Hearing the Archive, Land, and Memory with Brian Harnetty

On this episode, meet Brian Harnetty, an interdisciplinary sound artist, composer, and author.

Brian is known for his archival recording projects, socially-engaged works, sound & video installations, live performances, and writings, including his book, Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives (University of North Carolina Press, 2025).

Brian works with sound archives and the communities connected to them, creating projects that are centered on place and listening. This conversation dwells on many of these projects, including his recent recording Words and Silences, which is a musical portrait of Kentucky monk and writer Thomas Merton that combines archival recordings of Merton's voice with newly composed music.

Since 2010, many of Harnetty’s projects have brought together myth, history, ecology, and economy in Appalachian Ohio, informed by his family's roots there. Brian has released 10 albums and EPs, and his installations have been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, two Map Fund awards, and the Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially-Engaged Art, among many other honors.

Resources

• Episode transcript
• Episode webpage
• From Brian:
  • Brian's website
  • Sound is Magic Substack & podcast
  • Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives (University of North Carolina Press, 2025)
  • Shawnee, Ohio (2021)
  • Words and Silences (2022)
    • “Who Is This I?”
  • The Workbench (2024)
• Lewis Hyde, The Gift (1983)
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance (2024)
• Mallory Catlett & Aaron Landsman, The City We Make Together (2022)

We are grateful to folks across the country who have made tax-deductible contributions to Art of the Rural to make this conversation possible, and to the Ford Foundation and Good Chaos Foundation for their support of Art of the Rural’s media programs.

Transcript

Episode Introduction

Brian Harnetty: It is very complex in trying to figure out what senses of place mean for me, but to make sure that I'm not saying this is what everyone else's experience is as well. I don't feel like I'm a spokesperson or an expert, and in fact, I spend most of my time listening to others.

Matthew Fluharty: Today's guest is Brian Harnetty, an interdisciplinary sound artist, composer, and author. Brian is known for his recording projects with archives, socially-engaged works, sound & video installations, live performances, and writings, including his book, Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives, which was published in 2025 by University of North Carolina Press.

Brian works with sound archives in the communities connected to them, creating projects that are centered on place and listening. Our conversation dwells on many of these projects, including his recent recording Words and Silences, which is a musical portrait of Kentucky monk and writer Thomas Merton that combines archival recordings of Merton's voice with newly composed music.

Since 2010, many of Harnetty’s projects have brought together myth, history, ecology, and economy in Appalachian Ohio, informed by his family's roots there. Brian has released 10 albums and EPs, and his installations have been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. He's a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, two Map Fund awards, and the Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially-Engaged Art and contemplative practices among many other honors.

Brian brings such a reflective depth and a range of cultural connections to this conversation, a quality that mirrors what makes his sound work so unique. That we encounter creative leaps and new ways of composing that are deeply and authentically tethered to the land, histories, and experiences of his region.

This is what powers his new book, Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives. It's a book that I confidently feel will become a touchstone in the music field, but also closer to home. It's a book I wish was available to me in my early twenties as I was trying to balance my own rural cultural heritage and lived experience with a larger arts field, which afforded little visibility and representation to those foundations. Noisy Memory offers a robust articulation of Brian's journey, and I'm excited and grateful for how it will provide inspiration and ballast to many folks at various stages of their own artistic practice. So without further ado, please sit back, get comfortable, and enjoy this conversation with Brian Harnetty.

Interview

Matthew: Brian, thanks so much for your time and congratulations on the publication of Noisy Memory. 

Brian: Thanks for having me here. Yeah. 

Matthew: It's, it's a real pleasure and I have been so deeply enjoying the process of reading the book and listening to its companion podcast and also spending time with your Substack Sound is Magic, and I've been appreciating how across these different platforms, you've so intentionally offered a range of ways for listeners to kind of wander into these recordings and the artistic inter relational process that's really at the heart of the work.

You know, the book Noisy Memory has been an invaluable companion to a body of music writing and installation work that really, to my mind, occupies a singular place in the contemporary rural arts field as it brings music composition. And what you call archival stewardship, which I would love to talk about in the course of this conversation.

Sure. Towards creating an embodied and sustained awareness of the tethers of family history and land in rural communities. And I think really importantly, doing so without either nostalgia or pretension and doing so in a way that creates work that's with people and not about them. And I know in a moment I would really just love to ask you about Perry County and Appalachian, Ohio, but I'm curious as a way to kind of begin the conversation, how you frame the story of your creative journey up to that point.

You know, what kinds of artists, places, or pieces laid in early groundwork towards that engagement in Appalachian, Ohio. 

Brian: Thank you for that. You know, wonderful summary there of the work. That's a, a big question. I think, you know, if I go all the way back to my childhood, I mean, I, I, I didn't grow up in Appalachian, Ohio, but both my parents' families are from there.

And I grew up near Columbus, Ohio in a small town called Westerville. Those memories and experiences of driving to visit my grandparents my grandfather had a apple orchard, you know and those, those early memories are perhaps the first memories that I've ever had have. And, and, you know, visiting the orchard and, and climbing the trees and helping out and, you know, riding the tractor and all that stuff, it, it really made a mark on me.

And the landscape itself also made a mark on me. And so I think I've sort of carried those with me throughout my life, wherever I am. Then as a kid, you know, I took piano lessons and, and got really interested in music. And that followed down the classical route for many years. But after that, I had gone away to United Kingdom and studied there music composition.

But there was some sort of, all I can say is like a story or an idea that kept gnawing away at me. And I think it was rooted in those experiences, those childhood experiences of visiting, you know, like my grandparents in, in Appalachia. I decided to come back home to Ohio and really focus on local issues and family related stories and senses of place.

And over the past 25 years since then, every time that I've wanted to move away or do something different, I've sort of, you know, had a think about it and then doubled down again on these, these local issues. That has, you know, made me move in all of these directions that I wouldn't normally have had.

I stayed in a, a large city, but I think it's actually contributed to the work that I do and, and made it. And probably me more interesting in a way just because I'm following that instinct of family and place and the curiosity about it. And that's often in, you know, rural places and creating a body of work around around those, those places.

So it, it really felt like I was taking a lot of left turns, but then looking at it in retrospect, you know, all these years later, I'm like, oh, oh yeah, of course this makes sense. 

Matthew: An artistic practice as a history of left turns. 

Brian: That's right. Yeah. I mean, I was told again and again that, you know, in order to be a composer in particular, but I think this is probably a rule that a lot of artists follow, is that you, you pretty much have to be in a large cultural center in order to network with people and learn what's happening in the moment, in the zeitgeist or whatever.

And so I was just told over and over again that in order to be successful, you, you have to be in a big city. Part of me still believes that. I mean, I understand just the practicality of it, but then another part of me was just like, you know, well, I'll just go in the opposite direction. It's gotta be possible.

And that has led to all of these really interesting and very valuable friendships and interactions and experiences that I don't think I otherwise would've had. 

Matthew: I think about those, those left hand turns and like that pull between sort of non-urban place and the cultural center. You know, whether we, whether we feel it or not, sometimes there is a zeitgeist that's in the butter turner, you know, that's being turned.

And, and I, I think it's interesting even from the perspective of thinking about kind of the family lineage, you know, that is within you and your family it tells a story of rural diaspora, I think, of movement, you know, and I think, you know, if we're talking about white folks and, and settlers, that family history is necessarily a history of movement.

And, and I, I guess I say that, you know, because I think you're alluding to this in what you just shared. I think you're many things. One of them is an a contemporary rural artist. And I think sometimes when people hear those words together, there's like a sound of a computer not computing something. What I feel is so important feels like so true.

And I think this comes out really powerfully in Noisy Memory is how as an how as an artist, you're grappling with the family history that is rural, that is about rural migration and that it is about sort of leaving in return and, and the way that these, these aren't linear, you know, these are circles that circle back on each other.

So that's something I, I just really appreciate as a way into like a lot of the work that we're gonna talk about. I think the complexity of that identity, it feels like it informs the 

Brian: work it does and it's even, I'll have to put up like a very important distinction here that makes it even more complex.

I is the fact that I mean. These rural places are the subject of my work. But I actually I mean, like I always thought about Wendell Berry for example, and how he talked about, you know, the places around him are the subject of his work and he lives in that place. But for me, I, I don't live there. I'm in Columbus, Ohio, which is about an hour north of the region that I do most of my work in.

And it creates this really interesting dynamic where I am somewhere in between an insider because of my family connections and the friendships that I developed and an outsider because I am, you know, commuting back and forth. I'm still participating in the community, but I don't actually have that experience of living there.

Which I think is a very different and important thing. And so I always feel like I need to like say that. But to get back to what, what you're saying, it is very complex in trying to figure out what senses of place mean for me, but to make sure that I'm not saying this is what everyone else's experience is as well.

I don't feel like I'm a spokesperson or an expert, and in fact, I spend most of my time listening to others. And I, I think that's because of this insider outsider position where I'm moving back and forth between, between the two. Anyway, that's so, so that's very much what frames all of my decisions around the work.

You know, how I record other people how I use that material, which archival materials that I access, getting permission and letting everything flow out of the social part of it, the relationships and friendships and, and letting those things dictate the work. 

Matthew: I think that's a really important thought that you're underscoring there in that that tension, that insider outsider tension can be deeply generative, you know, as, as opposed to, I think sometimes when, you know, those of us who work outside of urban areas.

I think there's a sense sometimes that, that there needs to be this sort of straight jacket of authenticity for talking about rural places. Right. What I kind of wonder in terms of what you just shared is, you know, do, do those qualities of insider and outsider, I mean, do they help inform this notion of archival stewardship that you write so beautifully about in the book?

Brian: I, I think at its heart it's really about, I, I actually, I think this is what an artist does. A part of what, you know, an artist can do really well, I should say, is to hold that tension to hold both the ugly and beautiful things, the very difficult and aesthetically pleasing things, you know, all together.

At the same time, when I think about the community that I work with. In Appalachian, Ohio. You know, there are a lot of stereotypes that have been, you know, bandied about for years and decades, and so it's part of what I do is push back on those stereotypes, you know, of, you know, everyone is, you know, homogenous, backwards, that kind of stuff.

And to really use my skills as a storyteller and as a musician and as, as a writer, to push back on those things. At the same time, you know, I don't want to create like a completely rosy or nostalgic picture of, of these places because they have their own difficulties, economic difficulties, environmental degradation, like all of these, you know, really important things that need to be worked on.

But I just don't want that to be the only thing. It's, it's to present a picture that helps others see how rich and complex and human, these communities of people are. 

Matthew: This feels like a really beautiful bridge. Into spending some time talking about your piece and your really deep engagement in Perry County, Ohio and the composition Shawnee, Ohio.

I really love this thing you shared at Creative Capital a number of years ago when you were talking about the project, and I really resonated with me. You said, at the heart of my practice are two principles, the transformative power of listening and a commitment to place as a radical act of connection and accountability to a community.

And immediately, I mean, what, what I love about your work and your practice is that it is truly interdisciplinary. I can hear in that that's something that connect. To someone doing mural work, someone doing like radical oral history work, someone doing social engaged installations. It's shines a real light for how as, as artists and cultural workers working beyond the city, we might kind of orient ourselves to these questions and these kind of community situations you're raising.

And it is kind of a big question, but like, I'm just interested if this is a way to kind of step more deeply into this space and your time in Appalachian, Ohio and, and how that work of Shawnee, Ohio came about. 

Brian: Yeah, I think, and I think this, again, this is something that you are all too familiar with or perhaps more familiar with than I am.

One of the things I'm really interested is the idea of time and the, like, the amount of time one spends on a project and I think out of necessity, you know, many different artists that are doing these sort of socially engaged projects or residencies or, you know, in places can only dedicate, you know, a couple weeks or a couple of months to something.

I kept questioning that and thinking like, well, what would happen if I spent a year or five years, or 10 years? Or what if I thought of this project as being a lifelong project? How does that change my perspective? On, on the entire thing? So basically I started a PhD program in 2010. Before that, I had been working in Appalachia and Kentucky and various other places working with archival materials.

And I had learned a lot about the ethical questions of reusing and sampling materials. And what happened here was a desire to apply some of those, those lessons and to learn more to the places where my family was from. I went to Ohio University, which is in Athens, Ohio. It seemed like a really logical place to go.

Because of its proximity to, you know, southeastern Appalachian, Ohio being in the middle of it, and to the places where my, my family was from in Perry County. So I started that program. I learned a lot about ethnographic techniques, about the idea of deeply hanging out with a group of people over a long period of time, participating, observing and then, you know, eventually making field recordings or asking them about oral histories that might have already happened or conducting my own.

All of these things just take a lot of time to essentially to build up trust and a comfortableness between myself and community members. By the time I finished that program in 20 14, 20 15, I was very eager to get back to my creative work and the project, Shawnee, Ohio came out directly from that. It was as if I had been working on getting like a toolkit of.

Not just theory, but actually just practical ways of, of working with people. And then trying to figure out how to apply that to the music that I wrote and my own creative practice. And what I found was like having some sort of hybrid between the two where I considered, you know, the, the community that I worked with, a, as a co-creator.

Then I realized that they were helping me choose photographs and film. They were sharing, you know, recordings that they made of their families. They were very much informing what I chose as far as material. And then I would make something and then bring it back and share it with them. And then they were informing my decisions about the music itself.

So it created like this really, you know to my mind a productive and important symbiotic relationship between us that the creativity's flowing back and forth, the information, the story, the histories and along the way the community members were, you know. Learning over time that I wasn't going to like, just take stuff from them and then disappear.

That I was going to, you know, do everything I could to honor what, what they had offered me, and then to offer something back that showed a certain amount of respect back to them. Now, it doesn't mean that I'm doing exactly what they tell me to do. There's another tension there where I have my own creative identity and interests.

And so it was navigating those tensions between the two things that became at the heart of the, of the work. And to me, it just, it just completely transformed the way that I work. Because I was no longer in a vacuum. I, or I realized that I was no longer in a vacuum, and that the archival materials that I was using, or the conversations that I was having were rooted in connection between humans.

And even though they may come out in a recording or a cassette tape or something like that. That connection is the whole reason that it, that it happened. 

Matthew: I'm wondering if we could talk about the Peace Boy from Shawnee, Ohio for a moment. 

Brian: Sure. Yeah, that's a great example. So on one of the days I was visiting the town of Shawnee, I met a man named John Winnenberg, who has since become a very close friend of mine.

And I asked him if he had any recordings and he said, hang on a second. And he went back into his back room and produced a box of cassette tapes, about 40 or so. He handed them to me and he was like, well, you take care of these. You'll probably do a better job than I, than I have. And you know, the tapes were probably 40 years old.

And to my mind I knew that, that they're at the end of their material life, like they needed to be digitally transferred. So I went, it took me, you know, quite a few months to digitally transfer everything. And I essentially was, you know, creating an archive out of these materials that, that he handed me.

One of the tapes was a, like a project that a bunch of school kids did where they were doing oral histories from their parents. And on this particular tape that I, I is in this piece, it's an anonymous boy, he's probably like 10 or 11 or so, it's early 1980s, I'm guessing. And he's recording, you know, his grandmother to learn about the olden days.

But being a kid, you know, he didn't really think about it. He took the tape recorder and he placed it next to him and you can't hear the answers from his grandmother. So all we hear are these open-ended questions, you know did you know anyone that died in the mines? Yeah. How many people. And then he, you know, very mundane questions too, like, you know, did you work on the farm?

Like, you know, those kinds of things. But what I loved about it in the end was that there was like this ghostlike quality where he's asking these questions. As a listener, I was trying to answer them myself. It really opened something up in my mind that an archival tape can do that, you know, out of a mistake.

Something really important came about. So then I decided to create music that would go along with it. The piece features Anna Roberts Galt, who is a wonderful banjo player and the ensemble that I was working with, which includes like a string quartet and some Woodward instruments, some piano and percussion.

And we created this piece that, you know, the music goes in and out and alongside the boy's voice, and it's those contrasts again between his, his own youthful, you know, sounding voice. Those very serious questions that we never get answers to. And the music that comes alongside of it that creates like this, you know, to my mind a sort of magical combination 

Matthew: out of that ethic, it comes this, this album of, I hesitate to say material 'cause that, that, that places an object to it on it.

But this collaboration you know, this hybrid that you describe Shawnee, Ohio, and it, the recording itself richly deserved, was really lauded nationally and internationally. And it really stands as an important, really important contemporary work far beyond simply the, the rural part of the field that we've been kind of meditating on.

What I love, and I think the Noisy Memory describes this so beautifully, is knowing the reception that this work has outside of the region of Appalachian, Ohio. You and the musicians, the ensemble, you all come back to Shawnee to perform the piece. And I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit about what that experience was like.

Brian: Sure. I mean, and I have to say that like this project then taught me a lot about the idea of brewing in on something very, very particular and specific, and then trusting that audiences elsewhere might find something in it that's more, I mean, I, I hesitate to use the word universal, but that's that more common every time that we've performed this piece elsewhere including Minnesota.

There was always someone that came up to me afterwards and was like, this is amazing. Like this really describes my own family as well. So I re I realized pretty early on in performing this parti piece in particular that I didn't need to worry so much that this is very, very specific in particular because other people will find something in it.

That they can connect with and identify With that being said we first performed this piece at an arts venue, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Which was wonderful. We did three performances and they were all, you know, met with a lot of, you know, enthusiasm from the audience. But I thought while I had the ensemble with me, we should go down to Shawnee and perform there as well.

There's an old theater there. This actually happens to be the same theater that my grandfather used to play in a hundred years ago. You know, we set up there was a potluck beforehand. Lots of great food and pies, and even just like a moment or two before we started playing, like the band was still like eating food and grabbing a beer or whatever, and it just, it just, it was like the environment that I've always dreamed of, you know, to perform in.

And the piece also has a lot of images, a lot of archival photographs and old film. What I found was that, as you know, half the town showed up to, to watch this thing was that the people were interacting with the, with the film and the music in real time. Like there wasn't like this reserved, you know, being, being silent the whole time.

That, that you would find like in a classical situation, it was like, oh my gosh, there's my grandfather. Or like, you know, I recognize that voice and I loved it. I mean, I loved every minute of it. And then afterwards we had a q and a that went on for a very long time. That was just wonderful because it became people telling the stories.

You know, I wish I could have recorded that, you know, from their, their own childhood or that a picture somehow, you know, reminded them of, of their own experiences as children. So yeah, that was kind of like an ideal. And then from there, all kinds of things happened in my mind. That was in 2016. And since then I've been doing socially engaged projects, which try to recapture that moment of listening to one another.

I've been doing them outside, you know, in rural places in Wayne National Forest outside of Shawnee, but really just working with local community members to, to listen to each other, to tell stories to listen to the place around them and find those moments of connection. But yeah, that was a very, a very magical moment.

Matthew: Did that moment then lead to you joining the local nonprofit in Shawnee as well? I'm just interested in like all of the elements of the prism that, that composed this life work. 

Brian: Yeah. Well, I, yes, with one caveat that when, you know, when I'm in the middle of it, I have no idea what I'm doing. Do you see like the choices that I've made have been, you know, partially on instinct and partially with, you know, informed?

Yeah. You and I are looking at this in retrospect, and it's just important to say that because I mean, I really was sort of blind the whole time and now I like appreciated those moments even more because I'm like, how did that happen? I didn't orchestrate it, it just, I just pushed into it and then there, there we were.

It was, it was like finding an extra room in your house. And, and it not being a, a freaky, scary thing, but like opening up this whole new wave of, of seeing. So yeah, it, shortly after that, I became an AmeriCorps volunteer in Shawnee. I thought of it as like an artist grant. I mean, I was doing volunteer work.

They do pay you. I mean, it's like, I think it, at the time it was like 12 or $13,000 for the year. So it's not a lot, but it, it was enough to like you know, pay for gas and, and moving back and forth and that kind of stuff. I, I really saw it as an opportunity to not only give something back, but, but to embed myself with a community over a longer, even longer period of time.

So it was, again, doubling down on that hunch, like, oh, if I just stick around a little bit longer, I bet some other nuance will come out. Or, you know, some, some new thing that would be really interesting. I don't know. There's this old, this might be a, a zen thing, but it's like, there's this old John Cage phrase where he is like, well, if you're listening to a piece of music for two minutes and you find it boring, well just listen on for another two minutes.

And then if it's still boring, you can listen for four and eight, you know, and so on. And eventually it'll become interesting. Mm-hmm. Well, here, you know, this is an often overlooked part of the country and even, you know, often overlooked locally within the state that for some reason piqued my curiosity.

I'm like, it can't possibly be, it's much richer than, than what it's giving credit for, or, you know, and so that, that instinct allowed me to really see a lot more than I think just a cursory look would, would give you. And it did really inform me of what not to do, I have to say, or what I did not want to do.

Which and then I, it's ever since then, I've taken great pains to, to really emphasize that, that I, I don't wanna make a lot of assumptions and, and to play into the stereotypes. I also don't, I don't want to be a spokesperson because that's not my role, you know, so it's, it, it, ironically, very much helped me to identify what I needed to do and what I absolutely did not need to do.

Matthew: I mean, it's, it's a really subtle space, like the space that you're articulating Yeah. Right there. Yeah. And folks know when they're being manipulated, they also know when they're being condescended to, 

Brian: right. You know, that's, that's right. Yeah. And it's just, it's just not my place. Yeah. 

Matthew: Okay. Brian, so you have, you mentioned Zen a second ago, so I'm wondering if this is like an opportunity to kinda skip, skip the stone, like across the Ohio River and Head South.

A little ways from Shawnee. To Thomas Merton's Hermitage. 

Brian: Yeah, sure. 

Matthew: You know, you know, and I think this is important because we're talking about this really deep durational work in Appalachian, Ohio, but so much work can have so many values and in this work, with this engagement over what I understand, at least to be a smaller set of years feels really important.

I think there's a window here for talking about, you know, zen and contemplative practice, just to, you know, I'm just really curious about Words and Silences as a, as a project. I mean, just like, almost initially, just in terms of like, what led you to investigate Thomas Merton's archive in the first place?

Like what was that, the kind of breadcrumb trail? 

Brian: Well, I'll, I'll just say very briefly in case you don't, you know, others might not know. It's, the project is called Words and Silences. It's an album based on the audio archives of Thomas Merton, who was a Cistercian or Trappist monk, Catholic monk who lived in Kentucky.

And I think he died in 1968. He was a very well-known writer. And then later in his life, he became a bit of an activist as well through his writing and just a very beloved person and and writer. And the music that I made was influenced by, you know, the music that he listened to. Again, I have my own sort of like chamber ensemble and video, and we're like playing live with it.

So that's the project. My history with this one is much longer actually. When I was a teenager I began reading Thomas Merton's books, as did many other people, I'm sure. And for me it was I should probably back up even more. I grew up in a, in a very Catholic household, and my mother was very much a contemplative person.

She was a lay Carmelite mystic. She was very interested in the works of St. John of the Cross and, and Teresa of Ávila. And she maintained her own contemplative practice throughout her life, her entire life. And so I drew a lot of inspiration from her. And yet, when I was a teenager and into my twenties, I was struggling a lot with Catholicism.

And Merton actually gave me a way to open up to the world. One of the things I was interested in was the dialogue between different religions and spiritual practices and contemplative practices. And here he was giving language to that and a curiosity and an openness that was not rooted in judgment or anything like that.

It was, it was really about an intellectual exercise and a spiritual exercise and just sort of very deeply human trying to, trying to understand and figure it out. I approached his work that way. And then many years later, my late forties, I, you know, a lot had happened in my life and I started to think about those Merton books and, and how much they influenced me.

So I went back and was reading a lot of them in particular, his journals, which were very influential for me. And I just kept hearing like his voice in, in my head. And it just really made me think like, well, maybe there are recordings. I mean, I knew that there were recordings of him teaching and I really didn't respond to those very much.

They felt didactic and, you know, it sounded like someone teaching. So I traveled to Louisville and visited Bellarmine College, the archives there. After talking with the archivists there for quite a while about what I was interested in, he was like, well, there is this extra set of tapes that have not been published.

And that might be what you're looking for. And the story behind them was that another monk brother Paul Quinnan, who since then I've, you know, come to know handed Merton, a reel to reel tape recorder. This would've been really towards the end of his life. It's 19 67, 19 68. So really late. And he gave him this tape recorder and said, see what you can make of it.

So Merton took this recorder back to his Hermitage, where he lived in silence and, and in solitude, and started to record himself. And from the very first second of the very first recording I was in it, this was a completely different voice. This was the voice of his journals and, and, and not of his books, not of him teaching.

This was just extremely intimate and uncertain and curious and in ways that I had never heard before. And that, for me, became the roots of, of the project. That 

Matthew: that was something that, like a continuity, I really felt, you know, in listening to those pieces is that there is this really uncanny quality to merton's journals.

I, 'cause I have a number of these books and I'm by no means an expert in Merton, but they have this power where you can simply pick up one of his books of journals or even like the letters and just flip to a page and you're in a space with him. There is just like an intimacy. You mentioned the curiosity, even like, there's just kind of this spatial awareness.

I, it's hard to describe. So I'm trying to describe what it's like to read these. The moment you put words to it, you, you know, you're, you're warping it terribly. But that was one of the great joys of, you know, really wandering through the, through this work was that texture is communicated through your language really powerfully.

That voice. I mean, that voice, I mean, like one of the moments I, I really love is the recording from New Year's Eve where he's sitting around playing jazz records. You know, what an informal version of Thomas Merton to like, have just like the great gift of being in the presence of 

Brian: I know, and it, I mean, it sounds like he might have had a little bourbon or something.

You know, it's, it's really, yeah, he's, it's interesting for a person who's interested in sound studies and media that he's sitting there with a rec record player and a tape recorder and, you know, he's like a monk, you know, what is he doing? And he's listening to Mary Lou Williams recordings which I think he like developed a correspondence with her, you know as well, he's commenting on them.

You know, I, I just, it's so, it's so fascinating to that he felt comfortable enough with this newfangled technology to, to, to use it to his own. Means, you know, to like, the way that he, actually, this is very interesting. The way that he used poetry, the way that he used photography, the way that he used painting were all new mediums for him at the time when he started.

And he used them with his contemplative lens. And that to me is like a amazing, so like, there was a, a well-known photographer, Ralph Eugene Meat Yard, who was a personal friend of his and influenced Merton's own photographic, you know, experience. I, I just, I just love that. And then he was friends with Ed Reinhart, who was like a really well-known painter.

And then he was writing all of this poetry that was like deeply influenced by like Samuel Beckett and other, and other, you know, experimental modernist poets or whatever. It is just so neat that he was able to then apply that to the tape recorder as well. He immediately starts to interrogate the recorder as if it were like another being.

And then he sees two sides of his own self, you know, his speaking self and his listening self. And then hearing himself talk back to himself. It, it becomes like an exercise in a contemplative practice. He was also at the time reading Sufi mystics, Ibn Al Arabi was one of them. And then incorporating that language into his understanding of the tape recorder.

So for me, all the, all of these things, like, it's like a jackpot of, of, of, of research because it's thinking about the creative process, the contemplative process, and the, the writing or the recording, recording process altogether in, in one moment. And then he's also this huge music fan. Like he grew up playing piano, listening to jazz in New York.

You know, he had quite a life before he, you know, entered the monastery. All of these things are, are informing him, and he never really fully let go of everything. Like one day he came home with a, you know, the latest Bob Dylan record and the latest John Coltrane record, you know, which was like during his free jazz phase.

So he's a really impressive person and also really never had a moment where he didn't have something to say, which is also a funny, a funny quality. Yeah. 

Matthew: This feels like a really beautiful bridge. Just to share with our listeners a little bit of a window into the piece, Who Is This I? 

Brian: Oh, yeah, yeah. This piece is perhaps featuring one of my favorite tapes, and it really gets to the heart of, of what these tapes are doing again.

Just as I mentioned, he was reading the Sufi Mystic Ibn Al Arabi, and he read a passage of it and then sort of meditated on this passage with the tape recorder rolling. Here's a little bit more background. Just three months before Merton had ended, essentially an affair that he was having, he had had, I think the story is that he had had back surgery.

He became very close with and then fell in love with his nurse. At the time they had like, sort of like an un, you know, a, a quiet affair for a number of months. And then he was thinking about leaving and, and getting married. But at that moment, he had decided to come back and, you know, sort of reevaluate and, and become fully a monk again, or, I don't know what you'd call that.

I don't, I don't know what the right words are, but the way that he was handling it, I found to be really interesting, which is just a person searching, you know, again, it's without judgment. It's, it's, it's a, a person trying to understand the world and his own life to the fullest. And if that means making mistakes or pushing those rules a little bit.

A lot in this case, so be it. But then also these moments of reflection where then he uses those experiences to, to inform how he's gonna move forward. Anyway, so this is all background. So I sensed on this tape, like the sort of, he was carrying that with him, like a great sadness. And as he's, you know, meditating on these Sufi mystic quotes, he starts to question himself.

He thinks about his own identity, and he literally asks the question, who is this I? Who, who am I? And, and when he says that, his voice kind of breaks a little bit and there's a pause. Now this to me is very much what a recording can do that almost nothing else can that in a recording you can hear.

These very subtle fluctuations in nervousness or sadness or glee. And these are things that aren't expressed through words, but through all of these other auditory cues you know, for lack of a better term there's an old phrase that says speech reveals and text conceals. That is text can do a really good job of describing something.

You can be really articulate with it, but sometimes it hides those inner feelings. And with speech, when you are speaking, you are revealing those things in addition to the text. And so this is what I, what I love about sound anyways, so as he says, who is this I? I mean, I, every time I listen to that recording without the music or whatever, I'm sort of deeply moved.

I get like. You know, the, the goosebumps, you know, fission, I think is what it's called. And, and or a SMR or something like that. To me, it's because of his wavering voice. It's because he's showing a side of himself that I never saw before in any of the writings. And I just felt like I was in the room with him and, and he was having this moment, you know?

So I tried to articulate that in the music by getting out of its way, the whole ensemble that I'm working with, and I, we basically were, it's, that piece is a whole exercise and reducing the sound and, and so that there's hardly anything there so that we can really just hear the voice. And then when he finishes, we, we come back.

But yeah, that's, that's my FI think that might be my favorite moment in that album. 

Matthew: Yeah. It, it is just so powerful. It feels like a rush of error. It's coming into the room. He goes from reciting text to speaking, 

Brian: right? Yeah. It moves from the formal to the informal, and then he is shifting into his internal voice that, that sort of uncertain voice, you know, the one who's still questioning, like still thinking like, did I make the right choice?

You know, that I've sort of committed to being, you know, a monk again and or should I have, should I have pursued that, that relationship, you know, that I really found something important in too. I mean, it's, it's an impossible place to be and yet this is something that everyone faces in one shape or another.

Matthew: You know, this work, you know, really just kinda underscore for folks who, who are listening that this other quality with Words and Silences at, at least as I un understand this part of the compositional process. Is that you looked to those records that Merton was playing in The Hermitage and I, and honestly, I, I don't know exactly what verb I would use to describe the process through which you transmuted those songs.

I, so I'm gonna to pass the mic to you to describe that, but it felt really, I mean, it felt really important and I, it perhaps even goes back to like this question of it's neither nostalgia nor pretension, but it's a different way of looking through the prism at what his personal experience was and how that can be expanded for listeners.

Mm-hmm. 

Brian: Right. Yeah. I mean, the wonderful thing about Merton is that there's this entire society of, of scholars, I actually attended their conference once it's, you know, that, that have been doing work around or on the writings of, of Merton. Someone had very nicely compiled a list of all of the music that Merton had mentioned in his writings.

So I had this, you know what I can, you know, I saw that. I was like, oh, this is like a list of a mini archive of, of what he listened to. So I would pull from those recordings, I'd transcribe, you know, little bits that stuck out to me, and then I would, you know, very much transform them so that the listener can't tell at all.

Like for an example on one piece called Breath, water, silence, there was a Boogie Woogie piece that he loved called Boogie Woogie Prayer. I took just a couple of chords from that and slowed them way down, and then spread them out across the keyboard. And so you can't, it does not sound like Boogie Woogie at all.

You just get like a slight flavor of it, you know, as if it were a memory. But you're in, in my world, essentially, you know, the, the musical world that I'm creating, but it's informed by these other musics. And so that's, that's the way that I've worked for many years. Going back to when I worked with the Sun Ra Archives in Chicago and the Berea Archives in Kentucky.

So for the past 20 years, you know, it's kind of based on the idea of musical borrowing, but I sort of, I bury them because I want them to inform the music that I'm making and, and then also gives the work a kind of logic in my mind at least, like, oh, this is still all flowing back to Merton and his tastes, so that if he were still alive today I was hoping that he might enjoy the music as it were, because it might remind him of some of the things that he listened to.

Yeah. So that's, that's my process. Yeah, 

Matthew: I'd like to maybe follow that. Quality of voice. Maybe just to meditate on just one more project for a couple minutes a recent piece called The Workbench. This is also a very significant portion of Noisy Memory, Noisy Memory concludes, kind of comes full circle as you write about this piece.

And it's a piece that emerged after the death of your father. It's a piece that I know has deeply moved. Many people, myself included, it occupies a kind of space that really only a real select number of pieces of music or books occupy where I recommend it to folks. And I just don't add a lot of words, you know, because you want, I, I really just want this friend who I'm speaking with, just to enter that space, just experience it without me putting, putting words on top of something.

And I'm wondering if we could just maybe travel that same aesthetic a little bit. Just, if I could just simply ask you to share some about Workbench and how that was as, as a process. 'cause it, it's a really profound artistic piece, but what one can feel in it is a journey that I, I know that you went on as a person.

Mm-hmm. 

Brian: Well, again, I mean like, thank you for listening and for, for sharing. Yeah. I mean, in general, it follows the same process that I've been doing for a long time, which is, you know, thinking about a sound archive and then adding an ensemble of acoustic instruments to play along with those archival recordings.

And then as of late, I've really been adding a lot of video elements or visual elements to the projects as well. Yes. This one my dad passed away in, in 2021, and. It took a long time to, you know, I didn't even, you know, think about this, but I had the opportunity, a commission to make a piece, and I just felt like the time was right.

It had been a, a couple of years afterwards, I didn't really know what to do. I was going through a lot of the music that my dad listened to when he was young. But one of the things that happened at the same time was that, you know, we were slowly, you know, moving everything out of my parents' house. And my mom had gone to live with my, my sister, and so the house was empty in a way, and I inherited my dad's work bench.

I spent a lot of time just sitting at the workbench looking at all the objects. He was a typewriter, repairman. He repaired old radios. He was a very mechanically minded person. And just being amongst those objects that he cared for and repaired somehow was a consolation. It, it made me feel better.

So I spent more and more time doing that. And then I began to wonder like, you know, are these objects, do they have the, a kind of agency can they act as metaphors or reminders of, of the life that he lived? And so I can remember those things. So it's very much steeped in memory and, and honoring those memories.

So when I went to make the piece, I had, you know, just in my phone I had the last year or so of voicemails. That my parents had called me and I wasn't home. And then they left a message and oftentimes it would just be my, my dad. And so what I realized was that it was the quality of his voice and the number of those recordings was constituted like a personal family archive.

And when I combined that with the objects of the work bench this all started to form a piece in my mind. So I started to work with those recordings. It was very difficult at first, but eventually I listened to them so many times that I began to get just ever so slightly detached. I was able to listen to them without breaking down.

And I could then start to edit them very gently, you know, according to, you know, the way I thought the piece might unfold. What happened was, because it was over that last year, you know, you start to hear the process of transitioning between life to death and, you know, as, as I think an artist can do.

I became very curious about that, even though it was incredibly difficult. That for me, became this opportunity to really explore that. I'm, I'm not the first person to do this at all. I mean, I was very much thinking about a piece that influenced me maybe 30 years ago by the video maker, bill Viola, that really focused on, you know, the birth of his, his child, and the death of his mother or grandmother.

I, I, I can't remember. So I was, I was definitely thinking about that idea of the passage or, or journey there. And then, you know, I wrote the piece and then I was trying to finish it, and then I went back to a different set of recordings that I had made while my father was in hospice at the very end of his life.

And I don't know what your listeners know about this, but to me it was, I mean, I had been through the process a couple of times, but not this intimately. So I, I knew that because I'm a sound nerd, that listening is like the, one of the last senses, you know, that still remains active and that, that those last few days.

So I stuck around and talked to my dad a lot. Do you see what I mean? Like, but also I, and I have no idea why I did this. It was just pure instinct. I pulled out my phone and then started recording him, sleeping. Those recordings, made it into this piece. It took me a long time to like figure out whether that was the right choice or not.

But at the very end, I decided that it's just as ordinary as living

that, that sounds flippant. You know, you're in the middle of this, this sort of traumatic process, but it's also something that we all have to face. It, it truly is universal. And yes, it, it just occurred to me that this, this is just the way it is. You know, this is an ordinary part of life. And so I thought, okay, I can share this if I give it the right context and framing.

And so, yeah, I hope that the, the piece did that. It moves through those, those phases. It's also, it's not all, you know, sad or something like that. There are these moments that are melancholic but also joyful. I hope that it has, you know, a lot of those different, different qualities. And then the video does a very careful look at my father's workbench.

And, and for this, you know we had already sold the house. So I had moved the workbench to my garage and then like, sort of like reconstructed it as if it were like a, a monument or something like that or a shrine. And then we filmed the whole thing. We filmed, you know, some of the objects very closely.

And, and that's it, you know, that that's the whole, the whole video. But what I always liked about this was that then the workbench, you know, it didn't stay perfect. We now just use it. Yeah. It's just, it's just part of life. I mean, there are still things there that are my dad's and I still find myself like sitting at it just like as IED did when I was a little kid, you know?

But my wife also uses it for like, she's a potter, so like she, you know, puts pots onto it and my son plays guitar and like he's, you know, res stringing guitars on it and doing all kinds of work in for himself there. I love it. I mean, I love that it's like back in use so that these objects do have a kind of agency.

They do affect us, but they're also not static. So, yeah, that, that was something that was very, very important. We're gonna do a 

Matthew: radical move in, in, in the podcast platform. We're gonna break the fourth wall. So our listeners, if you're listening right now of course all of Brian's work is in the show notes the music, these extraordinary videos.

Just pause the podcast and go listen to The Workbench and come back to us. So I invite everybody to do that, and we'll see you in a second. And through the magic of audio recording, we're back. And I want to say something, what I really, I really appreciate about this work, and I feel like it illuminates so much of your work, so much of what you share in Noisy Memory, you know, it is this power that art has to move out of the particular, towards the universal, but, and then to do that in a way that it isn't a cliche, but is, you know, full of real connection and emotion.

And what I take from one of the things I take from that piece that I, I'm, I'm really grateful for and, and I, I have to name it with words, but, but it is inter interdependence, you know, and that's, that is, that is a word that's used a lot. But I feel like music in particular has a way to communicate that, you know, and it's, it's powerful in, in the book Noisy Memory, just to hear the audience's response to that piece, the fluency with which, you know, the created piece.

Can have meaning to so many folks. I mean, it strikes something that's beyond individual experience. I'm really grateful for your time today. And just wondering, maybe if we could just kind of go for just a couple minutes on Noisy Memory as a book and kind of as a creative process. Like, I'm really interested in that, you know, when you're writing about The Workbench in Noisy Memory, you kind of dwell for a moment on Lewis Hyde's, the Gift, you know, and these, these ideas of the power of exchange and the gift and how it circulates.

And you, you right here, how the movement keeps it alive. And it changes how you understand the world and yourself, myself, hearing this piece, it changes how I understand the world and myself. There's just this beautiful both interdependence and gift exchange there. I, I feel really strongly that this book actually embodies that quality.

Really powerfully and in, in a lot of ways, like it's not only illuminating your life, you know, that the creative practice they're in and this just really human forum of social engagement and those relationships. But I feel also, I really feel like this will be a kind of handbook for, for artists and their practices really truly across disciplines.

And I really feel, in particular for folks who are approaching, you know, the, the land, the social conditions and the points of inspiration that you have approached, I would say in particular in rural and non-urban space. I'm just so excited for this book to reach these readers. And I think we, I was just sharing this before we started recording like this, this is a book I wish I had the ability to read when I was 20, you know, for that really deep and thoughtful.

Engagement and everything that we've been talking about it now for an hour. Like for those, just those moments where you meditate really deeply, but with this a real sense of invitation. I mean, I think what I really appreciate about the book is that like, yes, it does document this creative practice, you know, over, over this stretch of years, but it operates on a lot of levels at once.

And one could be a writer, one could be a playwright, and, and like you're going to receive from this journey so much, so much ballast, and so much in inspiration and so many really complex questions as well. So I guess, like, what I'm curious about is that I know, you know, you of course have a writing practice before the book, Noisy Memory, but I'm just curious, like what was it like to write this book?

How did you go into this process? What was surprising or challenging? 

Brian: Yeah, sure. I, I mean, I, I have to say that you mentioned Lewis Hyde. I've been a fan of his for so long, and his book, the Gift. Which again, I think came out in the 1980s has, was exactly that for me in my twenties. I loved, I loved that book.

And then, you know, I, I followed his career for many years and, and actually he taught it at Kenyon College in Ohio, which is where I taught for a number of years. And I would just kind of like follow him around. You know, his idea of the gift is, is essentially that artists, but not only artists, but he uses artists as the primary example, are working in what he called the gift economy, which means that the, the things that they make and, and share have a different quality to them than a tube of toothpaste or, or something like that.

I think he includes, like, like nursing for example, as something similar, right? Where you are, you are, there is money exchanged, but you are really giving something beyond that that's, you know, you can't find words for. And also that you don't. You don't always want to just take an object, like a present from someone and then hide it behind a, a glass in a museum or something like that.

It's, it's when you use that object and then pass it along to someone else that then has, it's this power agency that I've been talking about. So you're absolutely right. The whole book is informed by Lewis Hyde's sense of the gift. It's also another hero that I got to talk to a couple years ago was Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I mean, I'm sure you and your audience know, know her work and we talked about the gift and we talked about Hyde in particular, and it informed her work as well.

And so thinking about those two heroes was, was sort of very much at the root of my process of, of writing this book. But to continue on with your, your question, I, you know, had done a lot of writing. I mean, I had done dissertation work and that kind of stuff, but I knew that I didn't want to write. For an academic audience in particular.

I wanted to open it up because that's the way I write music. I wanted something that I wanted, something that my parents could have read and, and then engage in conversation with them. I, I used that as my guide, but I also wanted it to be smart and rigorous. I didn't want to let those things go, but I, I wanted it to be a language that was open and hopefully not too jargony or anything like that.

So those, those things absolutely informed the project. 

Matthew: Yeah. It, it was such a pleasure and inspiration to read. And I would say in particular for folks who might be listening to this, it is not jargony. You know, and I've just, as someone who also like, has done a PhD and has tried to like recalibrate a way to write and think after that, like when someone is brought up in the book.

It's really important and it's a really nice pivot point. So I thought that was just really just like the language itself and, and the pacing of it was just, it allows for these spaces. There's invitations there. Good for meditation to bring it back on oneself. 

Brian: Yeah. I also wanted to think about the creative process and how to share those things.

I wanted to talk about the music in a way that wasn't necessarily about, it's this chord or this rhythm, which is interesting too, but mostly to music theorists. You see what I mean? I, man, I can nerd out on that too, but I, I, I was thinking of a different reader, I guess, and trying to parse through all of the things about the experience of being a musician, a sound artist, and a person in the world, and to channel those things back into the book.

Yeah, 

Matthew: it is absolutely a gift. I'm grateful for the gift of your time today as well, and having a chance to kind of walk, walk this path through. These experiences and projects. I really just have one more question. It's a question we ask all of all the folks who join us on the podcast, what's moving you right now?

What's giving you energy? It could be really anything. Books, art places, food traditions, websites, movies, you know, what, what, anything, anything. You know, and are, are there some points of inspiration and are there some recommendations you might leave with our listeners? 

Brian: Well, that's a good one. I mean, well, it's the summer, it's late summer right now.

And I always relish going to places. And so maybe that's one thing. Speaking of family stuff, I recently went to this place in Ohio called Kelly's Island. It's in, it's in the middle. It's in the middle of Lake Erie. And it's, it's where my great grandmother is from and, and her family. And so this is leading me down to a whole nother path.

I, I guess what I'm recommending is to, you know, revisit these places of your ancestors and, and see where that leads you creatively. So I've been, I've been thinking about, about that a lot. And along those same lines a, a different grandmother, apparently, I'm really thinking about family, family inheritances and gifts.

I, I received all of her old sheet music from the 1910s and twenties, and so I've been making new pieces from them. But just, you know, I, I'm not the world's greatest site reader, but it's really a pleasure to go back and play through these pieces and then to imagine both my grandmother and my grandfather, you know, playing for each other or all the pleasure that they took in it.

It's a, it's a really interesting exercise where. The sounds that I'm playing are the exact sounds that they would've played, you know, and it, it does feel a bit like a time machine, even if it's not the, you know, it's not like the music that I would normally listen to. For some reason, it, it's really helping me that way.

Oh, you and I were just talking about a book. 

Matthew: Oh yeah. Aaron Landsman 

Brian: called, yeah, The City We Make Together, which I think it was a really with Mallory Catlett, it's a book essentially rooted in theater, but also socially engaged art. And they had a piece called City Council Meeting and they were taking this piece all over the United States, both in like, you know, urban and rural areas.

And I thought it was a really interesting sort of like, guide how to do a community oriented project that has an artistic component to it. So yeah, I guess I would recommend that book. 

Matthew: Oh, wonderful. Brian, thank you so much for your time today. 

Brian: Oh yeah, it's really been my pleasure.