SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI-Music for a Forgotten Future (The Singing Mountain) (2011).
This track is a 23 minute instrumental that was used for an art installation by Douglas Gordon (who made the film Zidane, for which Mogwai provided the score) and Olaf Nicolai called “Monument for a Forgotten Future”. The more I learn about his installation, the more intrigued I am by it. According to wikimedia, “Monument for a Forgotten Future” is a sculpture by Olaf Nicolai and Douglas Gordon on the so called “Wilde Insel” (wild island) in Gelsenkirchen-Horst, Germany. It is 1:1 replica of a rock formation in Joshua Tree National Park with a sound installation by Mogwai that can be heard from within the “rock.” Someone has even posted a video of their trip to it. In the video (which is literally of a rock), as the filmer approached you can hear the music only when he or she gets pretty close to the installation. It’s just barely audible. Cool.
As for the music itself, it is very mellow an atmospheric, quite perfect for being on a Wild Island and sitting by/staring at a rock. There are definitely hints of Mogwai’s sound in the music, although there are a lot more keyboards than guitars (which befits their more recent albums). It’s very peaceful and quite beautiful. At about 19 minutes it fades out and seems to being another string laden piece into the mix as well, but it more or less fades into static (which would be a lousy time to get to the installation!).
The music comes free with most editions of Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will.
[READ: August 2, 2012] “Without Blood”
After reading Baricco’s Emmaus, I wanted to see what else he had written. I found this short story (which is also the name of one of his novels, although I’m not sure if this is an excerpt or the inspiration for the novel–Wikipedia says it is a “revised form” of the novel, whatever that means).
I was a little disconcerted by this story when it opened because it has a very violent introduction. The farmhouse of Manuel Roca is the site of bloodshed. Three men, Salinas, El Guerra, and Tito pull up in a Mercedes. Manuel Roca is the man they are looking for. He has two children a boy and a girl, Nina. He tells Nina that she must hide when the men come. Hide in the cellar and be absolutely still, no matter what happens. And to not be afraid. The son, slightly older, wants to help, he even has a gun, but Manuel tells him to hide in the woodshed. And then the house was riddled with bullets.
Manuel survived that first round but when he looked up, Tito (who was described as a boy but was in fact 20) was standing there with a gun pointed at Manuel. And he shouted to Salinas “IT’S TITO. I’VE GOT HIM.” When the threesome get inside, they see that Tito has shot Roca in the arm because he had a gun.
When the two men come face to face we learn that this fight has to do with the war. Roca says the war is over, although Salinas, says “Not yours, Not mine, Doctor.” Salinas was known as the rat because he deciphered Roca’s men’s coded messages. But despite the war, Salinas has only shot a gun twice. The first one was at no one, the second was at his brother who was in the hospital when the war ended. Salinas went to the hospital with the intent of killing Doctor Roca and his men, but they had fled, leaving all of the sick and dying unattended. When Salinas’ brother asked him to kill him…please, he could only comply.
After this flashback, Roca’s son came into the room with a shotgun. From here the scene gets really violent with both Roca and his son killed. The men realize that Nina must be there as well, so they look all over for her. It is the boy Tito who finds her in the cellar. They stared at each other, but Tito let her live. And the men left. After they set the house on fire.
Three days later a man on horseback found Nina and took her away.
Wow.
Section II opens with a woman–she has an elegant walk and a tight black skirt. She stops at a lottery ticket booth and asks the old man for a ticket. They chat briefly and then the woman asks the man if he would like to have a drink with her. He says he can’t leave the booth and then, “the woman nodded as if she had understood. But then she leaned toward the man and said: ‘come with me.'” And the man did.
On their way to the cafe he says he knows who she is. That as a girl she saw three men kill her father in cold blood. He confirms that he is the only one of the three left alive. [Although it seems obvious in retrospect, I was blown away by that].
The remainder of section II looks at Nina (who was no longer Nina after that day). She went to an orphanage and then a man named Ricardo Uribe took her away. He was a small town pharmacist and he told everyone that she was his daughter (he had just moved to the town). From there we get two versions of her story. One that she remembers and the one that the man, Tito, had always heard about her–both variants of the truth. This was a wonderful trick. Neither story is particularly nice, and it’s possible that she doesn’t remember which one is true. And this story makes up the bulk of section II–stories of her marriage and children, her instability and her eventual institutionalization.
We also learn about what Tito’s life had been like since that day. The stories he had heard, the fear he had. That Salinas and El Guerra died in strange ways.
The obvious conclusion would be to have her murder Tito. But that does not happen. The ending is much more emotional, much more unusual, much more profound, and perhaps a little upsetting. It’s a contradictory story, but it’s wonderfully told. And wonderfully translated by Ann Goldstein.
Evidently Baricco has written several novels, most of them have been translated into English (including bestseller Silk) and most of them are quite short–he could be my new favorite novella writer.
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