Oir (videopoem)

I was surprised and pleased this morning to see this stunning new videopoem by my friend Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, for another poem in Luisa Igloria’s new book, The Saints of Streets. She wrote “Oir” back on January 7, 2012, sparked by that day’s entry in The Morning Porch.

As with his previous collaboration with Luisa, Mortal Ghazal, Marc has blogged some very interesting process notes incorporating remarks from Luisa in his narrative. I’ll just quote from the first part of his post:

Some weeks ago we’ve had a thunderstorm at night. I recorded it, added some sounds and improvised piano…
For some reason I thought about the recording of ‘Oir’ Luisa sent me earlier. I combined them all and forwarded the result to Luisa.

I very much love the broody thunderstorm background and the improvised piano. I like the sound of rain very much. A hard rain on tin roofs is a particularly strong memory trace I have from my growing up in a tropical country. Anyway, for me rain has the capacity for both amplifying and muffling/softening the atmosphere. It’s full of emotional portent,

she replied.

Luisa also gave me the idea of using ‘café-ambient’ noises and provided me with some insights about the poem;

…but in part the poem is partly triggered by a conversation I had in a cafe. We talked about work, creative nonfiction essays, family…
As usual the cafe was crowded and noisy. it struck me then but perhaps more afterward, when I was writing the poem, that in the spaces that teem with so much everyday life, activity, business as usual, we strive to hollow out spaces for the intimate to be enacted and reenacted.

Read the rest.