Hello everyone, I am writing from Arles. Tomorrow it will be 98 degrees. I have found working in these high temperatures very challenging. But I have completed my work.
The audio above represents some of the audio work I do with Soundwalk. In the next couple days I will send pictures from the exhibition.
Below is an excerpt from my first post on Substack. I was writing about Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Andrei Rublev. I am including it as July 4th is one of the great icon painters feast day. It also marks the opening of the Exhibition that I collaborated with Soundwalk Collective for the Hoffman Foundation. Ten short films are part of the exhibition. It includes our homage to Tarkovsky and Rublev; the entire soundtrack which I improvised is above. I am sending it on Independence Day as it addresses the duality of the Artist’s blessed burden, and considers his dilemma. What does it mean to be free….
Excerpt:
The film opens with a breathtaking prologue wherein a visionary peasant with the heart of Leonardo successfully flies in a makeshift air balloon, beholding a panorama from a perspective that none have seen before, save the birds, or perhaps Icarus and ascending saints. The sequence closes with a dark horse rolling on his back then slowly rising by a glistening pond. Andrei Rublev appears in the first part called The Jester Summer 1400. We see him from above, reluctantly leaving his monastery, questioning the validity of his artistic path. As he tramped through heavy rains I felt his shivering body beneath his coarse robes. Pelted by a sad splendor, I was thinking.
The seasons change, the years go by. The music is holy, the rituals frozen and sad. The wanderings of the icon painter continue as a silvery dust seems to settle on every frame. A long film, the most perfect I had ever seen, so perfect it made me sick. I was struck with the sense of watching a documentary, shot in the onset of the 15th century. A black and white pageant of poetic realism.
I was transfixed by the overexposed Russian landscape where ice and smoke brutally unite. Winter expanses invaded and corrupted. Blood spattering nature’s canvas, echoed by a rage of paint smeared on chapel walls. Andrei endlessly tramps tumultuous Russia, confounded by nightingales, images of Jesus in the snow, and the crushed neck of a swan. He sacrifices his brush and speech, seeking unattainable peace, while turning his back on his God given gift.
Please drink a lot of water and considering these lines of the Declaration we so cherish. I hope you find the audio inspiring…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Happy Independence Day.
