Thursday, October 14
In my review of William Basinski's epic, four-CD masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, I noted that the Brooklyn-based artist was completing the work (which was culled from disintegrating metallic tape that disappeared as he played it) on or around September 11, 2001. When the towers fell, he and some friends went up to the roof of his building and played this music while watching the clouds of smoke shroud the city. This story, while true, seemed implausible. But here's proof: a brand new DVD recorded at Basinski's place on 9/11. It's one full hour of a stationary camera watching the clouds billow over lower Manhattan on the evening of that day, accompanied by part 1.1 of Loops (the most elegiac of the pieces, in my opinion). The sun has already set, and the clouds of smoke (which cover half the screen) are slowly merging with the darkness. In the foreground, random people can be seen shuffling about, and a few buildings are visible. That's it. But those clouds and that sky! The colors shift and fluctuate with every passing moment. At one point, the remaining natural light gets sucked into the smoke, turning the edges red, like the fireballs that were, no doubt, still consuming the buildings. As the sky grows dark and the city lights begin to burn, the clouds take on an even more sinister form, like shadows ready to envelop the last embers of life. And, yes, I’m getting lyrical and sentimental, but I think this work deserves such words. This is, at once, an historical record of the most significant day in recent memory, a beautiful elegy to the people who died in those attacks and in all the wars that followed, and a perfectly realized visualization of some of the most beautiful music created in this century.
