April 10, 2024 • 34 mins
In this emotionally resonant and poetic episode of The Passage, the Ferryman navigates the complex structural and emotional landscapes crafted by one of America's most iconic figures. Frank Lloyd Wright, voiced by Michael Cooke (Mulholland Drive), a visionary architect, designer, and educator, awaits in a realm of his own creation—a self-designed purgatory where the lines of genius and sorrow blur.
As they traverse this meticulously constructed space, a manifestation of Wright's philosophy of organic architecture harmonizing with humanity and the environment, the Ferryman engages with the architect in a dialogue that spans the spectrum of creativity and tragedy. Wright reflects on his illustrious career, a span of seven decades during which he shaped the architectural movements of the twentieth century and left an indelible mark.
However, the conversation soon delves deeper, into the shadows of a personal tragedy that haunted Wright—the brutal mass murder at his beloved Taliesin estate. While he was away, his mistress, her children, and his servants were mercilessly killed, a horrifying act that imprinted itself upon his soul and cast a long shadow over his achievements and days.
In this episode, the Ferryman becomes a visitor in Wright's self-imposed exile, a space where the great architect grapples with the duality of his legacy—of monumental creations and an intimate catastrophe. Wright confronts the haunting questions of regret and blame, pondering the price of greatness and the fragility of the human spirit amidst the structures meant to celebrate and shelter it.
In this episode of The Passage, listeners are invited to explore the inner chambers of Frank Lloyd Wright's mind and heart, where the foundations of brilliance are interwoven with the tremors of personal loss and remorse.
It’s a journey through the corridors of creativity and the hidden alcoves of grief, where the blueprint of regret forms the architecture of a soul seeking peace and understanding.
Written by Christeene Alcosiba
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hm, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Was heard to shut from the car. He's dead.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Whether he rebird to president.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Or four hours, people must get up and google identification.
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road
is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between
(01:09):
their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All I ask for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives
and the great temporary that is the land we're living.
These are their stories. This is.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
The passage.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm making a pit stop today, checking in a particular passenger. A.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I do not normally allow my passengers such liberties, but
for this soul, I've made an exception. It is August.
It is always August in this place, this place, in
the in between balance and form and function, and haunted
(02:33):
by bloody tragedy, the largest single incident of mass murder
in Wisconsin's history. This place which is not as it appears.
This place which is and is not spring green, where
the lines between the brilliant mind that builds it and
(02:57):
the rest of time and space blurred. The same mind
which had a hand in the design of the whole
of the twentieth century. Frank Lloyd Wright a towering figure
in his field, incredibly prolific in his lifetime. His designs
(03:19):
will prove to echo through their work for thousands of
years to come, and his visions represent the first truly
American architecture. He saw the world shifting. He was an
architect of that shift. He envisioned an America where mankind
lived in harmony with the land, where the home was
(03:41):
the center of life and a hearth the center of home.
There was a personal cost, however, as he left his
life in April of nineteen fifty nine, he believed his
work unfinished. There are no corporeal tools in the Bardo,
(04:02):
so he worked with all of the material left him
his own life. And what a construction he has made
here in the in between. But only he will be
able to tell us when he's done building. Hello, Frank,
(04:32):
it's time.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I didn't see you coming.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, it's time to get up, Frank.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I no longer have a body. How do I get up?
If I don't have a body? Am I a reflection?
Peras only a shadow?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, your consciousness is all you need. Focus, recall, movement.
What do you see?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I see grass on the hill, grass and summer thistle
bowing to the wind waves of it. An ocean of
green rushing away from me.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's good, Frank, this.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Is spring green. I'd know this slope of Wisconsin hillside anywhere.
I know it as well as my hands know my
own face in the dark.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Why have you taken me here? Spirit?
Speaker 7 (05:36):
The soul knows where it needs to go to heal itself.
Heal the soul, that's absurd. I didn't need any healing
in life, and I certainly don't require any healing and death.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
But you do. Come on, Frank. Our memories the mother
of all wisdom. You can access your own memories and
the memories of others here. These impressions all connect here,
every memory of every living thing.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
So what do I do?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Speak the truth, Frank, as you see it, and we
will be on our way. Speak.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I stand alone in a verdant field. I know this
to be my family land, But there are none of
the structures I'd known in life. No Unitarian chapel, no
twin windmills nicknamed Romeo and Juliet, no country school. I
(06:44):
am surveying the slopes for any sign of civilization. When
a man in a black suit appears before me, his
face is gray and unyielding in his january.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Your mother send you to work on this farm every summer,
and every returner did as aft as the day.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You were born.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
My uncle, James Lloyd Jones, long since dead. I haven't
seen James in over forty years, but here he is
just as menacing as I'd remembered him as a child.
I tried to run away from him, to escape his farm,
(07:31):
but was found quickly and dragged back screaming. I learned
two things during those interminable summers of work and prayer
at Aldebaran Farm. Firstly, that I hated physical labor and
took it as a sign that I was created for
loftier things than plows and take shit. The second, and
(07:56):
more profound lesson that I took from the slopes of
Spring Green was that America was made for the horizon.
It was made from movement with the land forward forward Wisconsin, Forward,
America across the prairie to become the prairie, within the mountains,
(08:18):
to become the mountains. Forward into the forest to become
the trees. A manifest expansion. Forward across the globe America
dessert buildings that reflected this movement, and I was destined
by God to create them.
Speaker 8 (08:42):
You you are shame on this family might leave this place,
but you'll never leave. That.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Is that your own morality speaking or did you borrow
your thoughts from the town paper again?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Here's a morality lesson for you, boy.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
We came there from Smarting Dome, the black spotted whales.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
Called that's by hostile or outsiders because.
Speaker 8 (09:07):
Of its religious unorthodoxy, called that really because of its
religious purity. Honest, godly people civilized this land, Frank, and
you you gave it back to the devil when you
stole that man's wife and.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Brought it here.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I'm bored of this, James.
Speaker 8 (09:27):
Do you know why you always returned to your mother's
soft boy? Because you're always looking for a short You're
probably looking for one right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Now, James, face.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Rigulous, grotesquely, his eyes rolling back, he opens his mouth
to speak. A dark room of spiders rushing forward between
his strained lips. He falls to his knees, his body
engulfed by a thousand of racknets. He's squirming and choking
(10:10):
on their selven legs. The black soil is beginning to
quake and froth and open up beneath him. Swallowing his
gray friend, he struggles to climb out of the hole.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No, no, no, He.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Points towards the horizon, and a great white complex materializes,
as though he's summoned it. It's the Chicago World's Fair Pavilion,
exactly as it stood in eighteen ninety three. A pathway
toward the white complex then opening in the grass before me,
(10:48):
and a crow lands on the root ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I will leave James to follow it. I will not
look back. What do you remember about the fair, Frank?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
That was the year that I left the firm of
Adler and Sullivan and struck out on my own.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, What do you remember seeing at the pavilion?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
The fair celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the landing
of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Disappointing gowdy architecture, monstrous
Greek revival buildings, painted ivory, the old ideas of Europe,
(11:40):
regurgitated by New York architects who came to the Chicago
swamp land to have their boots lit by their Midwestern colleagues.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You're editorializing, Frank, What did you see there?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I remember Frederick law ownsteads beautiful glass boats in the
man made lagoon, and here one arrives on the placid
water suddenly before us? Shall we board?
Speaker 9 (12:15):
After?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You continue?
Speaker 9 (12:22):
There?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Ahead of us wooded island located in the center of
the water forward to Hodin, meaning Phoenix's Palace. It was
a recreation of a temple that combined several centuries of
Japanese architecture and history into a tea garden and three
(12:45):
single story buildings that moved horizontally with the island from
east to west, forward with the island to become the island.
It commanded the eye with the subtle beauty. It vibrated
with life in the foreground against the hulking white giants
(13:08):
on the parallel shore. My hands itch for a pencil
and drafting table.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Your hands itched for a pencil, and they found one.
You found a shortcut. What are you suggesting here?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Spirit?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
You know precisely what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Old didn't confirmed ideas I'd already had. They were my
own ideas. If they were not, then it was providence
that I should make them known to the world.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
This is a story of theft. You can leave when
you can see who did the stealing.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I refuse to dignify that with a response.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
You are the progeny of devoted unitarians. Tell me, Frank,
what is the seventh commandment?
Speaker 4 (14:03):
The shot not commit adultery? Oh the Phoenix temple, it's
caught fire and now was gone the mirage. I'm back
in the field with an accusing spirit.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
These are your belongings, Frank, not mine. What was her name?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Her name was Mama. I met Maema when she and
her husband, Edward Cheney, were clients of mine. I was
commissioned to build them a house in Oak Park, near
the home that I shared with Kitty and our six children.
(14:56):
The affair didn't happen immediately. By the time Maema and
I were discovered, I was already determined to release myself.
I'd found my soul's match in Maema, my intellectual equal,
(15:20):
and there was no staying with Kitty and the children.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
After that.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Consolagration of body and spirit, every time I returned to
the house in Oak Park, who felt like enslavement, to
endure an early and unfit marriage, the monotony of domestic
life and needful mouths of children, the unpaid debts mounting.
(15:49):
Maema and I agreed that the falsehood it took to
continue our respective marriages was greater than the sin of
living an authentic truth. I built Taliassen form Mema. It
was to be our home and safe haven and spring
(16:09):
green away from scavenging, report of a place where I
could work and Mama could continue translating the works of
ellen Key while we waited for our divorces to shake out.
I wish to return to Talias in spirit, to Meema.
(16:36):
The pond below Tallyassen shimmers and warps like a desert mirage.
And there it is. It's there, it's real, We're here.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It's nice asant it And now.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Is that not Mema but a small figure sprinting towards
us from the courtyard, past the stone walled garden, bursting
with flowers, tolder than she. There's a ringing in my ear,
growing more intense. He approaches. It's Martha Cheney, Mama's daughter.
(17:18):
I know her distinctive page boy hair cut well, her
sapphire ring, her white summer dress flashing in the sun.
Martha Cheney eternally eighty years old. This isn't my memory.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Spirit.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there is no U frank, no point where you
end and this begins. No single horizon line, no individual timeline.
This is all you, converging, intersecting all sight, sounds, memories
(17:55):
and fantasies, all simultaneously, statuette scan fluid. You can access
every memory in this plane, not just your own. This
memory belongs to the land. It is carved into the
shining brow of the hill itself, and everything you see
(18:19):
is your reflection, including her.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And perhaps she's here to guide me back to Meema,
who's inevitably punched over a book somewhere, or drinked on
a duck chair in a elegant way, Mark.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Bright, Young Martha.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
She's spirit. Why is she running with her arms out
like that? She's not running towards me. She looks to
be running away from something. She's mouthing words, but I
can't make out any sound. My ears are completely wiped
(19:01):
out by high pitched ringing Spirit. I can't hear over it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
She said, my feet spirit. I can't touch her.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
My hands go right through her. The tidy page boy
haircut is unzipping itself.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Ah h.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
I cannot see her murder, only her small body unraveling
before me. The blows keep coming from Martha's phantom assassin
was two three in quick succession. She is looking at me,
(19:53):
her skull belching blood, red rosettes blooming on her white dress.
One two free the feld sapling Martha eternally eight gone
in one two free. A girl is a gash, a
(20:17):
red plot of the earth. The ringing is gone. But
I hear the clandestine kiss of a match and gasoline
outside of the house. I hear the immediate and elemental
fear of trapped men howling. I. I can't Spirit, it's
(20:44):
too much, I can't continue take my sight.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
Spirit.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Let's go a little further this time, Frank, please no.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
He's here now.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Starched, white servant's jacket, now splatted with blood and blackened
with soot. In his hands, a hatchet and empty can
of Ghastly, it's Carleton, Jillian Carlton, the murderer, and I
(21:20):
come here to visit my angels, and instead I'm haunted
by my demons.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Have courage.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
What more do you want a me demon, You're not
already taking everything from me?
Speaker 9 (21:36):
Just one thing? I want what ma'am wanted?
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Luncheon served on the private patty hole overlooking the pond.
She wanted a great many things for herself. She wanted
a man who wouldn't limit her into elligence. She coveted
another's husband, and coveting is a secret signal for the selfish.
(22:08):
She loved a linen chemise because it is simple. She
loved the Swedish language because it is not. The workmen
would be eating near the kitchen in the east wind,
after drafting houses and mending fences. The workmen wanted to
be praised for their discipline. The workmen wanted to be
(22:29):
praised for their industry and their humble beginnings. The workmen
wanted to be praised by a man who was praised
among men. Everyone kills something. As a man of ideas,
you just kill slower. A spirit called to me from
(22:50):
the trees, a whisper in the wind. The spirit revealed
to me that the house and the people were filled
with evil. The spirit told me that the cheers were
stuffed with human hair. The spirit he grows from the cellar,
(23:11):
and he grows from these shadows and the spirit he
paints in Cherokee red. The spirit demands to be seen
as you are seen, equal in beauty and in cruelty.
A revolutionary design executed without regard for the human costs
or the laws of physics.
Speaker 9 (23:33):
The spirit demands to.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Be compensated for the affordances made for progress, for civilizations
gallop over people and nature.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
The spirit he told me to collect for the lash
and the cotton, and the coffee, and the sugar, and
the blankets covered in your diseases.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
To collect on the commission of suffering, for the blankets
keeping you warm and free from consequences. The spirit tolt
me to affect the tools of equilibrium, the ass and
the fuel, to move with the stealth of opportunity, with
(24:17):
the instincts of the pioneer, to burn all useless brush
on the warmstead.
Speaker 9 (24:26):
To make the land and those on the land.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
Servile, to call it holiness, to call it the manion.
The spirit told me to collect now or never. Man
(24:49):
with her hair pinned and a chinyong, the same beautiful
head that laid on your pillow, revealed its secrets to
me with the singles strike of my hatchet.
Speaker 9 (25:02):
Her son was not challenge all.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
The Martha saw it coming, a frightened bird flying into
the expos guy. I culled them all and stained my
crisp white coat. I harvested them first, and then went
to serve the workmen their soap.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
They did not.
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Notice the blood on my hands, only the little felling debules.
They did not notice me, except when I was the
black bastard who refused to saddle a white mas's horse.
They did not notice me or my wife, who made
the soup serf to them with bloodied hands. They did
(25:52):
not notice the river of gasoline suddenly onto the dining
room table, and the orange gown flames twirling at their feet.
They did not notice my blade waiting for them on
the other side of that locked door, breaking their bodies
into a course of screams, a courus of witnessing crows
(26:15):
and agony, flecks of wet brains scattered like the petals
of a cherry blossoming grain, a ritual transfiguration of.
Speaker 9 (26:25):
God made flesh.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
With each rise and fall of the hatchet, to hear
the pleas and squeals of grown men rusting like figs,
like the big bastards that they were like you are
the pig bastard who stole what wasn't hysterotic. I am
(26:51):
speaking to you and through you. Now I say onto you,
it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich.
Speaker 9 (26:59):
Man to enter the Kingdom of God. I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it. Even the little girl. Her screams.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Her screams were as white as the driven snow. Her
screams were spring lilies in the mouth of an avenging dog.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
What does he want?
Speaker 9 (27:39):
I only want to be seen.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You shown me this spirit.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Tell me now you design the scene, Frank, this is
your point of view, and you will be condemned to
witness these projections again and again till you learn.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
What is there to possibly learn about the murder of
the woman I loved? Surely I'm not responsible for the
actions of that mad man. I look upon these ruins,
the gaping black hole left by the fire, and the
beautiful hillside is no less empty, charred and ugly in
(28:23):
my own soul, What am I to take away?
Speaker 6 (28:28):
What?
Speaker 11 (28:28):
Hmm?
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Something of madness? What? But it is my fault? In
what universe is that possible. Maybe my lesson is an
destruction rather than creation, and madness is some kind of genius?
Would that do? Who's allowed to be a genius? Who's
(28:50):
allowed to steal from another his land, his art, his wife,
his dignity, his comfort? Who is a madman in a
said country? Nothing about an affair so evil that it
should condemn anyone to witness this horror for an eternity.
Nothing I have stolen justifies this?
Speaker 9 (29:14):
Then?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Why do you find yourself here again and again and
again and again and again. Your soul understands what it
needs to learn from this tribulation. You have designed and
built this purgatory for yourself. It's it's gorgeous, A frame
(29:34):
constructed of hope, yes, but a foundation of fear. What
do you fear?
Speaker 11 (29:45):
I buried maybe with my old hands. I wrapped her
body in flowers. I thought I had paid my portion
of Greece? How do I I still deserve?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
What makes you so sure you do deserve this?
Speaker 4 (30:05):
I should have been there, I could have stopped it. Yes,
that's it. I became complacent. A man should protect the
relationships he builds. Yes, that's it. That's his blessing and
his curse. Yes, I get it. It's it's my fault. Satisfied,
(30:26):
Now you satisfied, it's my fault. I need to lie down.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
A gosh, It's time to get up, Frank. Start your
story again, and this time tell yourself the truth.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I no longer have a body and I get up?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Do I? How do I move?
Speaker 4 (31:02):
If I don't have a body?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Your consciousness is all you need? Focus? Recall movement? What easy.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
I can recall movement?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
What do I see?
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I see grass on the hill, grass, and some the
distle bowing to the wind waves of it, the ocean
of green rushing away from me. Yes, yes, yes, I
stand alone in a verdant field. I know all this.
I know this to be my family land. But there
(31:42):
are none of the structures I must leave.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Frank now stranded in this matrix of wood and stone
and prism, glass and remorse, or the lines between his
mind and the universe or blurred. Frank is lost inside
(32:06):
of his own ego, tumbling through a vortex of questions.
What do you owe those around you? From who you
take and borrow and steal? What amount of yourself, your success,
your life do you owe them in return? How long
must you punish yourselves for your own transgressions. Frank will
(32:31):
be the great designer of his own punishment, for many
loops to come before he's able to break the bonds
he has fabricated, reliving the horrors of his life, an
echo of trauma folding in on itself again and again.
But there is no greater destroyer of ego than grief.
(32:52):
He will discover the truth eventually, even if he re
envisions this place a billion times, and only then will
he complete his passage. Well, I have faith in him.
He is, after all, one the hell of an architect.
(33:19):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
This episode features Michael Cook as Frank Lloyd Wright, also
featuring Kevin Hines as Julian Carlton.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Written by Christinel Casciba.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakowski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
First Assistant director, script's supervisor and.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Music by Ben Lovett, additional music.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
By Alexander Rodriguez. Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Editing and sound designed by Dan Bush.
Speaker 8 (33:51):
Dialogue editing and sound mixing by Juan Campos, additional sound
editing by Racket Sound.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Our supervising producer is Josh Thane. Created by Dan Bush
and Nicholas Takowski. Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is
a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures
Hm, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Was heard to shut from the car. He's dead.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Whether he rebird to president.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Or four hours, people must get up and google identification.
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road
is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between
(01:09):
their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All I ask for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives
and the great temporary that is the land we're living.
These are their stories. This is.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
The passage.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm making a pit stop today, checking in a particular passenger. A.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I do not normally allow my passengers such liberties, but
for this soul, I've made an exception. It is August.
It is always August in this place, this place, in
the in between balance and form and function, and haunted
(02:33):
by bloody tragedy, the largest single incident of mass murder
in Wisconsin's history. This place which is not as it appears.
This place which is and is not spring green, where
the lines between the brilliant mind that builds it and
(02:57):
the rest of time and space blurred. The same mind
which had a hand in the design of the whole
of the twentieth century. Frank Lloyd Wright a towering figure
in his field, incredibly prolific in his lifetime. His designs
(03:19):
will prove to echo through their work for thousands of
years to come, and his visions represent the first truly
American architecture. He saw the world shifting. He was an
architect of that shift. He envisioned an America where mankind
lived in harmony with the land, where the home was
(03:41):
the center of life and a hearth the center of home.
There was a personal cost, however, as he left his
life in April of nineteen fifty nine, he believed his
work unfinished. There are no corporeal tools in the Bardo,
(04:02):
so he worked with all of the material left him
his own life. And what a construction he has made
here in the in between. But only he will be
able to tell us when he's done building. Hello, Frank,
(04:32):
it's time.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I didn't see you coming.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, it's time to get up, Frank.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
I no longer have a body. How do I get up?
If I don't have a body? Am I a reflection?
Peras only a shadow?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, your consciousness is all you need. Focus, recall, movement.
What do you see?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I see grass on the hill, grass and summer thistle
bowing to the wind waves of it. An ocean of
green rushing away from me.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's good, Frank, this.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Is spring green. I'd know this slope of Wisconsin hillside anywhere.
I know it as well as my hands know my
own face in the dark.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Why have you taken me here? Spirit?
Speaker 7 (05:36):
The soul knows where it needs to go to heal itself.
Heal the soul, that's absurd. I didn't need any healing
in life, and I certainly don't require any healing and death.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
But you do. Come on, Frank. Our memories the mother
of all wisdom. You can access your own memories and
the memories of others here. These impressions all connect here,
every memory of every living thing.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
So what do I do?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Speak the truth, Frank, as you see it, and we
will be on our way. Speak.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I stand alone in a verdant field. I know this
to be my family land, But there are none of
the structures I'd known in life. No Unitarian chapel, no
twin windmills nicknamed Romeo and Juliet, no country school. I
(06:44):
am surveying the slopes for any sign of civilization. When
a man in a black suit appears before me, his
face is gray and unyielding in his january.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Your mother send you to work on this farm every summer,
and every returner did as aft as the day.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You were born.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
My uncle, James Lloyd Jones, long since dead. I haven't
seen James in over forty years, but here he is
just as menacing as I'd remembered him as a child.
I tried to run away from him, to escape his farm,
(07:31):
but was found quickly and dragged back screaming. I learned
two things during those interminable summers of work and prayer
at Aldebaran Farm. Firstly, that I hated physical labor and
took it as a sign that I was created for
loftier things than plows and take shit. The second, and
(07:56):
more profound lesson that I took from the slopes of
Spring Green was that America was made for the horizon.
It was made from movement with the land forward forward Wisconsin, Forward,
America across the prairie to become the prairie, within the mountains,
(08:18):
to become the mountains. Forward into the forest to become
the trees. A manifest expansion. Forward across the globe America
dessert buildings that reflected this movement, and I was destined
by God to create them.
Speaker 8 (08:42):
You you are shame on this family might leave this place,
but you'll never leave. That.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Is that your own morality speaking or did you borrow
your thoughts from the town paper again?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Here's a morality lesson for you, boy.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
We came there from Smarting Dome, the black spotted whales.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
Called that's by hostile or outsiders because.
Speaker 8 (09:07):
Of its religious unorthodoxy, called that really because of its
religious purity. Honest, godly people civilized this land, Frank, and
you you gave it back to the devil when you
stole that man's wife and.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Brought it here.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I'm bored of this, James.
Speaker 8 (09:27):
Do you know why you always returned to your mother's
soft boy? Because you're always looking for a short You're
probably looking for one right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Now, James, face.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Rigulous, grotesquely, his eyes rolling back, he opens his mouth
to speak. A dark room of spiders rushing forward between
his strained lips. He falls to his knees, his body
engulfed by a thousand of racknets. He's squirming and choking
(10:10):
on their selven legs. The black soil is beginning to
quake and froth and open up beneath him. Swallowing his
gray friend, he struggles to climb out of the hole.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No, no, no, He.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Points towards the horizon, and a great white complex materializes,
as though he's summoned it. It's the Chicago World's Fair Pavilion,
exactly as it stood in eighteen ninety three. A pathway
toward the white complex then opening in the grass before me,
(10:48):
and a crow lands on the root ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I will leave James to follow it. I will not
look back. What do you remember about the fair, Frank?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
That was the year that I left the firm of
Adler and Sullivan and struck out on my own.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, What do you remember seeing at the pavilion?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
The fair celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the landing
of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Disappointing gowdy architecture, monstrous
Greek revival buildings, painted ivory, the old ideas of Europe,
(11:40):
regurgitated by New York architects who came to the Chicago
swamp land to have their boots lit by their Midwestern colleagues.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You're editorializing, Frank, What did you see there?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I remember Frederick law ownsteads beautiful glass boats in the
man made lagoon, and here one arrives on the placid
water suddenly before us? Shall we board?
Speaker 9 (12:15):
After?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You continue?
Speaker 9 (12:22):
There?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Ahead of us wooded island located in the center of
the water forward to Hodin, meaning Phoenix's Palace. It was
a recreation of a temple that combined several centuries of
Japanese architecture and history into a tea garden and three
(12:45):
single story buildings that moved horizontally with the island from
east to west, forward with the island to become the island.
It commanded the eye with the subtle beauty. It vibrated
with life in the foreground against the hulking white giants
(13:08):
on the parallel shore. My hands itch for a pencil
and drafting table.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Your hands itched for a pencil, and they found one.
You found a shortcut. What are you suggesting here?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Spirit?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
You know precisely what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Old didn't confirmed ideas I'd already had. They were my
own ideas. If they were not, then it was providence
that I should make them known to the world.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
This is a story of theft. You can leave when
you can see who did the stealing.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I refuse to dignify that with a response.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
You are the progeny of devoted unitarians. Tell me, Frank,
what is the seventh commandment?
Speaker 4 (14:03):
The shot not commit adultery? Oh the Phoenix temple, it's
caught fire and now was gone the mirage. I'm back
in the field with an accusing spirit.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
These are your belongings, Frank, not mine. What was her name?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Her name was Mama. I met Maema when she and
her husband, Edward Cheney, were clients of mine. I was
commissioned to build them a house in Oak Park, near
the home that I shared with Kitty and our six children.
(14:56):
The affair didn't happen immediately. By the time Maema and
I were discovered, I was already determined to release myself.
I'd found my soul's match in Maema, my intellectual equal,
(15:20):
and there was no staying with Kitty and the children.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
After that.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Consolagration of body and spirit, every time I returned to
the house in Oak Park, who felt like enslavement, to
endure an early and unfit marriage, the monotony of domestic
life and needful mouths of children, the unpaid debts mounting.
(15:49):
Maema and I agreed that the falsehood it took to
continue our respective marriages was greater than the sin of
living an authentic truth. I built Taliassen form Mema. It
was to be our home and safe haven and spring
(16:09):
green away from scavenging, report of a place where I
could work and Mama could continue translating the works of
ellen Key while we waited for our divorces to shake out.
I wish to return to Talias in spirit, to Meema.
(16:36):
The pond below Tallyassen shimmers and warps like a desert mirage.
And there it is. It's there, it's real, We're here.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It's nice asant it And now.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Is that not Mema but a small figure sprinting towards
us from the courtyard, past the stone walled garden, bursting
with flowers, tolder than she. There's a ringing in my ear,
growing more intense. He approaches. It's Martha Cheney, Mama's daughter.
(17:18):
I know her distinctive page boy hair cut well, her
sapphire ring, her white summer dress flashing in the sun.
Martha Cheney eternally eighty years old. This isn't my memory.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Spirit.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there is no U frank, no point where you
end and this begins. No single horizon line, no individual timeline.
This is all you, converging, intersecting all sight, sounds, memories
(17:55):
and fantasies, all simultaneously, statuette scan fluid. You can access
every memory in this plane, not just your own. This
memory belongs to the land. It is carved into the
shining brow of the hill itself, and everything you see
(18:19):
is your reflection, including her.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And perhaps she's here to guide me back to Meema,
who's inevitably punched over a book somewhere, or drinked on
a duck chair in a elegant way, Mark.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Bright, Young Martha.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
She's spirit. Why is she running with her arms out
like that? She's not running towards me. She looks to
be running away from something. She's mouthing words, but I
can't make out any sound. My ears are completely wiped
(19:01):
out by high pitched ringing Spirit. I can't hear over it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
She said, my feet spirit. I can't touch her.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
My hands go right through her. The tidy page boy
haircut is unzipping itself.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Ah h.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
I cannot see her murder, only her small body unraveling
before me. The blows keep coming from Martha's phantom assassin
was two three in quick succession. She is looking at me,
(19:53):
her skull belching blood, red rosettes blooming on her white dress.
One two free the feld sapling Martha eternally eight gone
in one two free. A girl is a gash, a
(20:17):
red plot of the earth. The ringing is gone. But
I hear the clandestine kiss of a match and gasoline
outside of the house. I hear the immediate and elemental
fear of trapped men howling. I. I can't Spirit, it's
(20:44):
too much, I can't continue take my sight.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
Spirit.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Let's go a little further this time, Frank, please no.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
He's here now.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Starched, white servant's jacket, now splatted with blood and blackened
with soot. In his hands, a hatchet and empty can
of Ghastly, it's Carleton, Jillian Carlton, the murderer, and I
(21:20):
come here to visit my angels, and instead I'm haunted
by my demons.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Have courage.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
What more do you want a me demon, You're not
already taking everything from me?
Speaker 9 (21:36):
Just one thing? I want what ma'am wanted?
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Luncheon served on the private patty hole overlooking the pond.
She wanted a great many things for herself. She wanted
a man who wouldn't limit her into elligence. She coveted
another's husband, and coveting is a secret signal for the selfish.
(22:08):
She loved a linen chemise because it is simple. She
loved the Swedish language because it is not. The workmen
would be eating near the kitchen in the east wind,
after drafting houses and mending fences. The workmen wanted to
be praised for their discipline. The workmen wanted to be
(22:29):
praised for their industry and their humble beginnings. The workmen
wanted to be praised by a man who was praised
among men. Everyone kills something. As a man of ideas,
you just kill slower. A spirit called to me from
(22:50):
the trees, a whisper in the wind. The spirit revealed
to me that the house and the people were filled
with evil. The spirit told me that the cheers were
stuffed with human hair. The spirit he grows from the cellar,
(23:11):
and he grows from these shadows and the spirit he
paints in Cherokee red. The spirit demands to be seen
as you are seen, equal in beauty and in cruelty.
A revolutionary design executed without regard for the human costs
or the laws of physics.
Speaker 9 (23:33):
The spirit demands to.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Be compensated for the affordances made for progress, for civilizations
gallop over people and nature.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
The spirit he told me to collect for the lash
and the cotton, and the coffee, and the sugar, and
the blankets covered in your diseases.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
To collect on the commission of suffering, for the blankets
keeping you warm and free from consequences. The spirit tolt
me to affect the tools of equilibrium, the ass and
the fuel, to move with the stealth of opportunity, with
(24:17):
the instincts of the pioneer, to burn all useless brush
on the warmstead.
Speaker 9 (24:26):
To make the land and those on the land.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
Servile, to call it holiness, to call it the manion.
The spirit told me to collect now or never. Man
(24:49):
with her hair pinned and a chinyong, the same beautiful
head that laid on your pillow, revealed its secrets to
me with the singles strike of my hatchet.
Speaker 9 (25:02):
Her son was not challenge all.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
The Martha saw it coming, a frightened bird flying into
the expos guy. I culled them all and stained my
crisp white coat. I harvested them first, and then went
to serve the workmen their soap.
Speaker 9 (25:27):
They did not.
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Notice the blood on my hands, only the little felling debules.
They did not notice me, except when I was the
black bastard who refused to saddle a white mas's horse.
They did not notice me or my wife, who made
the soup serf to them with bloodied hands. They did
(25:52):
not notice the river of gasoline suddenly onto the dining
room table, and the orange gown flames twirling at their feet.
They did not notice my blade waiting for them on
the other side of that locked door, breaking their bodies
into a course of screams, a courus of witnessing crows
(26:15):
and agony, flecks of wet brains scattered like the petals
of a cherry blossoming grain, a ritual transfiguration of.
Speaker 9 (26:25):
God made flesh.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
With each rise and fall of the hatchet, to hear
the pleas and squeals of grown men rusting like figs,
like the big bastards that they were like you are
the pig bastard who stole what wasn't hysterotic. I am
(26:51):
speaking to you and through you. Now I say onto you,
it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich.
Speaker 9 (26:59):
Man to enter the Kingdom of God. I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it. Even the little girl. Her screams.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Her screams were as white as the driven snow. Her
screams were spring lilies in the mouth of an avenging dog.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
What does he want?
Speaker 9 (27:39):
I only want to be seen.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You shown me this spirit.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Tell me now you design the scene, Frank, this is
your point of view, and you will be condemned to
witness these projections again and again till you learn.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
What is there to possibly learn about the murder of
the woman I loved? Surely I'm not responsible for the
actions of that mad man. I look upon these ruins,
the gaping black hole left by the fire, and the
beautiful hillside is no less empty, charred and ugly in
(28:23):
my own soul, What am I to take away?
Speaker 6 (28:28):
What?
Speaker 11 (28:28):
Hmm?
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Something of madness? What? But it is my fault? In
what universe is that possible. Maybe my lesson is an
destruction rather than creation, and madness is some kind of genius?
Would that do? Who's allowed to be a genius? Who's
(28:50):
allowed to steal from another his land, his art, his wife,
his dignity, his comfort? Who is a madman in a
said country? Nothing about an affair so evil that it
should condemn anyone to witness this horror for an eternity.
Nothing I have stolen justifies this?
Speaker 9 (29:14):
Then?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Why do you find yourself here again and again and
again and again and again. Your soul understands what it
needs to learn from this tribulation. You have designed and
built this purgatory for yourself. It's it's gorgeous, A frame
(29:34):
constructed of hope, yes, but a foundation of fear. What
do you fear?
Speaker 11 (29:45):
I buried maybe with my old hands. I wrapped her
body in flowers. I thought I had paid my portion
of Greece? How do I I still deserve?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
What makes you so sure you do deserve this?
Speaker 4 (30:05):
I should have been there, I could have stopped it. Yes,
that's it. I became complacent. A man should protect the
relationships he builds. Yes, that's it. That's his blessing and
his curse. Yes, I get it. It's it's my fault. Satisfied,
(30:26):
Now you satisfied, it's my fault. I need to lie down.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
A gosh, It's time to get up, Frank. Start your
story again, and this time tell yourself the truth.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I no longer have a body and I get up?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Do I? How do I move?
Speaker 4 (31:02):
If I don't have a body?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Your consciousness is all you need? Focus? Recall movement? What easy.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
I can recall movement?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
What do I see?
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I see grass on the hill, grass, and some the
distle bowing to the wind waves of it, the ocean
of green rushing away from me. Yes, yes, yes, I
stand alone in a verdant field. I know all this.
I know this to be my family land. But there
(31:42):
are none of the structures I must leave.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Frank now stranded in this matrix of wood and stone
and prism, glass and remorse, or the lines between his
mind and the universe or blurred. Frank is lost inside
(32:06):
of his own ego, tumbling through a vortex of questions.
What do you owe those around you? From who you
take and borrow and steal? What amount of yourself, your success,
your life do you owe them in return? How long
must you punish yourselves for your own transgressions. Frank will
(32:31):
be the great designer of his own punishment, for many
loops to come before he's able to break the bonds
he has fabricated, reliving the horrors of his life, an
echo of trauma folding in on itself again and again.
But there is no greater destroyer of ego than grief.
(32:52):
He will discover the truth eventually, even if he re
envisions this place a billion times, and only then will
he complete his passage. Well, I have faith in him.
He is, after all, one the hell of an architect.
(33:19):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
This episode features Michael Cook as Frank Lloyd Wright, also
featuring Kevin Hines as Julian Carlton.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Written by Christinel Casciba.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakowski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
Speaker 5 (33:37):
First Assistant director, script's supervisor and.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Music by Ben Lovett, additional music.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
By Alexander Rodriguez. Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Editing and sound designed by Dan Bush.
Speaker 8 (33:51):
Dialogue editing and sound mixing by Juan Campos, additional sound
editing by Racket Sound.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Our supervising producer is Josh Thane. Created by Dan Bush
and Nicholas Takowski. Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is
a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com