of my other music, but still restrict myself to altering only their volume and speed. The original version of this piece was assembled entirely on Garageband so it could simply be run through iTunes as a sort of play-along track. While this works well for a quick-and-dirty solo performance, I really missed the organic element of live performance, and so have since revised the piece to be played entirely live, with an accompanist playing some of the sounds through Polyphontics-programmed keyboard, and other controlled by me through a pedal hooked up to MAX/MSP. This winter, I'd like to adapt it further, so I can play the electronic part as well as the cello part myself via a touch sensor affixed to my fingerboard.
lyrics
but the tendency of the free market is not towards equilibrium but towards the extremes of boom and bust this is this is where everybody sleeps at (but they got old bob) this is the homeless this is like the homeless place (pop hideo) that’s that’s called a gun line right there you know every everybody get killed for their houses yet (huh?) some of their houses (tight) is totaled out (tight) (yeah) and um (I’m comin back) somethin about they grayn’t so long that they (comin back) they can’t do that (what?) some people got it and some people didn’t (street know that) (alright) all those (right?) that didn’t get it (in the street) (I’m tied) under the bridge man and this is like a little community here (I was tied) all these people they know each other (I was trippin on quick tide I was rone) and look out for each other and now observe that smith has constructed for society a giant endless chain man as regularly and they can’t find inevitably any work as a series of interlocked mathematical propositions this is where they end up at under the bridge man society is started on an upward march and now observe that smith has constructed for society a giant endless chain as regularly and inevitably as a series of interlocked mathematical propositions society is started on an upward march from any starting point the probing mechanism of the market first equalizes the returns to labor and capital in all their different uses sees to it that those commodities demanded are produced in the right quantities and further insures that so a lot of em are still here because they wasn’t chosen or they wasn’t picked um I wasn’t picked yet but I I’m still waiting hoping somebody come by and give me a job or something like that
but the tendency of the free market is not towards equilibrium but towards the extremes of boom and bust this is this is where everybody sleeps at (but they got old bob) this is the homeless this is like the homeless place (pop hideo) that’s that’s called a gun line right there you know every everybody get killed for their houses yet (huh?) some of their houses (tight) is totaled out (tight) (yeah) and um (I’m comin back) somethin about they grayn’t so long that they (comin back) they can’t do that (what?) some people got it and some people didn’t (street know that) (alright) all those (right?) that didn’t get it (in the street) (I’m tied) under the bridge man and this is like a little community here (I was tied) all these people they know each other (I was trippin on quick tide I was rone) and look out for each other and now observe that smith has constructed for society a giant endless chain man as regularly and they can’t find inevitably any work as a series of interlocked mathematical propositions this is where they end up at under the bridge man society is started on an upward march and now observe that smith has constructed for society a giant endless chain as regularly and inevitably as a series of interlocked mathematical propositions society is started on an upward march from any starting point the probing mechanism of the market first equalizes the returns to labor and capital in all their different uses sees to it that those commodities demanded are produced in the right quantities and further insures that so a lot of em are still here because they wasn’t chosen or they wasn’t picked um I wasn’t picked yet but I I’m still waiting hoping somebody come by and give me a job or something like that
14. ENSO
Circles. Featuring the dance and choreography of Mary Anthony, the camerawork of Chris Scarafile, and the voices of my mom, dad, and many others. Special thanks to Katy Hawkins.
Circles. Featuring the dance and choreography of Mary Anthony, the camerawork of Chris Scarafile, and the voices of my mom, dad, and many others. Special thanks to Katy Hawkins.
A NEW PRAYER TO THUNDER GOD
Featuring...
Live
Eden Macadam-Somer, violin; Lautaro Mantilla; guitar
In Boston
Peter Negroponte, percussion; Andy Fordyce, percussion; Aaron Gelb, bass clarinet; Peter Bauer, clarinet; Amir Milstein, flute; Jason Belcher, horn; Andy Allen, saxophone; Nigel Taylor, trumpet; David Cordes, bass; Lautaro Mantilla & Eden Macadam-Somer, field percussion
In Kopeyia
Ruben Agbeli, Paul Traku, Odartey Kwasi, David Bedi, Eric Bedi, Mensah Ali, & visitors at the Thunder God festival in January 2007 near Denu, Ghana; percussion & voices
Featuring...
Live
Eden Macadam-Somer, violin; Lautaro Mantilla; guitar
In Boston
Peter Negroponte, percussion; Andy Fordyce, percussion; Aaron Gelb, bass clarinet; Peter Bauer, clarinet; Amir Milstein, flute; Jason Belcher, horn; Andy Allen, saxophone; Nigel Taylor, trumpet; David Cordes, bass; Lautaro Mantilla & Eden Macadam-Somer, field percussion
In Kopeyia
Ruben Agbeli, Paul Traku, Odartey Kwasi, David Bedi, Eric Bedi, Mensah Ali, & visitors at the Thunder God festival in January 2007 near Denu, Ghana; percussion & voices
I still remember laying under my mosquito netting in Kopeyia, Ghana, ears buzzing from a long day of trying to wrap my hands (and head) around this challengingly unfamiliar music, and listening with amazement to the soundscape of the rainy season after dark. The extraordinary variety of noises were all universally alien to my ears, but it was not only their number or novelty that held my attention – instead, I was most impressed by how powerfully reminiscent they were of the music I had spent the day trying to play. I could swear, lying awake, ears wide open, that some crafty frog had stolen into the village and liberated a few gankogui, that the bugs had made off with the drums, and that I was listening to them play their own dances. How cool would it be, I thought, to write an electronic piece based around Ewe percussion music in which sounds took the places of drums?
My ideas about globalization and culture – the thematic underpinnings of Thundergod – have been challenged and overturned on an about annual basis since that night in Kopeyia. The product is a reflection on the joys and limitations of visiting and imagining other people, and how these processes are deeply shaped by modern systems of globalization that may be on the verge of sudden reversal.
Additional thanks to Makeba Clay,
Robert Levin, John Mallia, and Katie He.
Additional thanks to Makeba Clay,
Robert Levin, John Mallia, and Katie He.
FILM
The most immediately evident commonality between the films Persona and Pawnbroker is the use of sudden cutaways to other scenes. In both films, these are usually very brief – only a few frames – but sufficiently powerful to dismember the audience’s sense of a single coherent narrative. Instead, we are left with the impression of one public reality presented openly for our perusal, and another closed, inner reality trying to claw its way out.
In Pawnbroker, the first is the everyday life of Sol Nazerman, a pawnbroker living on Long Island and working in Manhattan, and the second is Nazerman’s harrowed past as a German Jew suffering through the holocaust. He insists he has abandoned all attachment to the past, placing belief in and taking solace from money alone, through which he interacts with the world in what he feels is the only truly pure way. Nevertheless, his terrible memories steadily intrude into his consciousness over the course of the film. They are usually beckoned by sights or moments disturbingly reminiscent of his time in a concentration camp, with urban infrastructure replacing barbed wire and African Americans standing in for European Jews. Although he has escaped the historical holocaust, his eyes have been opened to the more fundamental brutality of the human condition. Most painfully, he is eventually forced to recognize his intimate membership in that brutality as a merchant and citizen. After learning that Rodriguez, the man who has been funneling money through his pawnshop, is a pimp and crime lord, Nazerman confronts him, refusing to take any more money that “comes from filth and from horror.” Rodriguez retorts that his money comes not only from whorehouses but also from parking lots and laundromats and pawnshops, and that Nazerman, by his participation in economic transactions and civil society, is “right in the thick of” that filth and horror.
If the two realities of Pawnbroker are clearly delineated between present reality and past memory, the drama of the narrative is memory’s steady encroachment upon and final inseparable union with reality. In Persona, the multiple realities are somewhat more difficult to define. The opening scene, in which Bergmann uses the quick-cutaway method so reminiscent of Pawnbroker, forms a sort of introductory vignette on film itself. Bergmann suggests various dyads revolving around the central theme of film-making – audience and performer, spectator and spectacle, signifier and signified. In the beginning, each of these are presented as powerfully separate elements. Even gradations of color are carefully controlled; the first series of images are white superimposed upon black, and then we violently switch to black superimposed upon white. However, as in Pawnbroker, Bergmann’s realities tend to collide; the third collection of images are gray upon gray. Much of the rest of movie investigates the permeability of these boundaries, as represented in Elisabet, Alma, and the increasing struggle of distinguishing their discrete identities.
Images of violence are particularly striking in this opening scene of Persona. While violence also plays a prominent role in Pawnbroker, its place is more obvious; it is the violence of urban life that reminds Nazerman of the violence of the concentration camp, eventually revealing to him the violence underpinning all human transactions. In Persona, however, its purpose is more hazy. I like to interpret scenes like the slaughtered sheep, crucified hand, and burning man as part of Bergmann’s commentary on film itself. Film-making, like all representation, is basically a violent act, seizing phenomena from their natural context and nailing them to a strictly defined form and purpose, killing their original spontaneous coherence and preserving them in death. If reality is a moving, living, ineffable truth unto itself, then film is a static, dead representation presented for our consideration. If the story of Pawnbroker is reality’s erosion by memory, in Persona it is the erosion of reality by representation.
Likewise, in making a piece employing these films, I sought to erode the boundaries between both them and the viewer. The quick-cutaway technique common to both was a secondary strategy to this end, but my main strategy was sound. In much of my music, I’m interested in ways sounds can be misinterpreted from their original sources to create new meaning. In Train, this meant imagining the sound of a passing locomotive to be foreign voices in argument, the sound of a powerline to be a mandolin tremolo, or the “sound” of a massive graveyard to be snow falling on leaves. In Film, I assigned sounds from one part of a film to another, or to the wrong film, or from another entirely unrelated film. Thus the telephone from Nazerman’s pawnshop becomes the sleeping boy’s disturbance, the sound of Alma beating a table in frustration becomes the rhythm section of Quincy Jones’ Pawnbroker score, and an Italian translation of the Tell-Tale Heart becomes the “sound” of hands gesticulating. As in Train, some sounds I recorded myself, such as boiling water sped up to depict white, slowed down to depict black, and sandpaper over wood “drawing” gray. Most of the sounds, however, I tried to derive from one of these two or another film. Sounds of violence against women in particular permeate the score; a male character beating a female character from Children of Men forms a climactic moment of the Quincy Jones portion of the piece, and a girl gagging on a penis from a hardcore porno accompanies both the flashed penis at the beginning of the Persona clip and the disemboweling halfway through. Similarly, melodic material outside the Quincy Jones lines are drawn from motifs of Wagner’s Ring, itself a sort of film. Jarring diminished chords quote the Ring of Power leitmotif, and downward minor scales quote the Spear motif. Film exacts a power much like Wotan’s ring.
Perhaps the most important sounds, however, are the whore’s repeated entreaties to Sol to “look!” at her naked body. These narrate both his gaze on Harlem from inside his car, the Persona character’s gazes on each other, us, and the Pawnbroker material, and our gaze on Film. “Looking” is after all what film is most basically about. Bergmann’s Persona, Lumet’s Pawnbroker and my Film all consider the deepest implications of looking deeply – at film, at each other, and into ourselves.
Many thanks to Ran Blake, who first introduced me both to the Pawnbroker and the many unique challenges of accompanying film, and to John Mallia, who advised the project and who put me on to the invaluable film criticism of Michel Chion.
The most immediately evident commonality between the films Persona and Pawnbroker is the use of sudden cutaways to other scenes. In both films, these are usually very brief – only a few frames – but sufficiently powerful to dismember the audience’s sense of a single coherent narrative. Instead, we are left with the impression of one public reality presented openly for our perusal, and another closed, inner reality trying to claw its way out.
In Pawnbroker, the first is the everyday life of Sol Nazerman, a pawnbroker living on Long Island and working in Manhattan, and the second is Nazerman’s harrowed past as a German Jew suffering through the holocaust. He insists he has abandoned all attachment to the past, placing belief in and taking solace from money alone, through which he interacts with the world in what he feels is the only truly pure way. Nevertheless, his terrible memories steadily intrude into his consciousness over the course of the film. They are usually beckoned by sights or moments disturbingly reminiscent of his time in a concentration camp, with urban infrastructure replacing barbed wire and African Americans standing in for European Jews. Although he has escaped the historical holocaust, his eyes have been opened to the more fundamental brutality of the human condition. Most painfully, he is eventually forced to recognize his intimate membership in that brutality as a merchant and citizen. After learning that Rodriguez, the man who has been funneling money through his pawnshop, is a pimp and crime lord, Nazerman confronts him, refusing to take any more money that “comes from filth and from horror.” Rodriguez retorts that his money comes not only from whorehouses but also from parking lots and laundromats and pawnshops, and that Nazerman, by his participation in economic transactions and civil society, is “right in the thick of” that filth and horror.
If the two realities of Pawnbroker are clearly delineated between present reality and past memory, the drama of the narrative is memory’s steady encroachment upon and final inseparable union with reality. In Persona, the multiple realities are somewhat more difficult to define. The opening scene, in which Bergmann uses the quick-cutaway method so reminiscent of Pawnbroker, forms a sort of introductory vignette on film itself. Bergmann suggests various dyads revolving around the central theme of film-making – audience and performer, spectator and spectacle, signifier and signified. In the beginning, each of these are presented as powerfully separate elements. Even gradations of color are carefully controlled; the first series of images are white superimposed upon black, and then we violently switch to black superimposed upon white. However, as in Pawnbroker, Bergmann’s realities tend to collide; the third collection of images are gray upon gray. Much of the rest of movie investigates the permeability of these boundaries, as represented in Elisabet, Alma, and the increasing struggle of distinguishing their discrete identities.
Images of violence are particularly striking in this opening scene of Persona. While violence also plays a prominent role in Pawnbroker, its place is more obvious; it is the violence of urban life that reminds Nazerman of the violence of the concentration camp, eventually revealing to him the violence underpinning all human transactions. In Persona, however, its purpose is more hazy. I like to interpret scenes like the slaughtered sheep, crucified hand, and burning man as part of Bergmann’s commentary on film itself. Film-making, like all representation, is basically a violent act, seizing phenomena from their natural context and nailing them to a strictly defined form and purpose, killing their original spontaneous coherence and preserving them in death. If reality is a moving, living, ineffable truth unto itself, then film is a static, dead representation presented for our consideration. If the story of Pawnbroker is reality’s erosion by memory, in Persona it is the erosion of reality by representation.
Likewise, in making a piece employing these films, I sought to erode the boundaries between both them and the viewer. The quick-cutaway technique common to both was a secondary strategy to this end, but my main strategy was sound. In much of my music, I’m interested in ways sounds can be misinterpreted from their original sources to create new meaning. In Train, this meant imagining the sound of a passing locomotive to be foreign voices in argument, the sound of a powerline to be a mandolin tremolo, or the “sound” of a massive graveyard to be snow falling on leaves. In Film, I assigned sounds from one part of a film to another, or to the wrong film, or from another entirely unrelated film. Thus the telephone from Nazerman’s pawnshop becomes the sleeping boy’s disturbance, the sound of Alma beating a table in frustration becomes the rhythm section of Quincy Jones’ Pawnbroker score, and an Italian translation of the Tell-Tale Heart becomes the “sound” of hands gesticulating. As in Train, some sounds I recorded myself, such as boiling water sped up to depict white, slowed down to depict black, and sandpaper over wood “drawing” gray. Most of the sounds, however, I tried to derive from one of these two or another film. Sounds of violence against women in particular permeate the score; a male character beating a female character from Children of Men forms a climactic moment of the Quincy Jones portion of the piece, and a girl gagging on a penis from a hardcore porno accompanies both the flashed penis at the beginning of the Persona clip and the disemboweling halfway through. Similarly, melodic material outside the Quincy Jones lines are drawn from motifs of Wagner’s Ring, itself a sort of film. Jarring diminished chords quote the Ring of Power leitmotif, and downward minor scales quote the Spear motif. Film exacts a power much like Wotan’s ring.
Perhaps the most important sounds, however, are the whore’s repeated entreaties to Sol to “look!” at her naked body. These narrate both his gaze on Harlem from inside his car, the Persona character’s gazes on each other, us, and the Pawnbroker material, and our gaze on Film. “Looking” is after all what film is most basically about. Bergmann’s Persona, Lumet’s Pawnbroker and my Film all consider the deepest implications of looking deeply – at film, at each other, and into ourselves.
Many thanks to Ran Blake, who first introduced me both to the Pawnbroker and the many unique challenges of accompanying film, and to John Mallia, who advised the project and who put me on to the invaluable film criticism of Michel Chion.
AND FINALLY...