Five Bullets 6.24.22
This week: Experiments with film, Werner Herzog, Balinese Gamelan & more
Happy Friday everyone! Here’s five things I found interesting this week:
Earlier this week I got some film developed (remember film?!). I shot three rolls over the past few months with two cameras. This was a fun learning experience which I dive into with this photo essay.
I met infamous director/filmmaker/writer Werner Herzog this week (thanks Sean!). The IFC Center screened Herzog's film Little Dieter Needs to Fly and held a book signing to celebrate the release of his new book The Twilight World. The novel is a fictional account of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier during World War II who refused to give up his post on a Phillipine Island for 29 years. It was my first time seeing Little Dieter, a film which Herzog said "made my network executive want to vomit" because it was so bad. After seeing this moving account of Dieter Dengler's harrowing experience as a POW in Vietnam, we had a few moments to meet Herzog who graciously signed my book. If you haven't heard of Werner Herzog, I highly recommend you check out his wide body of work.
Herzog signed my book! Last weekend I had a chance to explore the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, housed in the former Alexander Hamilton US Customs House in lower Manhattan. I saw three exhibits: 'Native New York' detailed the history of Mannahatta (the Lenape name for "island of many hills" ) before, during and after the colonial era right up to present day Indigenous living and working in the area including the Shinnecock; 'Infinity of Nations' displayed art and history collections of North, Central, and South American nations; the third exhibit housed the striking artwork of Oscar Howe, a Yanktonai Dakota artist.
Watched another writer documentary: Arthur Miller: Writer, directed and presented by Rebecca Miller. The documentary includes commentary and interview footage of Miller reflecting on his life as Rebecca discusses different aspects of his personality, relationships, family history and long career as a playwright and screenwriter, having published iconic works such as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. [Check out my post on some other writer documentaries to watch].
This week I'm listening to Balinese Gamelan: Music from the Morning of the World from Nonesuch's Explorer Series (thanks V!) . Recorded by David Lewiston, this album released in 1967 was the first from the label's new Explorer Series. Lewiston essentially reinvented the field recording, prior to which were largely academic, by heading to remote villages in Bali with a few microphones and a tape recorder and recording what he heard, as he heard it. Nonesuch helped bring these recordings to a wider audience. I'm looking forward to listening to these hypnotic rhythms over and over.
“It took a strange and unfamiliar music and brought it into focus, with no thought of taming it, no effort made to popularize or present it as tame or simply exotic. It came at you with the rush of A Love Supreme or Picasso's Guernica, all good and evil and noise and silence, and everything that was left out of Western music and everything that was hidden in the shadows of your church or your past suddenly present and shining and alive.”
Got something to share? Leave me a comment!
See you next week! As always, thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Until next time,
KW
Thanks for introducing me to Music from the Morning of the World.