La Mer : 19991129
“Mon oreille est un coquillage
Qui aime le bruit de la mer.”
Do you know this poem written by Jean Cocteau?
…[In English, it means "My Ear is a shell, it loves a sound of the sea."]
Many of you might have obtained David Carson’s latest book called “Photografiks” (photografik is a compound of photo and graphic made by Carson), as it includes most of pictures taken by Carson that are used for “The Fragile”. Obviously it abounds in objects of various colors captured in pictures that exist in this world, graininess from which I imagine atoms that make up substances, beautiful interaction between pictures and captions, simplicity of expressing, and a free atmosphere that just comes from simplicity.
It’s art that is accidentally born when you have a little impulse to change your angle a little from usual. It’s like someone holds out their hand and shows you something surprising, saying you can still find a thing like this in the world that seems so familiar to you. You can tell the same thing about music by Trent. “Changing your angle”, and holding what impress you within you forever are part of a talent, though.
The naturally out-of-focus edges that you can see in pictures in the book are particularly fantastic. If you have an experience of editing graphics, I guess you know this : It’s very hard to make those natural edges with computer software. However hard you tries, they have a shade of intentionality “that you make them vague and make them look out-of-focus”, or “a smell of machinery”.
Distances between actual materials and lenses, slight differences in focus and momentary beautiful gradation that comes from quantity of light. There couldn’t be the same moment. I cannot help keeping it in mind that photography is momentary art.
Among all the pictures, I think the one that shows the approach to the design of “The Fragile” most powerfully is “182-183″ which appears toward the end.
As this picture was used for the cover of “The Fragile”, I had been wondering what “the objects” were. But I didn’t think that they were shells at all. Of course, they must have cut off part of the picture intentionally, hoping people “imagine variously” like I did. Anyway, that warm color is a picture of shell, which is “no longer alive” yet the remains of “living thing”.
After I gazed at it for a while, I noticed there was a little caption in the center of a picture in the right page. It was a word of “listen” which is so small that you barely notice.
The moment I noticed it, I felt something as if a kind of electricity ran through my spine. What I remembered at the next moment was the part of the poem with which I started this essay. And then there came facts that studded that rose to my head slowly. How many expressions that remind me of the sea and water there is in this album!
There is even a song titled “La Mer (meaning ‘sea’ in French)” and in the following song called “The Great Below”, lyrics take over the image of the sea from the previous song and develop that. The video footage for these two songs that Trent officially asked Carson to produce for the live show use is said to feature waves and underwater images.
It’s been long since the opinion that the first life was born in the sea was generally accepted. Then, we, human beings, all have a sea as roots within us. It is a “current” called bloodstream and it is “salt” that our bodies include.
As a kid, have you ever cupped around your ears with shells, glasses or hands and listened to “the sound of the sea” for fun? What did you listen to actually? It may have been sounds around you or the sound of the wind that were altered in closed space, or the sound within you.
In this poem what “a shell” misses are apparently various memories between the shell and the sea, and it also seems that the writer misses someone. But, what if it were “the sound of ‘the sea’ within your body”? It may mean “basic nostalgia” that everyone has in the depth of their heart in common. It is, as it were, “unconscious community” whose existence you don’t realize.
It’s one of techniques for this album to explore and discover what you have within you, so this album also includes this “unconscious community” beyond our words and ideas. From emotions that everyone experiences, such as joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure, to love and self-hatred, to “defeat”. They are “feelings” separated from various situations that everyone experienced. I think this “unconscious community” is the reason why lots of people synchronize with his world, using their memories or feelings aroused by this work as catalysts.
He reminds us of what we usually tend to overlook because they are basic. This community, a little bond with others, may be one of things that uphold him. And, as music is eternal yet momentary, I think this work also inculdes “eternity” that transcends a very long time ago when the sound of the sea still lasts even if human beings stop existing.
