The Wagon - from 'Music for a Story-Telling'

written in 1991 and 1993 / recorded in 1994

Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-working of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn’t exist enough long to perform it, or works for a students’ theatrical project that failed to feature my works in full when the actual performance took place. For example, the piece written for a string quartet featured here in the intro and the outro was originally written for the latter project. Nonetheless, the main body of this tune, performed by my band called Culotte, was newly written for this conceptual work in 1993, reflecting the Grunge-era-Zeitgeist at that time.

Whilst the string quartet sections are both assigned to the Narrator to explain the scene, the main body features conversations between a couple of convicted criminals coincided to be tried in the same court room. One of them is a local thug, who speaks the language of the state he belongs, and the other is an ‘intruder’ from the outer space, who speaks his native language somewhere far away from the planet where the story takes place. Therefore, the conversations between these two figures do not establish any sort of exchanging of meaning, understanding, opinions nor information whatsoever.

Nevertheless, viewers of this video are expected to learn certain things from these seemingly meaningless and absurd conversations appear on the screen. One thing is that while Wella, the local criminal, provides his knowledge on what is going to happen to them next, he seems to reveal his ignorance on basic idea on what is death, by failing to respond to his opponent’s gestures. On the other hand, Kelp, the intruder, also reveals his distasteful bad nature through showing his obvious contempt not only for authorities but also for a fellow criminal before him.

Of course, as the author of the story, I can hardly refrain from pointing out such trivial things in order to establish each character effectively and taking this opportunity, I have to confess that it feels enjoyable to insert some politically partial opinions disguised as a fictional character’s view.