The Organist

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The Voice is a Thief Jun 08, 2017

Show notes

Will Marlon Brando’s anguished shout from A Streetcar Named Desire survive as a cultural meme long after Brando himself is forgotten? Will the Stella scream become an enduring cultural reference in the vein of Shakespeare’s quotations? In 2011, essayist Elena Passarello won New Orleans’ annual Stella scream competition by channelling Brando’s abject bawling. This week we speak with her about screams, cries, and the full range of the human voice. How does the body play into the sound of our voice? Is it possible to hear a broken foot bone when a performer speaks or sings? As interviewer Niela Orr puts it, “Passarello’s essays are what would happen if Joan Didion wrote captions for VH1's Pop-Up Video.” Passarello’s work explores the physical and cultural aspects of the human voice and how they might be connected. Our discussion encompasses vocality from opera, Flavor Flav, and James Brown, as well as automated voices, such as the classic Bell telephone operator, the voice of the Moviefone hotline, and contemporary AI, including Alexa and Siri—and how these automated voices mimic accents and human confusion. You’ll also hear Passarello’s rendition of how Koko, the gorilla with a lexicon of 1000 signs, tells the legendarily dirty vaudeville joke “The Aristocrats.”

You’ll also hear fiction from Chelsea Martin on attempts to woo an estranged ex—written in the form of a review of The Organist podcast itself.

Special thanks to Mickey Capper and Sidewalks podcast for the use of “Someone like Baby.”

Produced by Jenny Ament and Niela Orr.

Appendix: Hypnotic Induction Jun 01, 2017

Show notes

If each episode of a podcast is an organ, an essential piece of a larger body, then this is an appendix to that body: a non-essential but still uniquely formed bonus episode. In it you’ll hear a hypnotic induction as performed and scored by the hypnotherapist Daniel Ryan. Ryan was featured on the Organist last week in our episode about the relationship between our bodies, our minds, and sound. One last note— it’s probably best if you stop operating heavy machinery while you’re listening to this podcast.

Sleeping Knowledge May 25, 2017

Show notes

How does music resemble food? How can sound work like medicine? To treat chronic digestive pain, producer Ross Simonini tried everything until visiting hypnotherapist Daniel Ryan, who uses only the sound of his voice through a technique shared by orators, monks, musicians, parents—and magician David Blaine.

We also learn about the psychoacoustics of lawn sprinklers with Susan Rogers, a sound engineer who’s recorded albums for David Byrne, Barenaked Ladies, Tricky, and, most famously, Prince’s albums Purple Rain and Sign o' the Times. Rogers is one of the most legendary female sound engineers in an industry long dominated by men. These days, she’s also a professor at the Berklee School of Music, where she researches how our brains process sound.

Lastly, author Eugene Lim brings us speculative fiction on the interstellar connections between celebrity CEO Elon Musk and the Organist podcast itself.

Hypnosis segment produced by Ross Simonini. Interview with Susan Rogers produced by Jenny Ament.

Episode 78: The Topiary May 11, 2017

Show notes

This week, we voyage deep into outer space for a story that’s funny, strange, somewhat erotic and a little depressing. It’s a science-fiction outer space radio drama featuring Martin Starr (Silicon Valley, Freaks and Geeks), Matt Bush (Adventureland), and Lilan Bowden (Parks and Recreation). It’s part of a series called The Outer Reach, directed and produced by Nick White. In it, Leon and Michael are the only residents of The Topiary—a tiny tourist planet near the edge of the galaxy, lush with exotic plant life. But due to budget cuts The Topiary is shutting down. So Leon decides to document their remaining time together. When their final visitor arrives, her biting observations on the topiaries themselves are only the first step in driving Leon and Michael apart.

In this episode, you'll also hear Organist fan fiction from Stacey Levine, author of Frances Johnson.

Directed and produced by Nick White Starring Martin Starr, Matt Bush, and Lilan Bowden Written by Katya Apekina Sound design by Jeff Emtman Music by The Black Spot

Thanks to Howl.fm for sharing this episode with us. THE OUTER REACH: STORIES FROM BEYOND Artwork by Jorge Jacinto

Episode 77: The Self-Rattling House Apr 27, 2017

Show notes

In New Orleans, Will Oldham, Solange Knowles, and five-year-old children have all played a (mega-) phone booth, the “self-rattling house,” and a vocal processor that mimics the experience of neighbors talking through walls. Each of these homemade instruments is part of Music Box Village, a project that turns architecture—in the form of a sprawling complex of makeshift buildings—into an investigation of sound, but it also returns performers to the intuitive composition and experimentation of first learning to play.

Also in this episode, Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Books talks about his “wanderjahr” (“I got fired for not wearing a uniform,”) huckleberry bushes, living with Parkinson’s, and the spontaneity of book publishing. Finally, the poet Ryan Tucker describes, in a luminous iTunes review, his transformative experiences as a WWI fighter pilot, for whom the Organist podcast unlocked the ethereal realm.

Episode 76: A Radio Wave In My Brain Apr 06, 2017

Show notes

Ottessa Moshfegh’s books are menacing and powerful; they’re filled with intimate descriptions of bodily fluids and bowel movements, but, like Flannery O’Connor, they also cut deep into the psychic substrata of her characters. In this week’s episode, Moshfegh discusses her process of writing these books—which apparently involves visitations from the paranormal. Last year Moshfegh was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her novel Eileen, which is a story about a woman desperately seeking the connection of another human being. She also wrote a novella, McGlue, which is a kind of murder love story set in Salem Massachusetts in 1851. Moshfegh spoke to Ross Simonini about the source of the darkness and the weirdness in her fiction.

In this episode, you’ll also hear Organist fan fiction from comedian Dan Sheehan, known for tweeting as his persona @SICKOFWOLVES, who is “DEFINITELY NOT A WOLF PRETENDING TO BE A MAN.”

Episode 75: The Cool Gaze of Madame Realism Mar 23, 2017

Show notes

In an era of fake news and alternative facts, what is the role of literature that blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction? Novelist Lynne Tillman has figured out one possible role. She’s been writing art criticism for more than three decades, including criticism starring a fictional character named Madame Realism—a name that is itself a retort to the way women artists were marginalized and made invisible within the Surrealist movement. Tillman’s Madam Realism stories encompass not only art itself but also the reactions that art inspires in the viewers around her character, as well as how the museum itself curates a viewing experience. In this episode, Tillman and writer Adam Colman visit the MoMA to discuss, in Tillman’s associative way, an exhibit on French avant-garde artist Francis Picabia. Their conversation takes them from the birth of the avant-garde to the squareness of Paris to institutional critique until they are finally kicked out of the museum by security.

In this episode you’ll also hear Organist fan fiction from Moira Cassidy (as read by Garrett Stewart).

Feature photo: Francis Picabia. Optophone [I]. 1922. Ink, watercolor, and pencil on board, 28 3/8 × 23 5/8″ (72 × 60 cm). Kravis Collection. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: The Museum of Modern Art, John Wronn.

Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953). Très rare tableau sur la terre (Very Rare Picture on the Earth). 1915. Oil, metallic paint, pencil, and ink on board, with gold and silver leaf on wood, in a wood frame possibly constructed by the artist, 49 5/8 x 38 9/16 x 2 3/16″ (126 x 98 x 5.5 cm), with frame. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Francis Picabia. Tableau Rastadada (Rastadada Painting). 1920. Cut‑and‑pasted printed paper on paper with ink, 7 1/2 × 6 3/4″ (19 × 17.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller by exchange. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: The Museum of Modern Art, Peter Butler

Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953). La Nuit espagnole (The Spanish Night). 1922. Enamel paint on canvas, 63 x 51 3/16″ (160 x 130 cm). Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Ludwig Collection. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Francis Picabia. Espagnole (Espagnole à la cigarette) (Spanish Woman [Spanish Woman with Cigarette]). 1922. Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, 28 3/8 × 20 1/16″ (72 × 51 cm). Private collection. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo courtesy Mercatorfonds

Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953). Les Amoureux (Après la pluie) (The Lovers [After the Rain]). 1925. Enamel paint and oil on canvas, 45 11/16 x 45 1/4″ (116 x 115 cm). Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © Musée d’Art Moderne/Roger-Viollet Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

Francis Picabia. Untitled (Espagnole et agneau de l’apocalypse [Spanish Woman and Lamb of the Apocalypse]). 1927/1928. Watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper, 25 9/16 × 19 11/16″ (65 × 50 cm). Private collection. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Stephan Wyckoff

Francis Picabia. L’Adoration du veau (The Adoration of the Calf). 1941–42. Oil on board, 41 3/4 × 30″ (106 × 76.2 cm). Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle, Paris. Purchase with assistance from the Fonds du Patromonie, the Clarence Westbury Foundation, and the Societé des Amis du Musée national d’art moderne, 2007. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

Francis Picabia. La Révolution espagnole (The Spanish Revolution). 1937. Oil on canvas, 63 3/4 × 51 3/16″ (162 × 130 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Dominique Lévy Gallery and Michael Werner Gallery. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo courtesy Archives Comité Picabia

Episode 74: It's Very Indian to Watch AbFab Mar 09, 2017

Show notes

Humor lays the groundwork for a hard truth and, for poet Tommy Pico, that hard truth is about living as an indigenous person in occupied America. "Alien invasion overlord movies / r cute in a Monet way,” he writes. “I survive seven generations into a post-apocalyptic America / that started 1492. Maybe / you'll live too?" There are, he says, just a few images of Native Americans that have filtered into mainstream culture: the noble savage, the squaw, the horseback warrior, and the sad Indian, “whose religion and spirituality and land and resources and livelihood have been taken away from them. I want to write in defiance of the sad Indian.” Pico’s poetry builds a contemporary Native American persona, one that occupies multiple spaces simultaneously: New York City, the internet, pop music, and Grindr. It’s an identity that’s determined to be heard by the culture at large. Tellingly, Pico’s first book, IRL, is both in the form of a single epic text — maybe even a sext — and inspired by Kumeyaay “bird songs,” some of the last surviving remnants of the Kumeyaay tribe’s long-form poetry tradition.

In this episode, you’ll also hear Organist fan fiction from Jimmy Chen, performed by the legendary Edgar Oliver, as well as a series of “verbal selfies” from artist Robyn O’Neil.

Feature image of Tommy Pico by Eugene Smith for Poets & Writers Magazine.

Robyn O'Neil, "The Everywhere Citadel", 2016. Graphite on paper 60 1/4 x 38 1/4 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Ascension", 2016. Graphite on paper 22 3/4 x 30 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Suffocation Bed", 2013. Graphite on paper 23 x 30 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Inflation Drill (after Guston)", 2016. Graphite on paper 22 3/4 x 30 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "The Husband Cathedral", 2016. Graphite on paper 34 1/8 x 60 1/4 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "The Mercy Quartet", 2016. Graphite on paper 34 1/8 x 60 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Studies in Suffocation I", 2016. Graphite on paper 60 1/4 x 66 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Studies in Suffocation II", 2016. Graphite on paper 60 1/4 x 66 3/16 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Government Bureau (after Tooker)", 2016. Graphite on paper 22 3/4 x 30 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "These Moments", 2016. Graphite on paper 10 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "The Five Echoes", 2016. Graphite on paper 15" x 12 1/8 inches

Robyn O'Neil, "Ultralight Beam Terzetto", 2016. Graphite on paper 41 1⁄2 x 63 inches

Episode 73: What We Talk about When We Talk about Two Bears High-Fiving Feb 23, 2017

Show notes

In 1921, the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, after years of experimenting with different ways to use his artistic interests to expand the potential of psychoanalysis, created a series of inkblot drawings that reveal the unconscious mechanisms of a patient’s brain. Six months later, he died, just before the inkblot test became an international phenomenon. Since then, Rorschach’s inkblot test has become pop-cultural shorthand for both Freudian psychology and the depths of the human mind. It has become an inescapable reference in art, film and journalism. Damion Searls, author of the first-ever biography of Rorschach, explains how our application and understanding of the test diverge from Rorschach’s intentions.

In this episode, you’ll also find Organist fan fiction from author Elizabeth McKenzie, a “verbal selfie” from Casey Jane Ellison, and the winner of the Sarah Awards’ Very Very Short Short Audio Fiction contest.

Hermann holding daughter Lisa, 1918.

Hermann in his office in the Herisau apartment, cigarette in hand, 1920.

Hermann, Lisa, Wadim, summer 1921.

Rorschach age 6, in Swiss folk costume, 1819.

Rorschach early inkblot.

Rorschach notes on printers proof.

Rorschach on a hiking trip in the Santis, September 1918.

Rorschach rowing on Lake Constance, CA. 1920.

Roschach dressed in wizard costume.

Soldiers looking at inkblot.

Wedding Photo, May 1, 1910. Pictures credit: Archiv und Sammlung Hermann Rorschach, University Library of Bern.

Episode 72: Baptism of Solitude: Paul Bowles's Morocco Tapes Feb 09, 2017

Show notes

The novelist and countercultural icon Paul Bowles -- author of The Sheltering Sky, friend to William Burroughs, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams, and husband of the brilliant writer Jane Bowles -- lived in Tangier from 1947 until his death fifty-two years later. In 1959, he received a grant from the Library of Congress to â€œpreserveâ€ the music of Morocco. He set off in a VW bug (with his two driving companions, a Moroccan and a Canadian), laden with a massive Ampex tape recorder, bottles of hot Pepsi, and a pound of hashish. These remarkable recordings have long been unavailable, but last year, the label Dust-to-Digital released them as a deluxe box set. The Organist asked the writer Brian Edwards to listen to the tapes, and to tell Bowlesâ€™s remarkable story. Brian went through hours of recordings dozens of times, and sent back this report, which raises important questions about the problemsâ€” artistic, technical, and of course ethical â€” of recording a music you love in a country thatâ€™s not your own.

Produced by Myke Dodge Weiskopf Written by Brian T. Edwards Â

Bowles Marakesh â€” Credit: Courtesy Allen Ginsberg Estate / Dust-to-Digital

Bowles-older â€” Credit: Courtesy Irene Herrmann / Dust-to-Digital

Paul Bowles on street-Tangier, June 1955 â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

Line of singers w Qraqab cymbals 1 drum â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / LibraryÂ of Congress

Double horn group by building â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / Library of Congress

Musicians in front-men with guns behind â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / LibraryÂ of Congress

Foothills-figure by fortress â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / Library of CongressÂ

VW bug along mtn road with small group â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / Library of Congress

Bowles squatting by wall

Loc-Map â€” hand-drawn map by Paul Bowles, showing his itinerary through MoroccoÂ in 1959, aboard a VW Beetle, filled with recording equipment, supplies, and recordingÂ team â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital / Library of Congress

Bowles against tapestry â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

Tangier Group (burroughs, bowles, ginsberg) â€” Credit: Courtesy Allen Ginsberg Estate / Dust-to-Digital

Sand village and palm trees â€” Credit: Courtesy Dust-to-Digital

Music in this episode is fromÂ Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959.Â

The Organistâ€™s theme music is by Barry London of Oneida.

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