Words and Silences - Brian Harnetty (2022)
In terms of the media I consume, I am a surface-scratcher.
I read, watch, and listen to a little bit of everything. I’m interested in so many different threads, especially in music, that I have a hard time just sitting with something and really diving deep. I premised this listen-a-day project I do on the idea that I was going to do that anyway, so I might as well try to weave it into something lasting.
When I was younger, I’d get into months-long grooves where I’d only listen to one artist, and learn as much as I could about them. I’d get out of that phase, but I’d retain an appreciation of that artist and cache of new favorite tunes even after I’d long stopped paying close attention to them.
That’s gotten harder as I’ve gotten older, partly because I keep finding new threads to pick up and partly because I already have so many of those old favorites. These two converging functions leave me in a sort of fugue state where I can’t get in depth on an artist’s music the way I used to.
Even Bob Dylan, an obsession of mine since I was maybe 16 years old, gets shoved aside for months or even years between stretches when I really dive into his music. I’m leery around huge catalogs of things I haven’t explored yet because I can see how easily I’d get sucked down that rabbithole. Not that this would be a bad thing; but I think about how much other stuff I’d be giving up if I suddenly went to an all-Zappa-all-the-time or an all-Tropicalia-all-the-time diet and I can’t quite commit to that.
So here we have a very small scale project by a guy I’d never heard of Harnetty got into that pocket of uninterrupted interest in the work of Thomas Merton. Merton was a monk who wrote poetry and essays on a wide range of topics. I’ve come across him before in my reading but never in this much depth.
In 1967, Merton was living the isolated life of a hermit. Part of his daily routine was to record himself with an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. He used the sessions to speak about his life’s work in calmly observing and making sense of the madness of life, as well as commentary on things he was reading.
Harnetty uses these tapes, and Merton’s general outlook on calm observation and presence, and builds a wonderful set of chamber music that is so glassy smooth you feel like you could skip stones off of it.
One version of the record features Harnetty’s music along with the Merton recordings that inspired them. It’s the most pleasant and mind-expanding audiobook sort of experience I’ve heard, I think, and I’ve hear a bunch of such stuff.
The second version is the instrumentals without the 1967 spoken recordings. This one is a lovely companion piece that shows off the clever space and openness Harnetty brings to the project.
I could probably spend weeks listening to both versions of this. I don’t suppose I will. But it was a breath of fresh for me, a reminder that there’s so much beauty out there just waiting to be experienced.
