Summer Collage

From a Russian film I can't remember

Digging around for interviews with Paul Auster this morning, I stumbled across a reading by Priscilla Becker (poet, Brooklyn) in The Paris Review. You can listen to the entire thing here, but it inspired me to make a little summery sound collage using Becker's awkward lovely voice and an old Bert Jansch instrumental.

Blue Statuary

by Priscilla Becker

The songs wore out; they rusted
the radio. The singers began to die.
I left my toenails at the beach, hoping
they would grow another body.
I would return with a better,
more expressive face.

I loved it when you said my name.
When you didn’t, I listened
to the sounds the world made.
The trees especially injured me,
though they wouldn’t have known.
When the wind arrives, it upsets them.

I would return with sand in my hair.
The silence, I expected.

Liv Ullman in Utvandrarna