Section Eight – Ben Singer
We are so lost, Sophie and I. Almost non-existent, struggling just to breathe.
Our bodies are holding a place in the world for us, but we can only occasionally make contact with them. We struggle to push our awareness into our eyes and see, into our fingers and touch. We struggle for the strength and the will to guide our awareness anywhere, to gather it like the shards of some delicate vase we believe we can repair if only we can find every piece.
We’re still standing open-handed and agape, as a child does when something has been snatched away so suddenly and completely that there’s an instant of disbelief before the tears or rage. And despite the tears we’ve already cried, the loss hasn’t yet been felt. We can agree something has happened, but not that something has fallen away, and not that the loss has changed us.
We haven’t yet closed our hands to find nothing there.
Take Them Away
Bannister
Music composed and performed by Ben Singer.
Ben combines the formal training in jazz and classical music he received at Eastman School of Music with the roots music of his folk-singing, bluegrass-playing British parents. He regularly performs original music as a singer/songwriter and as Modern Robot, which plays live soundtracks to classic silent films and other weird movies. Ben is also a frequent collaborator in North Carolina, working as a studio musician, recording engineer, and video producer.
Contact Ben.
The Cloud Diary Music Project
We sent musicians a synopsis of Cloud Diary and a randomly chosen scene from among 12 scattered throughout the novel and asked them to respond to the scene, musically or aurally. The piece could be of any genre and any duration. It could be music already recorded, adapted, or written specifically for the scene. Find more information here.
Click here for the full Music Project playlist.