Drunken Owls and Other Delights

So the Walk in Silence project trudges along, but I'm happy that it's at least in a moving status! Due to busy weekends and other writing things going on, I haven't put too much work into it lately, but I'm continuing to read the books and find out more information when and where I can.

At this point it's still wobbling between a chronology of record releases and whatnot, a memoir of my listening habits at the time and what my mindset was, and a history of how radio (both commercial and college kind) evolved at the time. The first two are relatively easy as I have my stupidly huge mp3 collection, my old writings, and an ever-growing spreadsheet of dated events. The third is proving interesting.

I've gathered a handful of music scene books, band bios/autobios, and textbooks about the history of radio. It's actually pretty fascinating stuff, reading all this and putting it together, especially if you're a music nerd like I am. What I'm missing at this point is the voice of those (aside from myself) who listened to the stuff I did (and still do). I've put that plan into motion just recently by sending an email to the Emerson Alumni people who run the periodic updates, mainly asking if people are interested in being interviewed for this. For now I'm just focusing on the listeners and the college deejays. The interesting outcome of this 'open audition' email has already worked wonders--the woman who compiles the alumni email updates responded back stating it'll be going out tomorrow, and that she knows someone from NYC who might be a good contact, and that she'd be interested herself. So far, so good!

I'm hoping I'll have something a little more solid by the time I go to SFWC, because I'm thinking of trying to sell this book idea to a few agents and publishers while there. In particular I'm thinking of St. Martin's Press, who's put out a lot of good music books that I'm actually using for reference, but I'm of course open to anyone else who might be interested as well.

While I'm on this art kick, here's some more interesting dada/surrealist/avant garde filmmaking I studied at Emerson...


Entr'acte, René Clair, 1924


Ballet Mechanique, Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924


Ghosts Before Breakfast, Hans Richter, 1928


Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1929
(Yes, this is the film that the Pixies song "Debaser" is about, and you may remember MTV using a colorized edit as a bumper at one point.)


Meshes of the Aternoon, Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943


Prelude: Dog Star Man [first 9 minutes], Stan Brakhage, 1961
[The complete Dog Star Man lasts about 78 minutes and is in 5 parts...and a few years later Brakhage made an even longer version called The Art of Vision that lasted 270 minutes.]

Luckily, this is only nine minutes' worth of the forty-five minute long movie which, literally, is one extremely long zoom-in, with the audio going from the lowest tone to the highest and loudest. So yeah...if you're going to actually play the video, you may want to turn down the volume and put any cats or dogs out of the room.

I sat through the entire forty-five minutes in my Experimantal and Avant-Garde Film class at Emerson, and I have to say it's an interesting experience. I know many people view E/AG film as self-important navelgazing, but I find it extremely fun to watch and learn about. This one did try my patience, though...and unfortunately I'd been scheduled to do an oral report on the Fluxus movement just afterwards...let's just say I didn't do too well because this film successfully screwed with my head, made me forget what I was going to say, and made it hard to concentrate for the remainder of the evening.

Quite possibly one of the toughest yet most interesting movies I've ever watched.