Posted by: Roman Mars on October 29, 2004 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

Nubar Alexanian (no, not him, the other one) presented a panel about image as metaphor. This was probably the most enigmatic session based solely off the guide description, so I was really curious to see what this one was all about.

From the get-go, Sharon Ball boiled the session's lesson down to one sentence: Metaphor needs to serve the story.

Sherre Delys (ABC/Next Big Thing) suggested that the way to arrive at work that truly connects with the listener is to completely ignore them. If you develop metaphors that are strong and true people will always find a way to relate it to their experience. So the question for you, the blogging audience (who I'm choosing not to ignore) is this: Is metaphor only a metaphor if the audience heard it as such?

Sherre's sample was from her piece "Ages Ago" a meditation on sound and memory. The metaphor in this piece is a parrot. The parrot is a playback machine that maps its world through sound. Even if people didn't make the connection between the parrot and the central thesis about how sound can bridge time and space, it still informed the tone of the piece and can be enjoyed simply for what it is.

Download file- Parrot 1

Download file- Parrot 2

Download file- Parrot 3

Sandy Tolan presented an example from Living on Earth. In this case, one of the arresting sounds is a man calling a canoe from across the lake. Here is an example of what Sandy called the "organic metaphor." The call was not inherently part of the story, it was recorded in the place, but Sandy uses it as a metaphor for the sadness about the destruction of Ecuador. This interpretation of the canoe call and what was actually going on was completely different. They are juxtaposed to create a new meaning.

Download file- Ecuador

Here is music as metaphor. The frenetic tone of the violin, points out the frenetic tone of a refugee camp.

Download file- Violin

It was all pretty heady stuff. One thing that wasn't mentioned, but was hinted at by Sherre, is the idea of the metaphor not only as something that shouldn't be explicitly created with the audience in mind, but is actually not for the audience at all. The deeper meaning that you find in your pieces as you listen to them for the 400th time is one of the keys to extracting joy from your work. Probably no one will catch it, but if you find pleasure in it, that's all that matters. Do you find this in your own work? What are the moments that keep you going? For me, a good piece of music, that I know will work perfectly, will send me directly to the ProTools. And you?

More from Third Coast Festival 2004 :
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