In a serene and random Creative Commons YouTube use this week, Truth Is a Lonely Place [Disquiet 0138] soundtracks a beach sunset at the 12:22 mark in a half-hour journey through California’s North Coast by videographer Michael Bonic.
The original track is off my 2014 record Particle Theory:
…and was composed in 2014 for the Disquiet Junto #0138 – Video Sonic Void. The creative prompt for the project was as follows:
PROJECT 0138
Compose a 2.5-minute soundtrack to complement the silent video “Untitled #8, 2004″ by the artist Josh Azzarella. The video is intended by the artist as a “Never Ending Loop,” as is this audio accompaniment.Note: This special Disquiet Junto project is the result of an invitation by the San Jose Museum of Art for me [ed. – Disquiet’s Marc Weidenbaum] to develop a sound installation to be displayed on its second floor from October 2014 through February 2015.
Untitled #8, 2004 from Josh Azzarella on Vimeo.
Eventually, Marc selected a brilliant remix of Truth is a Lonely Place by Canadian musician Lee Rosevere, also included on Particle Theory, to be part of the San Jose Museum installation titled “Momentum: Experiments in the Unexpected” that he co-curated later that year.
Fwiw, Azarella’s video is a looped abstraction of a 9/11 jumper from the World Trade Center. This video always struck me as one of the most poignant and resonant responses to the omni-present imagery of that terrible day here in NYC. In many ways, we are still trapped in that moment of free fall, having accelerated in the last 20+ years through wars, social upheaval, the pandemic, and no doubt we continue, faster and faster, to careen into tomorrow.
Every day now seems to cascade madness and uncertainty into more and more aspects of our lives. I’ve never been in free fall, where gravity can exert no more force on you. In terminal velocity, you cease to accelerate, and I can imagine in that moment losing sense of the ground; losing track of time; perhaps even feeling a bit weightless, as if shooting upwards instead of down.