aquapher (Jared Bremner) and DJ LA (LA Alfonso) at Sadleir House in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada after their soundtrack performance for a 1922 silent film. Photo by Lauren Yandt
Jared and I pulled it off last night! We were very well-received by the packed house for the screening of Häxan with our live performance of the soundtrack. I was nervous and alert for the whole time. I imagined everyone’s eyes on me as I turned knobs, changed vinyl records on the turntable, and looped sections from my tracks. I caught some of our performance on video. [1] Someone else documented my spoken introduction explaining my rationale for the project. [2]
Further encouragement from my horoscope which told me that the Full Moon’s message was: being my most authentic, empowered self is my greatest contribution. And that’s not only for my own life, but it’s also for the benefit of my community — it’s how I can best give to others. The message reminded of that Martha Graham quote that Jared often invokes.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. — Martha Graham
It felt really special inside that screening room last night. It was, for me, the culmination of a lifelong call to present films only to pull the curtain to show part of its own internal machinations. By revealing the author behind the lens, as I’ve often done in my personal documentaries, I’ve disrupted the norm and inspired potential filmmakers to create their own films. Chris Marker’s San Soleil had that transformative effect on me when I saw it decades ago.
The same kind of reveal is at work when the sound is detached from the film and, then re-attached in a performative context. As film music specialist Gillian B. Anderson says, “if the attempted remarriage of music and image does nothing else, I hope it will prompt viewers to consider the relationship between these three artistic forces”(30). Which three artistic forces he meant, it wasn’t specified in his essay. [2] I will presume he meant sound, image, and words. I took his words to heart and initiated a one-of-a-kind experiment in order to investigate. It’s difficult to describe in mere words how these three artistic forces played with each other in a highly-charged way at last night’s performance.
As I reflected on what I learned from the process, I opened a package that had been delivered earlier that day. It contained the book Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods [3] by Shawn Wilson.
You see, I’ve been researching about research itself — the “research-creation” methodology. I’ve only recently realized that I’ve been initializing research/creation projects for quite some time now and I have found myself repeating certain methods that give me the results I need. As the great Rolling Stones rightly intoned, “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need.” [4]. Shawn Wilson says, “Research is all about unanswered questions, but it also reveals our unquestioned answers” (6).
Applying Wilson’s thought to my recent process of presenting a live score for a silent film to an in-person audience in a small theatre, my biggest takeaway is observing how I quickly lost myself the project, how I had seemingly limitless energy and focus — and time just flew by.
I’ll say, for me right now, I think the elements that make up a worthwhile project includes (a) the element of pulling the curtain back to reveal its own process, (b) the element of creating a container in which random collisions of sound, word, and image can happen, and (c) to create a community through the live presentation of creative research. These may be the answers that I wasn’t looking for when I started my research on how to pull off a performance of a live score to silent horror film from 1922. As Terry Tafoya writes, “Part of finding is getting lost, and when you are lost you start to open up and listen” (6).
Writing about it, reading about it, diving deep into the internet for possible sounds for the live score, I spent countless hours. I purchased a DJ controller and the BluRay of Häxan from Amazon, music by The Caretaker and SKUL from Bandcamp, and stock audio from Motion Array. By randomly watching Häxan while I previewed music in other browsers, I saw the random combinations of sound and image and I felt charged up and excited. I made mental notes. With my iPhone, I filmed a spontaneous moment from the computer screen which ended up being a promotional Instagram reel. [5]
When Jared dropped off the turntable that he inherited over the weekend, I was excited to dive into my vinyl collection and my heart exploded with excitement to share my rare finds. I will do my best to attach a list of tracks and albums. [6] An audience member confided after the show that she tried to Shazam a track during the performance but the app found no match in its song data bank. “That’s because,” I said, “Jared played original tracks with his keyboards and audio gear.” Oh! Of course, she said. Another person came up to me and said they had previously done a live soundtrack to a silent film too and, “would you like to collaborate?” Another said, “I’m in!” Research is relationships. Shawn Wilson puts forward in his book that “relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality” (7) and the shared aspect of Indigenous…[research] methodology is “accountability to relationships and… these shared aspects of relationality and relational accountability to can be put in practice through, choice of research topic, methods of data collection, form of analysis and presentation of information” (7). Research, in short, is “a ceremony that brings relationships together” (8). Wilson says, “The purpose of any ceremony is to build stronger relationships or bridge the distance between aspects of our cosmos and ourselves” (11).
Last night I can literally count thirteen individuals with whom I have strengthened my relationships through the initiation, research, and creation of the event; countless more were acquainted with the project online. Robin Wall Kimmerer says in Braiding Sweetgrass, that is power of ceremony; it marries the mundane to the sacred. [7]
Yesterday, someone sent me a picture that I had made an released on the internet to promote the event only to come back to me, to my delight, slightly altered. This is the height of internet engagement, I thought. It’s not only a “sample,” one additional step makes it a “remix.”
These days, the creation of an event inevitably includes promotion and that becomes part of the overall research (and creation) as well. I posted on social media with the class assignment on memes in mind and I reminded myself of Bill Wasik’s four key attributes [8] of viral culture — (a) speed, (b) shamelessness, (c) duration, and (d) sophistication (8). Mostly, I think, I just need a lesson in “shamelessness” — I want a camera-ready personality that is able to post a reel or TikTok in an effortlessly coherent way at the drop of a hat. That’s what I’m working on.
As the immediate result of this quick research/creation project for Trent Film Society, I am able to slow down the process for myself and note what I had previously thought impossible to get down on paper — the ways in which the heart matters in the everyday and academic research. I simply ask myself, “is my heart in the right place?”
Notes
1. LA Alfonso. Trent Film Society presents Häxan with live soundtrack by DJ LA and aquapher, https://vimeo.com/lesteralfonso/liveperformancehaxan.
2. Häxan. (105 min. 1922) Directed by Benjamin Christensen. Blu-Ray Edition. Booklet of Essays. The Criterion Collection, 2019.
3. Shawn Wilson. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Publishing, 2008.
4. Rolling Stones. You Can’t Always Get What You Want (1969) Songwriters: Mike Jagger, Keith Richards.
5. @by_LA_Alfonso, Instagram reel, posted on October 12, 2023,
6. Häxan, Live Score October 2023, Sources
Aquapher — Live Performance, A Highwayman Comes Riding (https://aquapher..bandcamp.com)
From vinyl collection: Amon Tobin — Isam (Ninja Tune), The Moth — Antennae (C3R), The Velvet Gentleman: the Camarata Contemporary Chamber Group — The Music of Erik Satie (London Records)
From Angel Lobotomy Records (https://djcrackerjacks..bandcamp.com)
Tchaikovsky — The Witch (1926)
Professor Von Spookenstein (Halloween Hellscapes IV: The Horror Below) — Corrupted Exorcist Part 1
SKUL (Ash & Bones) — Tracks 1 to 3
Mark Korven (Music from The Witch) — What Went We, Foster the Children, William and Thomasin
The Caretaker (From Deleted scenes, forgotten dreams and Selected Memories from The Haunted Ballroomˆ — Deleted scenes, forgotten dreams (part one), The Haunted Ballroom, Friends Past United, “Excuse Me” for ladies, Garden of Weeds, Moonlight Serenade, You and the night, Midnight the stars and you (https://the caretaker.bandcamp.com)
Motion Array (motionarray.com) stock audio — Horror Piano Trailer (variations), Dark Drone Ambient (variations), Nightmare (variations) by Daydreamz Studios, Dread Forest (variations) by Jelliot, Always Lost (variations) by Matthew Harvey, Nightstalker by Negativist, Dark Corners (variations) by OctoSound, Infinite Suffering by Pasha Striker, The Gothic Mansion (variations) by Sonic Dream, Carrie (variations) by Trigubovich.
7. Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass. Audiobook. Narrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Tantor Audio, 2015.
8. Bill Wasik. And Then There’s This. Viking, 2009.