Seditious Sounds: On Conlon Nancarrow

by Gautam Pemmaraju

Conlon-nancarrow-1418515548

In a desultory speculative history, an affliction caused by the febrile May heat here in Bombay, I imagined a current day encounter between two old scheming radicals who spent their entire lifetimes up to no good—from global-trotting revolutionary activity to cloistered tomfoolery. I saw MN Roy, a founder of the Communist Party of India and the Mexican Communist Party slowly sipping tequila out of a slender glass with Conlon Nancarrow, a music composer of extraordinary conceptual depth and at one time, an American communist. Apart from a shared ideological space, these two remarkable men also shared a love for Mexico City—while Roy spent two intellectually formative, even revelatory, years in the sprawling city from 1917 to 1919, Nancarrow left America in protest twenty years later in 1940. He subsequently became a Mexican citizen and spent the rest of his life there. In my heat-induced visions, I saw the two eating fresh papaya (Nancarrow reportedly was very fond of them) and shooting the breeze. Perhaps they spoke of British spies, Bolsheviks, Hegelian dialectics, and radical humanism; my delirium did not reveal the nature of the conversation. I am more inclined to attribute things of a mundane nature to the encounter—the pleasing weather, Louis Armstrong, and seasonal fruits. It could well be that they were planning a night out at MN Roy's former house No 186, now a well-known ‘clandestine', ‘hip' night club in Mexico City (thanks to 3QD editor Robin Varghese for this gem), the irony of which is fecund with wild discursive possibilities.

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Misbehaving Clocks: A Primary Pathology of Timecode Troubles

by Gautam Pemmaraju

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
– St Augustine

Of the many professional vexations that I have encountered, there are a few that remain implacable. TC01 They appear unannounced, lurk in the shadows, thief-like, and seek out opportune moments to manifest, bringing a unique set of anxieties, afflictions and injury. There is a quality of mystery to some: their appearance is seldom anticipated, the torments they unleash may or may not be prior detected or prevented, and their severity may not be accurately assessed until after the damage is done.

So when, a few months ago, I took the tapes back from the two-day Mahindra Blues Festival to the edit studio for post-production (the multi-camera TV production of which I had directed), I was to soon realise to my utter dismay, the anguish that was in store for me. A multiplicity of timecode issues – drift, break, sync, control track – appeared on the master tapes and I was confronted with the horror of the loss of automated synchronization amongst other devilry. This perfidy cannot be overstated – the prospect of trying to achieve/repair sync, the flaws of which are in turn mischievously asynchronous, begins with the acceptance of many, many edit hours of painful remedial work. Someone or something fucked up and I had to pay for it. I need also to mention here that generally, post-production suites are vile, dank, freezing holes-in-the-wall inhabited in many instances, by overworked, underpaid editors with frightening dietary habits and appalling personal hygiene. Editors and directors, as in other symbiotic partnerships, have no alternative but to rely on one other and any breach of protocol or even some unknown impedance in their delicately calibrated fellowship, can lead to disastrous consequences.

The technical/historical aspects of this revolutionary innovation1 are reasonably well chronicled but there are literary and artistic ideas in the invocation of timecode – from its utility, its flaws and tempers, the consequential effects thereof, to its intriguing presence in mediated reality.

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