Incompleteness
11 February 2009
I like listening to soundtracks for movies that don’t exist. I was just listening to something called Romances, by “Kaada & Patton,” which sounds like a Tim Burton movie but weightier and better. It has jellyfish on the cover. There are also various John Zorn projects that fit into the fake-soundtrack category; he talks about it in the liner notes to Spillane.
It made me want to read things that are similarly incomplete: notes for a non-existent exhibition, maybe, or instructions to a non-existent device. I’m sure there are such works, and I’ve probably read some of them, but I can’t remember any examples at the moment. The essential thing is that the artifacts not cleverly tell some coherent story; they should leave a great deal to the imagination. I probably will not write such a collection, but I like to think about writing it. Usually the things I like to think about writing are not the things I actually like to write. That may be one reason why I often have trouble knowing what to write next.
There’s also the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a collection of narratively suggestive pictures with no actual explanatory narrative attached. I haven’t looked at that book in a long time.
I’ve always thought Kraftwerk’s Autobahn sounded like the soundtrack to a fun video game.
Music is probably the best medium for this kind of thing, because you can listen to music while you’re looking at something else; so music makes a good supporting medium, and then if you take away the main medium (the movie, the video game), you have this pleasant sense of an evocative incompleteness.
Interestingly, although I’ve never seen a laser show without any music, it sounds pretty stupid. So there must be something more going on here. Maybe because a laser show doesn’t normally accompany narrative. If we all grew up reading stories with laser shows attached, would it then be interesting to watch a laser show with no story?
Comments (3)
There’s a good/weird book called “The Age of Wire and String” which is really hard to describe, but it’s sort of like what you’re talking about.
Also, my English project for Independent Study was sort of like that–it was a collection of found/written-on objects and notes on them. It ended up being an absurd definition of the absurd.
The Age of Wire and String, I should read that thing someday. It’s actually an embarrassment that I haven’t. It is totally this famous, seminal work. I am impressed that you have found it and read it.
You may like The Hazards of Love. If you’re into the whole Decemberists shtick like I am.