| Poems Niederngasse |
| Night
Vision: Wayne H.W Wolfson interviewed PNG: Tell us about the project, how did it come about? WW: The project is a CD titled Midnight Latitudes. It is a collaboration between myself and Mars Syndicate. There is an online journal Art Revolutionaries. They try to promote artists working in all different mediums. One of the things they offer is an online radio AR RADIO. It had been featuring a piece I had done several years ago with Boston based producer/composer Grenadier. Although I only consider myself an author, the piece was not the typical spoken word fare. When ever I am interviewed or just asked by a journal for a blurb about my main source of inspiration, I have always said music. These things must have made me seem approachable to musicians. We had a bunch of informal meetings initially to see what we could come up with. In a very short amount of time it became apparent we could do something worth while. PNG: What is it all about? How is it connected to poetry? WW: The album is a concept one. It figures around an anti-hero known only as “The Detective”. A lot of things are kept vague, non-linear story line with certain images and words which are constantly looping back and referencing other events taking place within the world of music and story found here. As an example, the very first track you hear someone running to a car in the rain, the radio is fiddled with, a brief melody is heard, then the first piece is about a man leaving a woman. There is a definite story, but did the man already leave the woman and was running to car in the start of the album or is he now on his way to do so. Another example of the constant looping back, the melody he hears on the radio is then hummed by man and woman as “their song” in next piece. Was it really their song, or did his mind just fill in that space with the brief snatch of song heard on radio. There is a definite story, although it is not traditional narrative taking the audience from points A to Z. I think some of the best modern poets did the same thing. Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) would often have poems which bordered on being short stories, stories where there was a plot but things were left semi-open, semi-opaque. In France some of the creators of the Anti-Novel (Nathalie Sarraute, A l’Aine Robe Grille) were authors who painted pictures with words but left a certain elasticity to the where and when of what was going on with the characters and their world. This is something I think poetry is moving away from, an image standing for something and yet not being rigidly locked into place. I think too, for any work of art where you want people to be able to go back to it again and again, the lion’s share of the tension should not derive from finding out “what happens next”. Largely, we avoided that in the way the story is told. PNG: What were your working methods like? WW: The very first thing we had established as a rule for the project was that we wanted people to be able to give it multiple listens. A lot of comedy albums and spoken word albums, no matter how big a fan of the artist you are, a listen or two a year is all that is really necessary. We did not want music or words to take precedence, one over the other. Mood was also the most important aspect of the project overall. We have several people doing vocals, the pieces are sometimes acted, sometimes sung. The text was a mix of poems and short stories which I then made into a sort of script for everybody. There are things in the script, a synopsis, which is nowhere on the album or in linear notes, but it made things easier for everyone, to sort of visualize where this guy was. By the time we were recording the third piece, it very much became like actors showing up for a shoot, no longer did the emotional landscape of the characters have to be painted beforehand to capture the right emotional resonance. The music too is a key ingredient. As opposed to my last project, this is mainly acoustic instruments. There are a few sound samples here and there, but mostly it is real people playing acoustic instruments which provide an ambient warmth to the over all sound that machines just can not capture. We decided from the start too, that this story takes place in a sort of timeless Argentina. I liked the idea of The Detective being a sort of European expatriate. Argentina, seemed the logical choice to me, you had things about it that made it sort of like Europe, but then just when you could almost forget where you are, there would be a custom or something which reminded you, you are not home. The vague familiarity of sitting in European café but not being in Europe I thought would make for an effective feeling of dream like alienation. The time/year is never stated or alluded to and really neither is geographic location. The landscape is reflected somewhat through the words but more so through the music. There is a very Astor Pizzola melancholy romanticism running through all of it, providing a unified feel. PNG: How did this project effect your writing? WW: If you took the lyrics to a popular song, they are not always compelling by themselves. A lot of lyrics when presented just as a poem would be rejected by an editor. And some of the best poems may have too much going on in them to do anything with verbally. There has always been this dichotomy between what writing could make good spoken word material and the high art which seems destined to be trapped on the page. I know with my writing, the way it often rapidly shifts tense and contains inner musings of the characters, it would be hard to pull off in a performance type medium. This project has truly shown me a third way. I can keep the complexity, but still be understood in any sort of performance type of thing. All that aside, the project has gotten my juices flowing, in that, all during the creation of Midnight Latitudes I was doing all kinds of writing outside the project. PNG: Where can we find the CD? WW: It will be coming out in late spring. The news section of my site will have a release announcement. It will be available pretty much everywhere else you buy CDs. I know Mars Syndicate is in the middle of doing a new site too, they will also have an announcement.
 Being a huge fan of
jazz, when we recorded the
album there were some definite moments of lyrical improvisation on my
part.Text from the first single. Via Reggio Wayne H.W Wolfson Winter reminds me of death. Spit the words out of my mouth, so much rotten fruit. Fall is coming. The night crawls on its many legs, Jesus loves me for my crimes. The odd hours before leaving. Always awkward, as if caught in mid crime. Crime of passion, Autumn, fall. I will take my coffee on the deck one last time. As always you can pretend to have just remembered how I like it. I hum that song. Please, do not say “ours”. On the table, left alone, the pages of the magazine stroke the air. Thinking of home, Ulysses and his kitchen herb garden left unattended. The perfume of mint is cooler than what little shade is to be found. Say goodbye like it is important. Know full well it is the best that I can do. In her people’s tongue her name means “To go, to cry”. I would do one and cause the other. |
d
 Wayne Wolfson is a California based author. More information on his work can be found on his web-site: Terrible Beauty www.waynewolfson.com More links: http://artrevolutionaries.com/ (first review of single Via Reggio:) http://www.bluepepper.blogspot.com/ |