Soundcheck Staff - Jim Jarmusch: Walking The Tightrope lyrics

The New York Times once referred to the writer and director Jim Jarmusch as “the last major truly independent film director in America.” His award-winning films have included Down By Law, A Night On Earth, Mystery Train, Broken Flowers, The Limits of Control. His most recent effort, 2013's The Only Lovers Left Alive, is a kind of noir-ish, vampire-themed movie about the pa**age of time. Since the early 1980s, Jarmusch has created not just a series of movies, but a kind of cinematic language: cool, wry, atmospheric, sometimes elliptical, and always musical. That's because Jarmusch was making music even before he began making films. He was part of the first wave of post-punk bands in New York in the late 1970s and early '80s as a member of The Del-Byzanteens, and his connections to music and musicians have strongly colored his movies. Jarmusch has become a**ociated with a circle of actor friends -- Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton, for example; but that circle also includes singer Tom Waits, saxophonist and composer John Lurie, and proto-punk icon Iggy Pop. In addition to starring in his feature films, Waits and Lurie have provided soundtracks as well. But in the past few years, Jarmusch has become more active in making music, and in scoring his own movies. His noise/drone-rock band SQÜRL – formerly known as Bad Rabbit – can be heard in The Limits Of Control and The Only Lovers Left Alive. Now, Jarmusch and SQÜRL are doing new soundtracks for four silent films by the surrealist artist Man Ray. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Jim Jarmusch discusses making music for someone else's films, and a penchant for walking the tightrope between narrative and abstract art in his own movies. And if you thought his C.V. was looking a little thin, Jarmusch is also working on an upcoming opera about the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, with Robert Wilson and composer Phil Kline. ----- John Schaefer: When did you first discover the Man Ray films? Jim Jarmusch: I think I saw them in the mid-'70s for the first time. I studied in Paris for a little while, through Columbia. I got incompletes in most of my cla**es because I became addicted to the Cinematheque in Paris. So I saw so many things there; I'm pretty sure that's where I first saw at least L'Étoile de Mer [The Sea Star], perhaps his most famous film. JS: They're abstract films as opposed to narrative. What do you think of them? JJ: They are definitely. These four films that we're going to perform scores to are all from the '20s, so he was right in the peak of surrealist movement. I don't know how formal surrealism is, but these are definitely surrealist films in every sense of the word. So they employ dream logic; they do not care for plot or conventions; they are sometimes abstract images from his photograms -- his Ray-o-gram techniques. Sometimes they're action photography but filmed through distorted gla**, lots of distortion. They're very abstract and very, very beautiful, non-literal. JS: But how important do you think these films were in the history of film of cinema? JJ: I think looking back at them, they are truly remarkable films. They are really amazing, and I think maybe undervalued, but I don't know how you value these things. For me, rediscovering them and now, watching them over and over, they are really striking. I think they are incredible pieces of the history of cinema, of non-narrative cinema, of experimental photography, of non-literalness. JS: So stumbling upon them as a budding filmmaker -- maybe not at the time but with the benefit of hindsight -- do you see lingering after-images of that in your own work? JJ: I was that age, in my early 20's, and especially when I discovered the Cinematheque in Paris and saw all these -- my mind was blown from all directions. I was seeing cla**ic Japanese films, I was seeing experimental films, it was kind of an amazing inundation. JS: As opposed to a lot of other films that were being done in the 1920s, where film was seen as a narrative form, one of the things that strikes me with Man Ray's films-- and I know there were others who were doing it too -- is that it's non-literal, and if there is a logic, it's a dream logic. When I think of some of your movies -- 2009's Limits Of Control, for instance -- there is kind of a dream logic to the way scenes repeat, but they're slightly different. And the way you get to the denouement, or the final scene, is not clearly or logically explained. JJ: There's a direct connection, in a way, not really stylistically. When we made Limits Of Control, our kind of oblique strategy was try to not provide expectations to the audience. So we removed things like plot, and action, and drama, and all kinds of things to see can we make a film that we think is a beautiful film without these expectations. Removing them all. And of course, a lot of people said no! But, Man Ray did the same thing, certainly not stylistically, but he removed all the things people were expecting: narrative films, some kind of plot, and relationships between people, some kind of story. He removed all of those. He was not interested in them. JS: You used the term "Oblique Strategies," which is a deck of problem solving cards that Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt created in the 1970s. And of course Eno is known for doing with music what you just talked about in film: stripping away the story, the narrative, and kind of leaving the thing itself. Is that tension between abstract and narrative important for you musically as well? JJ: I'm not a trained musician but I have very strong musical tendencies, intentions, you know? I would say that the Man Ray films are very, very musical in a way. Imagistically -- I don't know what words to use -- there's something really rhythmic and lyrical about them. The kind of music I make, we make, [is] not structured entirely; it's not based on existing forms, though we write some songs with verses and choruses. But, for example, when these live scores are going to be performed by myself and Carter Logan, we'll be using guitars, distorted guitars, drums, some percussion, and also keyboards --I have an old retro keyboard from the '80s. Carter uses a Moog. We will be using some loops and things, so we're distorting the sound often. It's kind of drone-oriented. We have maps. We follow our maps, but every time we play it's different. So there's an improvisational element that's important. We're not trying to literal punctuate everything in the films. I think Man Ray would be appalled by a literal musical interpretation. JS: That's what they call Mickey Mousing. JJ: Do they? JS: Yeah. JJ: Well, none of that. JS: [Laughs] It's when somebody gets hit by a two-by-four in the back of the head, you have a little [knock sound] at that moment. JJ: I think if Ray wants you to see the ocean he would rather hear a freight train. I'm taking liberties, but I'm pretty familiar with his work and his life, so we're trying to do something very respectful to what he did. There's a funny correlation between surrealism, a kind of link to psychedelia in odd way because both of them have to do with the unconsciousness or the expansion of your consciousness. Both of them are non-logical. So they tap in. Our music is a bit psychedelic by nature. We just like humming, throbbing, distorted drones. You know, so we built things using those things. It's kind of a trippy experience to watch his films with our scores. Hopefully. ----- JS: So your band SQÜRL is a duo that can expand to a trio? JJ: Yeah, we work with Shane Stoneback when we record. He doesn't travel with us. When we play live, we did a lot of shows last year in Europe -- well, not a lot, but a number of shows where we played with Jozef Van Wissem live. So he's a SQÜRL, an ancillary SQÜRL. That becomes 12-string electric, 6-string electric, vocals, drums, loops, stuff like that. JS: What about the lute? Because Jozef is primarily a lute player. JJ: Yes. And he did beautiful things, created beautiful music for our film, Only Lovers Left Alive. When we play together as SQÜRL, he does not play the lute. He plays the electric 12-string. But we got a recent email from someone -- and I think there was a spellcheck concerning Jozef from Europe -- and it said Jozef Van Nuisance. So from now on that's what I'm calling him. JS: Van Nuisance? [Laughs] JJ: Jozef Van Nuisance, I think, is very appropriate. JS: Some years ago in 2011, you and Jozef were playing on my other show, New Sounds. And that music goes to a couple of different things we were talking about. One of them is the drone. It's not that you're actually playing a drone, but you're certainly suggesting one in the way the guitar is distorted and it's abstract. It's not "Here's my guitar solo, watch how fast I can play." JJ: It's kind of textural, it's receding in the background, with the lute in the foreground. It's also something that's related to a lot of things that interest me, namely, mixing different things from periods in history -- so a lute and an electric guitar basically manipulating feedback. I love these things. I love making music with synthesizers and distorted things, loops and stuff with films of the 1920s with Man Ray. I just like the mixing of things, they just go together so beautifully that you just wouldn't expect it. JS: You mentioned before that the films of the 1920s have musicality and the rhythm: Jazz was very much in the air. But I'm not sure I would want to see these films with a jazz score. JJ: Well there's something nice for us because we play, slow, drone-y, stuff that shifts more than hits you rhythmically with changes and the films are the opposite. So that juxtaposition goes together. I think if we try to make real fast music to quick-cut films that wouldn't have the same effect. JS: The other thing with that piece of music [from 2011] is that the title was “Concerning The Beautiful Human Form After d**h” and many of the works you and Jozef have done over the years have drawn from the writings of various Christian mystics. Is that a shared interest with Jozef as well? JJ: It's shared in that we find links: he found William Blake through [Emanuel] Swedenborg. I found Swedenborg through William Blake. These kind of things that connect by mutual interest. Those titles are Jozef's tiles, which I like very much, but I don't interfere with them. I don't change them or suggest anything. JS: The idea of the drone. It comes through in lots of ways in your work. There's a great scene in Only Lovers Left Alive where Yasmine Hamdan, the Lebanese singer, is in this cafe in Morocco, and Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton's characters are peering in when she's singing. And the whole thing is over a drone. You talk about liking ways of connecting things that are separated in time. That's a way of connecting things that are separated geographically. The drone seems to be kind of universal. JJ: Well it's in all types of music. Music that's very, mystical, magical, it's a kind of hypnotic thing. You find it in 20th century cla**ical music; you find it in [music] from North Africa, especially; you find it certainly in Indian cla**ical music; you find it in certain forms of rock 'n' roll. There's something about it being imperfect that I think is important. We find magic in imperfection and in perfection we find less magic. It's like certain Native American tribes in the Southwest, if they make a basket or some pottery, they'll make sure it's asymmetrical, the pattern. Because if it's symmetrical, it's devoid of magic. I don't know how that relates particularly to the drone, but it does to distortion and broken sound. Drones and other types of music have some sort of distortion element to them, a kind of ringing… It's a way to hypnotize your audience! JS: Is there a cinematic equivalent to the drone? JJ: Oh wow. I'm sure there are equivalents. I'm not prepared to answer that. I have to think about that for awhile, whether there's something in the style of Bela Tarr, you know, I'm not quite sure. Or even Jacques Rivette? JS: Just off the top of my head I'm thinking, the Texas landscape that Wim Wenders sets Paris, Texas in… JJ: Yeah. JS: It's kind of a visual drone -- this endless horizon. Kind of sense of space. I don't know. You're the filmmaker that's why I'm asking you! [Laughs] JJ: I don't know... I'm sure there's many references we could find but they're kind of stretching two different things. They all interrelate for me. That's what I love. Different forms suggest other forms. ----- JS: This has been another part of your career -- that's one of the reasons why I asked you to do the Man Ray thing. You connected music and films so closely throughout your life. Going back to The Del-Byzanteens; you and Phil Kline, the composer, were in a rock band together. That was basically how it worked in New York downtown back in in the late 1970's, early '80s, right? Filmmakers were making music, photographers were singing. JJ: Oh yeah. Everybody. The painter-filmmaker James Nares was a drummer in The Del-Byzanteens, and previously, a guitarist in The Contortions. There was a point there that I loved in the late '70s where someone put flyers up all over the East Village that said, "Everyone here is in a band." Which was pretty accurate. Phil Kline -- he's my old friend, he's a great musician from Ohio, we grew up together, he's a real musician, he knows music theory, everything. I'm a non-musician, but very musical so there was no problem in us making a band. There was an openness to different approaches that were not necessarily the mainstream, commercial ones. JS: The Del-Byzanteens' song, “Girl's Imagination,” is from around 1981. That's years before the 1986 film Down By Law -- so my first introduction to you was as a musician. You're singing and playing keyboards, Phil is playing guitar. I think that James Nares... JJ: That's James on drums, Philippe Hagen on ba**. The lyrics from the song are from Luc Sante, who's also our old friend and a great writer that we love. So at least the lyrics are cool. No, the music, you can hear it, a kind of post-punk thing. We were inspired by all these different things going on. JS: What were you listening to back then? JJ: Well, we were listening to all kinds of things from gamelan music to Harry Partch to Conlon Nancarrow... Lou Reed, Bowie, and a lot of British stuff. And for some reason, The Del-Byzanteens, well, it's really because of our manager, she would get us opening slots before British bands so we opened a lot for Echo And The Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, [and] Brit bands of this period. JS: Was there some point in the early '80s, where you came to a fork in the road and you had to make a decision, which to pursue? JJ: There kind of was, yeah. It was in the dressing room, in the basement of something that had formerly been a German bank and we were opening for The Four Tops with a kind of frat boy crowd hurling beer and vomit at us and then afterwards the toilets broke in our dressing room so there was about two inches of fluid on the floor with our equipment and our clothes and stuff. And we weren't getting along so well, and that was sort of it for me. "You know what, I'm just going to work on films for awhile." That sounds kind of weak now. Like, "Well, gee, you couldn't stand it?" But the whole band had feelings like something was changing and we were all doing other things. JS: Now, you and Phil Kline are involved in this opera about Nikola Tesla, and Robert Wilson, the American dramatist has been brought on board. Now here's a guy whose whole approach to theater goes back to abstract versus narrative. JJ: Completely. Even that he calls these things operas is already a stretch. He finds his own form. Wilson [has] worked with amazing people, and he has a very interesting way of working -- gathering ideas both visual, verbal, musical, and guiding the process to find striking things that would accumulate and become a whole. It's a very mysterious process. JS: That sounds like what you do as a director. JJ: Well, I have much more, believe it or not. I have scripts and a map. JS: He has storyboards… JJ: He does, but it takes awhile to collect them [and] structure them. JS: Does it sound like an opera? JJ: It's in progress. There is some music that Phil and I are creating that is feedback, electronic, drone type stuff. But then Phil is writing other things; Phil is the composer of the piece. I'm included in some of the music, But how much? I don't know. He's writing a variety of different forms and I think he's finding that right now. He has some actual song type arias and then he has much more dark and different kind of music so he's finding it actually. He's written a lot of music but he told me recently "Half of what I wrote now won't be used and I'm going in a different direction." JS: I know that he's been talking about this project forever. It's a long-term thing. And it actually reminds me of you and Jozef Van Wissem from 2011 when you came on New Sounds that day. I remember you saying, "We're working on some music for a film I'm hoping to make, I've been working on many years." And that of course, turned out to be Only Lovers Left Alive. So when people hold you up as an exemplar of independent film-making, is that really what it means, that it takes years to get something to fruition? JJ: For me it does. Some people are much faster than me and I'm sometimes embarra**ed. But also, people don't realize how busy I am. They think, "Well you made a film a few years ago, what else are you doing?" So, for example, we're preparing this piece with Robert Wilson and Carter and I are doing these scores. And then SQÜRL is recording and releasing other music as well. I'm preparing a new feature film for next fall that will be filmed here in New York and New Jersey. I also have an ongoing project for a book of photographs with my brother Tom -- who's an amazing photographer -- so we're preparing a book together. So I have a lot of projects going on that just are evolving at their own pace. I'm very busy but sometimes people think, "What are you doing all day?" But man, I do a lot of things. ----- JS: What is your normal process, if there is a normal process, for dealing with music or say right now, in the stage that you are in this next film. Where are you in the musical process? JJ: The music is so important and they're always so intertwined. I'm just in the early stages of exploring the possibilities of a kind of electronic score, which I never used before. Something is pulling me toward that because I love a lot of electronic music and I haven't used it in a film really. JS: You mean the cosmic, Morton Subotnick Silver Apples Of The Moon kind of electronic stuff? You mean, Calvin Harris-style electronic dance music? You mean something more Tangerine Dream? There's a lot of ways you can take that. JJ: True. I don't know, I would say from Cluster to Eno to… I don't know if you know f** bu*tons. Some variety of things that interests me. I like Detroit House and all kinds of electronic aberrations so I'm not exactly sure but I want music that floats along. I don't want a heavy beat -- maybe no rhythm at all. I'm not sure yet. JS: Do you want to have this in your mind before you even start shooting? JJ: Yeah. I'm gathering it now. I could switch over and say, instead of electronic stuff I'm only going for string orchestra in the end. Another beautiful form of drones is just string instruments, play drones by their nature -- which is so beautiful. JS: So how different was this process than working on the Man Ray films where you had something fully formed and you had to come at it from the exact opposite direction? JJ: That was different because we were reacting to something. When we make music with SQÜRL, we're reacting just to each other and music regenerates so, that gives you a very beautiful map, you know how long it's going to be. Usually we don't and we don't' really care. It gives you a structure to not accentuate in a way. The films are very structured in their non-logical way.