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I’m a believer in Fate, so, a Speakers-enhanced slice of raw fact: Nothing Happened
“…when you’re 17 in a dead town.”
When I’m not making my noises, I write stories. Some go somewhere, some don’t. This doesn’t. But it came to me fully formed yesterday, a vivid memory of something which I actually experienced, back some time in the 80s, driving through rust belt towns way off the tourist trail in the South and Midwest, USA, until the discomfort and sense of threat of being two obviously Gay men who were ‘not from around here, are you Bud?’ got too much for us, and we retreated from the ‘flyover’ states back to our metrosexual coastal comfort zones again. It was bad enough in Reagan and Bush #1’s America. I can’t imagine going back there now. A beautiful country. A difficult place, for people like me. For one thing, I’d be risking arrest every time I needed a restroom. And at my age, that’s often…
I felt compelled to write it out, and do some kind of setting to get it out there, some fragment shored against my ruin. This is the full text of it, if anyone is interested:
_We arrived in the town mid morning, in the rain. A forgotten sort of place. Post industrial. Lots of empty warehousing down by the lake. Exposed red brick. Blank holes of broken windows.
I think it had been a logging town once. Mist hung over the lake and the town, making everything grey and cold.
We parked the rental in an abandoned lot, and tried to find a diner or coffeeshop to get a late breakfast in. No luck. The only places we found had shuttered years ago. The streets were empty, to an almost eerie degree.
We thought about getting back in the car, and driving on to the next speck on our tourist map of the state, but then we saw the sign pointing up to the hills above the town. Civil War fort, it said.
Well, this was supposed to be a Civil War tour of the region, wasn't it?
So we left the car in the lot, and climbed the steep hill out of town, passing decaying Victorian clapboard shapes which went from rowhouse to mansion as we ascended.
It didn't take long, it wasn't that big of a place.
As the last crumbling mansion fell away behind us, we crested the hill, and exited the town limits.
Above, a series of gently tumbling bluffs were crowned by the stark, angular, strangely futuristic glacis of a concrete fortification, which glowered over the little town and its once important harbour.
As we got closer, we saw the blank grey walls of the place, scratched and graffitied by generations of bored local youths. A litter of old Budweiser beer cans and roach stubs and soda bottles, the burned patches in the grass left by discarded barbeque trays, and from the gaping blackness of the doorless entrances, the smell of urine, mould and faeces. How to have a party, when you are seventeen in a dead town.
We'd brought torches, so we spent an hour clambering around, on, in, the vast concrete blockhouses, the spooky echoing tunnels, peering out the frowning gunslits over the mist bound bay. It was scary in a silly kids-playing-grown up kind of way, reminding us of our own teen years.
We both froze in sudden shock when a distant iron door somewhere in the dark complex clanged once. Someone else in here with us? An unexpectedly powerful gust of wind? A coincidence of gravity?
We both laughed nervously at our own fears, pretended it was nothing. But still.
The spooky/fun equation seemed now tipped more to 'spooky' than 'fun'. Suddenly acutely aware of our status as gay men in a state whose farmers sometimes were angry enough to paint 'God Hates Fags' in blood red letters on one hundred foot high grain silos , topped with fluttering flags; of our own impermanence in this relic of another time. Silly, frivolous foreigners passing through a place that no one knew we were at in the first place. The rental a mile or so away behind us. No firm booking for the night to come, and a couple of trackless days on the road, also, already behind us. We knew we could just - ‘disappear’ - in this forgotten country, of fag haters, and serial killers, and gun owners, and disinterested, incompetent local cops.
It wasn't a place to have an imagination in.
So we got back out of the concrete fort, a little more quickly than we had ventured in, and if either of us was walking faster as we headed back down the hill the other didn't mention it.
Getting back into the suitcase-crammed cheap little compact, the doors shutting with tinny clunks, felt like some kind of relief.
The sense of foreboding that had come upon us when the distant door clanged in that fort stayed with us, until we got back on the interstate.
A few miles later and: "Look!" we both said at once, pointing, then laughed at our own unacknowledged sense of relief at leaving the grim, grey little town behind. "There's a Denny's in two miles!"
And so nothing happened that day, except a late breakfast. Nothing at all.
Not ‘that’ day._
Comments
I enjoyed listening to and reading this memory and could picture a boring, dying place with underlying menace. What did you use for the reverb siren and the slightly dirty guitar if you don’t mind (and if those lackluster descriptions suffice)?Those sounds jumped right out at me. Thank you
@myapologies : Yep, it was definitely a spooky, strange vibe. Didn’t help that earlier the same trip we passed through Milwaukee the day after the Jeffrey Dahmer story broke. Huh - I just realised that lets me date it precisely. Not the 1980s, but the week of July 21st, 1991. (The day Dahmer was arrested.)
All the musical backing is assembled from different Blocs Wave loop packs, manually triggered along with the AI vocal, from the free tier of the Natural Reader app, which I screen capped then sliced up into multiple manual triggerable sections in Koala. Fed through a telephone-like setting of Speakers, with some eq tweaking, and Toneboosters Reverb. A little light Envolver action courtesy of @wim’s expert advice, though I feel I need to experiment more with that to get the best out of it.
Can't listen (403 error) but what a great read, Irena!
Huh, weird. I just tested it here, seems to be working fine for me. Thanks for mentioning it though. And thanks for reading the wall of text! Glad you liked it.
This is a masterful piece of work @Svetlovska.
The relentless music, the flat narration, the foreboding sense of dread.
It’s positively Lynchian.
@rottencat : Thank you! I sort of had him in mind, actually, the atmosphere of post industrial dread of Eraserhead was the nearest touchstone I had for making sense of that place. ‘Lynchian’ music (his own, and that of collaborators associated with his work) has long been a favourite of mine. And that town was something straight out of one of his movies, or perhaps one of Steven King’s novels.
The UK has its fair share of down at heel towns of course, (some of those in the Welsh valleys, perhaps, spring to mind). But travelling in the US, seeing the absolute geographical isolation of some of those ‘rust belt’ places, the abject, beyond third world levels of poverty that can go along with it, weirdly juxtaposed with often staggering natural beauty, (the Appalachians, oh my!) was a whole other thing.
That entire tradition of movies which just don’t make sense translated to the context of a crowded little island like the UK, the thought that whole communities could plausibly lapse into cults, cannibalism, and worse, out there somewhere in the swamps, or forests, deserts, or mountains, only makes sense in the context of the vastness of the US, I think.
I can’t say as I exactly enjoyed experiences like that town, and other moments like it, - the two horse town ‘Everglades City’ I stayed in; a survivalist army surplus store in the desert town of Barstow mid way between LA and Vegas, with a half track sprayed with the legend ‘looter shooter’ parked outside, and a proprietor who openly wore a 45 in a shoulder holster; a roach infested hotel room lit by dim 40 watt bulbs where I shared a lift down to breakfast with a body on a gurney brought out from the room next to mine; ; a bar I visited in the wrong part of Chicago once, where you could drink all night for free if you agreed to be handcuffed to the bar, though there was no guarantee that what you would be drinking was beer; the creepy motel owner in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of a hurricane, who asked me as I checked in “Anyone know you’re here?”… these all left indelible impressions on me.
Glad I have those memories. Not keen now to make new ones of a similar ilk.
A now-deceased friend of mine, who was a legit, straight up frigging polar explorer, amongst other things, once told me that a journey only counts as really travelling once you have a near death experience along the way…
Working for me fine on my iPad now (wasn’t working on my android phone earlier for some reason), and sounds great - I kind of wish in the audio version that the vocal was a bit louder. Did you use an AI for that btw?
The sung vocal that comes in around 1 min 48, and again periodically from there, is SUBLIME! Where does that come from? And the vibe keeps going from there. It also definitely has an American vibe too. And Lynch for sure. The guitars are perfect.
Your stuff keeps getting better and better Irena. About time you started reaching out to some labels, methinks!
I don’t listen to the majority of the Creations on here, but I think your sound has developed sooo much in the last few years, more than anyone else here I can think of.
I already liked it back then, but your recent stuff is definitely up in quality from then, at least in terms of sophistication if not vibe, by orders of magnitude. The accompanying texts just add so much too.
One constructive criticism: the fade-out at the end is far too abrupt! But otherwise, great great work! You’re making amazing use of your retirement, your apps, your hardware. Major kudos!
Always interesting getting a visitor’s perspective on our country, both negative and positive. Might I ask what it was you were hoping to see or find in those locations? Barstow isn’t exactly a glamorous location known for its sights, for one thing.
And you unfortunately seem to have a poor impression about armed people in the U.S. If someone is walking around strapped, I never have a problem with them. They’re trained and responsible. It’s street tweakers and mentally ill these days (who seem to be everywhere in my State these days) who make me nervous. You never know what they might suddenly do.
Anyway, as always an interesting story!
Very good, all of it. You have become extremely productive lately, and I the exact opposite - for some time now (I do create, every day, I just can't put things together .. into a finished product ).
I can go for weeks or months only making snippets of songs in the pursuit of new ideas, then suddenly I’ll start coalescing things into complete pieces, one after another. I’ve just learned to let things happen however they do and not worry about it.
Beautifully done @Svetlovska. My favorite of yours so far.
I’m loving the Speakers app, good to hear others using it.
Mind my asking what town you were in?
You mentioned Milwaukee and I’m a short drive from there in northern Illinois.
Your description of that town could be so many places, just wondering if I know it.
Hi,@Ben, you know, I can’t. We were on our way from Chicago, travelling North I think, more or less heading round the shore line to a place called Door County, Lake Michigan, just to see what was there. This town was in a steep sided valley with a river which made its way down to the lake, a literal one road in/same road out kind of place we had detoured to just because it was on the lake. It was very run down, almost a ghost town. I think we got spooked by the emptiness of the place as much as anything else. There are plenty of rundown places in the UK, but you still see people moving around. Not there, not then. Especially as the news on the radio then was all about cannibal killer Dahmer…
@NeuM : I think what we got to see is exactly what we wanted to see, even if it was scary and unsettling to experience at the time: the kind of odd, out of kilter, off the tourist track US my warped gothic tastes and fandom toward moviemakers like David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, Tobe Hooper, inclined me towards.
I was at that time a very frequent visitor to the states, at first on my journalist visa, later, after I joined the job, as an off duty cop. Declaring myself as a Brit cop, and flashing my warrant card, got me out of a few anti-gay scenarios, since the kind of person who wanted to be a homophobe also seemed to have an exaggerated respect for law enforcement, even foreign law enforcement. Still, being a gay man at that time, travelling around Southern and Midwestern states in company with a fairly effeminate partner, the 100 foot grain silo ‘God Hates Fags’ signs and preponderance of visible firearms when all I had was harsh language and a condescending way with Brit sarcasm to offer in riposte made for a fairly threatening vibe sometimes…
You have to understand I come from a country where even most cops are not armed, let alone storekeepers, and his open carry, the 45 very ostentatiously visible in a rig that put the pistol over his chest, not in his armpit, was from my perspective, as a visitor to the tough town where Tarantino shot the exteriors for From Dusk To Dawn, very weird indeed.
Almost as weird in fact as his clientele, composed it seemed of the kind of camo-wearing dangerous-loner desert rats who trucked to his store from their deep desert compounds on 4x4 all wheel drive dirt bikes, to stock up on MREs and ammo. I say this, because as it happened, my deceased polar explorer friend had spent several years living in a tin shack right out there amongst them, with only a stray wild dog for company, and knew the store well when I mentioned it to her. It had been her ‘local’ store too. She was autistic, and preferred to live in situations where, as she explained it to me, she could see anyone coming to visit her from several miles away, which gave her time to prepare…
I think this meant she fit right in.
@Pxlhg : thank you! And thanks for noticing. I have had a bit of a purple patch lately. I probably need to calm down…
@Gavinski : aw shucks, you say the sweetest things!
Seriously, though, thank you. I take your point about the volume thing, I need to get to grips with ducking more I think, and the fast fade… yes, it’s part of the problem of trying to hit everything manually while the live mix down is running, coz no automation. Especially since Blocs Wave opens full screen, obscuring Koala. I may need to consider a two iPad solution… Yes, if it was in a DAW it would be an easy tweak, but this is high stakes all or nothing on a single stereo mix on a single iPad, so if I get even close to nailing it, it’s kind of a result. I need to refine this process some more, I think.
I’d like to claim I was some kind of producer genius re the vocal and guitar, but they are just loops, tweaked some, from different Blocs Wave packs, (also) manually triggered as part of the mix down. Still, they fit together, and fit the mood I was aiming for, so that’s okay, I guess?
As I mentioned above, the vocal is the free tier of the Natural Reader app, which offers five minutes of AI assisted text to speech audio a day. Just enough, as it turned out.
Either way, an interesting story well told.
Thank you!
A great piece Irena ! I really like your way of telling this story, even if nothing happened... THAT day... You left us wondering what terrible things happened other days...
I Would like to hear your voice a bit louder, it seems beautiful. Hope you'll make more like this, it is always a pleasure to read you, but having you reading us your story is an even more enjoyable experience.
Some great cinematographic references you mentioned in the comments... especially Lynch, Wenders and Jarmusch ❤️.
BTW...Microsoft Edge can read articles to you, and the default British English female voice is quite high quality. No limit to how much you can use it. This, combined with the new Bing Chat AI integration has made Microsoft Edge my new default browser. Was a chrome fan for years, but no longer!
Actually you can 'speak' any text selection in any app on the iPad by enabling 'speak selection' in the accessibility settings.
(This is 'Samantha' voice).
Yes… no. I’m looking for better quality than the iPad default speech offers. The latest gen AI voices make a better job of natural phrasing. Not quite there yet, but getting there. I tweaked the Natural Reader one I chose by slowing it slightly, and shifting the pitch down a couple of semi tones, and I quite liked it. Still some odd phrasing, but creative use of punctuation, and using Koala to insert my own pauses helps. Still waiting for the one time purchase, pitch and phrase editable super tool, but until then, the experiments continue…
I’m going to assemble my speech pieces into a Bandcamp album shortly. This one:
They are perhaps closer to sprechstimme than sprechgesang, but I like the latter word better, it seems more immediately comprehensible in English, even if Schoenberg’s 1912 definition of the former is closer to the spirit of it:
“ The goal is certainly not at all a realistic, natural speech. On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and speech that collaborates in a musical form must be made plain. But it should not call singing to mind, either."
I think I can manage that…
Apparently the speech will be improved in iPadOS17 so that'll be fun to check out when it drops.
One thing I look forward to is to creating my own 'custom voice'(based on my voice) so I can use it to speak/read anything.
But yes, there are better voices out there but it's still quite easy to spot the AI voices when compared to a 'real' person.
I’m fine with the uncanny valley in general terms. The dissociative flatness actually works with my material, I think. I just want a little more control over rising and falling intonations, pauses, and emphasis.
That would need a specialized app but as far as I know the iOS/macOS speech engine is capable of modifying pitch and other speech related parameters on the fly but we don't have any apps that currently exploits those features from what I know.
(Ie. it should in theory be possible to make an app where the speech synthesis follows midi-notes in time).
Yep, well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and see what comes down the pipe the next couple of years.
Nice! Didn't know that Samu 👍
Yeah, really looking forward to seeing what those custom voices are like. Currently there are some paid services offering that, but the good ones are crazy expensive and the cheap ones I demoed were trash
That was superb, great story, music etc.
I also think you’re in an incredibly productive and creative period at the moment. Long may it last 🙏
Great atmosphere and story here. And I concur re the Lynchiness. The kind of place that’s OK in a movie, but I really wouldn’t want to visit!