PG: The soundtrack in catalog is remarkably imaginative and dense, and although what the relationship is between the story and the images isn’t clear, it is clear that they fit together in some way. Actually, in a lot of ways. The juxtaposition is inviting, but discomfiting. What was the writing process like for that soundtrack?
SB: This piece of writing was actually something I had written years before. I had recorded the film and video artist Gregg Biermann reading it for a very different purpose. The piece is, yes, really dense and labyrinthine. I went through a number of different soundtracks for catalog—originally the soundtrack was composed of every line from every poem of Emily Dickinson’s in which she uses the word still, wait, pause, frozen etc. (there is a line in my lawn poem lecture about this choice[see FOR A LAWN POEM, ed]). These two elements—the poem extractions and the recreated photographs—were married in my mind the whole time I was working on each part of the film and then, when I put them together it seemed too pat—seemed somehow cute or operable in a way I don’t like my films to be. So, I then spent a lot of time creating other soundtracks for the piece and this is something that is really inorganic to me. It’s rare that these two elements don’t come up together. To have one finished part and be searching around for its mate felt pretty bad and yet, it was obvious the film did not want to be silent. I can’t remember how I remembered the piece I had recorded so many years earlier but without having heard it in more than five years I felt sure that it would be perfect. I like how when listening it is really difficult to sort of place yourself in any one musing position for very long. The floors of that sort of insertion get shifted around too sneakily. I’m really happy with the counterpoint of solemnity the images creates.
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