Oir by Luisa A. Igloria
This new videopoem by Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, is one of his best, I think. Somehow the poem and reading by Luisa A. Igloria are just a perfect fit with the images and music.
As with his previous collaboration with Luisa, Mortal Ghazal, Marc has blogged some process notes incorporating remarks from Luisa. 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.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.