So in developing music for the band, and dealing with my addiction to film, I was looking for a new way of writing that would incorporate both of my loves into music and stumbled upon a new method. Starting with Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman’s Trilogy, I attempted to loosely translate the films into songs. I did this in part because it would be a challenge, and also because I had these films on DVD and had never gotten around to actually watching them. This brings up the (mostly true) fact that all I’m ever doing is looking for ways to watch movies, but alas, the songs came out great and really allowed me to try a lot of new things that I wouldn’t have thought of under any other circumstance. This way of working is not new at all, and one of my favorite examples that begs further study is this gem:
“Such Sweet Thunder” is an amazing work by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn that examines William Shakespeare’s character’s through song. I can’t say enough good things about this album, and the sheer creativity of it is something that is hard to find these days.
On the flip side of this coin (in this case a Sacajawea Dollar), you can take music and turn it into a film. A great example of this is the new Todd Haynes film “I’m Not There.”
In this film, Haynes takes inspiration from Bob Dylan’s life and songs, and crafts a totally original blend of documentary and fantasy by splitting Dylan into 7 different characters and placing each one in different parts of his life, and sometimes combining this with literal interpretations of his lyrics. It’s cool to see art used to make new art, and then being tossed in a pan with other art to yield art not unlike the original artists art. The key word being “pan” or “art,” depending on who you ask. Anyway, that will do it for more first in depth(ish) post. Future posts will sound less academic!
Glowing Realm 
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