Listening with Daniel Weintraub, Filmmaker

Daniel Weintraub is a Director, Producer and Editor. His most recent feature length documentary "Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros", is currently screening all over the world and garnering Weintraub best director accolades. Daniel also created documentary and experimental shorts on the work of Oliveros; "Don’t Call Them Lady Composers", and "Montage for Improvisors" which were shown in museums and festivals in CA, NY, UK, Spain and Switzerland. Additionally, Daniel acted as video curator for the exhibition of Pauline’s work at Centro de Creacion Contemporanea de Andalucia, Cordoba, Spain.

Weintraub will speak about listening as a filmmaker and his documentary "Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros"

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to listening with China Blue.

(00:03):
This is a podcast that focuses on how listening not only informs us about what is occurring in the world around us,
but also helps us connect with others,
build stronger businesses,
strengthens our mental health,
and become more creative and compassionate individuals.
As more and more people practice attentive listening in a community,

(00:23):
it becomes a community building practice that
strengthens our mental health as we learn from our neighbors.
I will be interviewing people from all walks of life to learn how listening has informed them in their field
and help them to make intelligent decisions.
They will be artists, musicians, composers, dancers,

(00:44):
business people, psychologists, neuroscientists, and Buddhists, to name a few.
About me, I'm an internationally exhibiting sound-based artist.
In my work, Discovering Unheard Sounds,
I realized that the core component that drove my work was simply listening.

(01:04):
That realization put me on the path of speaking about and helping people learn to become better listeners.
I began with leading sound walks,
which I continue to do in the upstate New York region to help people learn to listen from nature.
And now, tune your ears to this podcast to learn about the power of listening.

(01:27):
And do pay attention until the end for further information on how to start your own listening practice,
share it with others, and to support listening with China Blue.
Today we are speaking with Daniel Weintraub.
Daniel Weintraub is a director, producer, and editor.

(01:49):
His most recent feature-length documentary, Deep Listening,
the story of Pauline Oliveros, is currently screening all over the world
and garnering Weintraub best director accolades.
Daniel has also created documentary and experimental shorts on the work of Oliveros,
titled Don't Call Them Lady Composers, and Montage for Improvisers,

(02:13):
which were shown in museums and festivals in California, New York, United Kingdom, Spain, and Switzerland.
Additionally, Daniel acted as video curator for the exhibition of Pauline's work
at Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía Cordova, Spain.
Daniel has written and directed several narrative short and documentary films,

(02:38):
experimental films, and dance films that were featured at festivals around the world.
Seasoned in film and television, Daniel has worked as an editor and director on commercials,
music videos, TV shows, and feature films across a career spanning 25 years.

(02:58):
His work for HBO and Comedy Central earned ProMax and BDA awards.
Most recently, as an editor, he worked on award-winning post-Katrina documentary feature, Forced Change.
Daniel is passionate about youth arts education, both as an educator and with Forge Media,

(03:19):
an apprentice-based production company offering film students professional experience
working on videos for local organizations focused on supporting and building community.
Additionally, Daniel is a musician, producer, and recording engineer mixing sound for picture
and music recordings of artists including Lionel Lukey, the Fleece Brothers, Karen Ann,

(03:46):
and the record Molecular Affinity, a trio with Pauline Oliveros, Thola McDonaghs, and Nels Klein.
Daniel is a member of the band Touloula and has released several solo records as Black Words Men.
Okay, welcome Daniel Weintraub.

(04:06):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm really, really excited to speak with you because for actually for many reasons.
But first, let me introduce the fact that you created the film Deep Listening, the story of Pauline Oliveros.
Now Pauline coined the term deep listening, which is a listening practice that includes bodywork,

(04:28):
psych meditations, interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature,
one's own thoughts, imagination, and dreams.
Now, I've been wondering how this idea impacted you as a filmmaker and engineer
because you must have been thinking a lot about this as you were making the movie.

(04:49):
Yeah, I thought about this a lot more since you told me we were going to talk.
I know when we originally sort of chatted about this, I kind of explained the initial kind of difficulty I had in a sense of connecting deep listening to filmmaking.

(05:09):
And that was based really on this.
What I feel is kind of the foundation, or at least the foundation for me, and I think from my time spent with Pauline,
the foundation of the practice of deep listening is this idea of focal and global listening.
This is sort of the pathway, I think, that opens you up to bigger things.

(05:33):
For those who don't know, focal listening would be, as Pauline would often say, focus and expand.
So focal listening would be noticing a sound that's close to you and really getting inside it
and letting that completely take over your listening and then expanding and expanding and going outside the space you're in and even outside that.

(05:55):
And in the most basic sense, this is kind of contrary to filmmaking because in filmmaking,
when you're in the theater watching a film, you're creating the illusion that the sound is emanating, obviously, from the image in front of you.
So it's a very focal, in the most basic sense, you don't want global listening in a film theater.

(06:21):
That's kind of like a distraction.
Sure.
But as I thought about it a lot more, I realized that in fact, other aspects of deep listening
and what I would say, sort of the byproducts of deep listening are absolutely crucial to me in the making of this film.

(06:42):
And even before the making of this film.
Let me interrupt. What do you mean by byproducts?
Well, so for example, one of the main, simplest one would be this concept of presence, right?
Because through listening so intently, you become more present.

(07:08):
So in a sense, I call that like a byproduct.
Obviously, it's a byproduct, it's totally central to the thing.
But it's not, you know, when you say, you know, generally when we speak about deep listening,
we say that deep listening helps you be more present, as opposed to saying, you know,
being present is the key to deep listening, which it is, of course.

(07:29):
But that's so in terms of a byproduct, that's what I mean.
So presence, you know, interviews, for example, that was a huge, huge thing is to be,
and very much with my approach to doing interviews.
And I did over 30 interviews in this film with a lot of really kind of all inspiring humans.

(07:55):
So, you know, I didn't want to be overwhelmed by the situation.
I didn't want to just be like fanboying.
And so I really, you know, I made sure that the, and I also didn't want to come in with
just a list of prepared questions.
So I took this approach to the interviews of very much being present.
I didn't even focus too hard on the technical aspects of the interviews.

(08:17):
I did all of them by myself.
There's not a lot of people running around, very simple lighting, very simple sound setup.
So I was able to just be extremely present in the moment with the people I was talking to, right?
Like some people say, like there's a great quote from the film where Becky Cohen says,
who's a colleague and friend of Pauline's in San Diego, that Pauline, you know, listens to one

(08:42):
person like she's listening to the whole world.
So that was kind of something that I really tried to do in these interviews so that I could
expand perhaps beyond what some of these people who have been highly interviewed before
usually talk about.
Which means of course, and of course you're doing this now.

(09:02):
So you're listening to me, you're picking up what I'm saying.
If you're being really present, you're probably your next question is coming based on what I'm
saying.
And that's kind of how I was doing, you know, doing these interviews by being in the moment.
So that's just, you know, that's one small example.
And there's, you know, many, many, many other ways that elements of deep listening shape

(09:28):
the filmmaking, not only of this film, but of all my films.
I can expand on that more if you'd like.
No, I was just, you know, thinking about the fact that you had mentioned in one of our past
conversations that you're also interested in how music sounds in space.

(09:50):
And I was curious about what that meant to you.
And if you're talking about, and what kind of spaces you're talking about, are you talking
about unusual spaces or studios or what kind of environments are you thinking about?
Well, I think it's all environments.
It's really something that I, this is one of the things that when I first, when sort

(10:16):
of Pauline first emerged in my consciousness as a potential subject for a film, you know,
one of the, I wasn't really super aware of the deep listening and particularly of her
writing and the more sort of philosophical nature of her work.
I was really just aware of her as a musician and a composer.

(10:39):
So, you know, this idea of listening to sound in the space is absolutely central to Pauline's
as a performer, particularly.
And that was something that I had thought about so much before I ever really encountered her
thinking.
And then she was putting it into, and this is a lot of people tell me this, that she

(11:02):
manages to articulate in the most sort of direct kind of simple way, very complex ideas.
So, you know, I had in my head these things, you know, swimming around that were akin to
deep listening, one of them being the idea of sound within a space.
And she just really helped to illuminate that for me.
So, made me more aware, more present when I'm thinking about this.

(11:26):
You know, when it comes to, you know, when you're recording sound in a room, you're hearing
the room, you know, that makes a difference, whether it's, you know, particularly with
music, but even with an interview.
So, you know, I've become, just being aware of that and how it impacts the impression

(11:47):
that the audience is getting is really important.
And whether or not do you want to hear more of the room or less of the room, these kinds
of things really come into play when you're mixing a film, when you're trying to tell
a story.
And quick question.
When did she become, as you put it, a subject for you to concentrate on?

(12:10):
I would say the subject of a film, right?
So, yes, better put.
Yeah, the subject of my film, you know, because when I came, when I moved to the Hudson Valley,
about 13 years ago now, I had the intention of making a feature length film.
But I didn't, a documentary, I think, was a feature length film.
But I didn't, a documentary, but I didn't know the quote unquote subject.

(12:35):
So that's the, that's the content that I'm thinking about.
So it really comes back to, you know, as I said, I moved up here with the intention of
making a feature length documentary.
I had edited other feature length documentaries I had made as a director, numerous short films,
but I never, I was living in the city.

(12:56):
I just didn't really have the bandwidth to do justice to a feature length project.
And I knew once I moved up here that I would have a lot more bandwidth.
There's a big reason why I moved up here.
And, you know, and, you know, just peace and meditation and, you know, the kinds of things
you need to really do a big project, which honestly, I think is one of the things that

(13:20):
really drew Pauline to this area as well.
So the, I think it was four days after I got here, a neighbor of mine came over and we
were talking and I didn't even tell her, I was thinking of making a film, but I did tell
her that I'm a filmmaker and a musician.
And she just comes out and says, oh, you should make a film about Pauline Oliveros.

(13:40):
So that, that was when it really like, and I didn't know, I did not know that Pauline
was living 20 minutes away from me.
I had no idea.
And on top of that, this neighbor, of course, knows Pauline and had done some grant writing
for her.
So she eventually set up about a year later, a lunch with, with Pauline and Ion.
But during the, the span of that year, I became really, really excited and obsessed with the

(14:09):
idea of doing this film.
And of course, once I met Pauline, I knew I had to do it no matter what.
Unfortunately, she felt the same way.
So, and it's really good.
I felt that way because it took me 10 years to make the film.
So if I didn't have that sort of passion and commitment and sort of what, you know, how
I've thought about this before, if there's any other, you know, subject that I could

(14:34):
have dedicated so much time and energy to, and I can't think of anything just because,
you know, in the process of making this film, I was discovering, you know, I was
discovering so much about Pauline, which of course, with the nature of Pauline's work,
meant I was discovering a lot about myself.
And so it really was like a, a growth experience, which is what kept me able to stay focused

(15:00):
for such a long period of time on this project.
Right, right.
And that's, that's the part that I find really fascinating.
Excuse me.
And I was wondering if we could delve a little bit deeper into the idea of your concept,
your, as you sort of put it, as the elusive concept of deep listening that you had started

(15:26):
to think about, but before it was articulated better through your relationship with Oliveros.
And I was wondering if you had, how, how, how did that evolve?
How did that come to exist in your mind and become something you were starting to think

(15:46):
about?
Well, I think that, you know, a lot of what it did was kind of provide, you know, in the
beginning, what Pauline really did was provide me with sort of a context for some things
that I had been thinking about, which then allowed me to then expand those processes.

(16:07):
So, that's what I meant was the things you were starting to think about.
Yeah.
Well, so, you know, a big, a big thing for me is this idea.
In fact, I have a, I was reading yesterday, I was rereading quantum listening, and I was
reading, and I came across this, this quote that was pretty much like describes the entire

(16:34):
process for me of this film, which is, listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering
meaning, interpreting, and deciding on action.
So, you know, that's amazing.
Like, I never thought about listening as being that before, but, you know, when, once, once
you read that, you realize it's completely obvious.
And, you know, it's very much the approach I took to this film on a couple levels.

(17:00):
The first one being just how I learned about Pauline, right?
Because Pauline did not, you know, when you work, we did work together on this film, in
a sense, in that, obviously, I was here, and I followed her extensively for, you know,
the three, between 2013 and 2016.
And we spent a lot of time together, and she was never lecturing me or trying to impart

(17:25):
information.
She's, kind of, points you in a couple directions, says, interview these, like, five or six
people, go to maybe these two archives.
That's, like, what she told me.
But what happened is that each person I interviewed, if I was present and, you know, paying
attention to this and deciding how to take action, led me to another interview or another

(17:50):
archive or another library.
So it was by, you know, by listening and taking action that I learned about Pauline.
And then it really, really comes into play with the editing process, because a big, my
biggest struggle with this film, you know, other than sort of, you know, the couple years

(18:13):
where I really had to wrestle with how to deal with the fact that Pauline had passed
while I was making the film.
The big thing was that I'd, when I started this film, I really intended to try and capture
Pauline's spirit in the, in the, you know, her creative and sort of avant-garde spirit

(18:33):
in the way the film came out.
And I found that I tried and tried writing out outlines, chapters, all these different
things.
And nothing was working because, you know, I was discovering that you can't, telling
her story in a nonlinear way is really difficult because you can't really talk about deep listening

(18:57):
until you understand how she arrived at that.
And that was a process that took, you know, 30 years.
So ultimately what I did when I started editing this film was exactly that phrase that I read.
I organized the footage very, very well.

(19:19):
So I spent days and days just watching everything.
I don't, not thinking at all about how I'm going to use it or anything, making notes
and then, you know, doing what we call like sub clips.
So I label a clip, you know, Pauline talks about Tony Martin or something like that.
And so then once I started editing, it really was this, this organic process of make two

(19:43):
edits and now what are those two edits suggest the next edit should be.
And I just worked that way and I worked really fast and that's kind of how the structure
of the film just evolved on its own.
So I really opened myself up to this, you know, this idea of, I read it again because
she says it so much better than I can.
Right directing attention to what is heard.

(20:05):
In other words, directing attention to what I'm putting in the edit, gathering the meaning,
interpreting and deciding on action, which would be of course following at it and where
that takes me and where that takes me.
So I found that, you know, that was like a huge guiding factor for me and, you know,
the ability to kind of put that within this larger framework that Pauline gave us, gives

(20:31):
us is just so, so valuable for me.
You know, I don't think I ever would have thought of that process as listening before,
for example.
And I think that's really, you know, with quantum listening, I think like this idea
of listening to your listening is just, it's amazing.
And you know, I never, even though, like I said, I was doing some of these things already,
I never would have thought about listening in that way and understood the impact it can

(20:56):
have on us as humans in the world.
You know, like Pauline says over and over, there's no empathy without listening, no understanding.
You know, it's all, this is how we really, the main way we connect as humans and learn
is through listening.
And that was, that was that connection for me was super valuable in not only in the making

(21:17):
of this film, but just as an artist in general.
Well that's really, really fascinating to hear.
I was going to say to see, but that doesn't make any sense, right?
To hear how it slowly became applied in your process as an engineer and a filmmaker, because

(21:42):
it allowed you to create a path.
And in my understanding of filmmaking, oftentimes you create a whole script and you follow the
steps of the whole script in order to tell a clear story.
And you didn't do that.
You let the story unfold through your process of listening to what will, how it, listening

(22:11):
to how it will lead you.
And that's, you know, sort of a bizarre approach, but it makes a lot of sense because it creates
its own path and you don't have to create a template to squeeze everything in and wonder,
oh, I have this little lingering little bit over here that's really, really important
that tells this particular story.

(22:32):
How do I shoe horn in this bit here?
And then it becomes this like collage of stuff that becomes, comes often not related, if
you will.
And that's, I mean, that's a huge part as a, you know, that's a lesson that you learn
as a director pretty early.
You better learn as a director pretty early on, which is you can't get too attached to

(22:55):
stuff because it might be that your favorite shot you ever took in your life just doesn't
work with the story.
You have to be willing to get rid of stuff.
I did, I mean, the one caveat I should say is that I did know how I was going to start
and end the film.
Oh, really?
I knew, for example, for those of you who've seen the film, it ends with kind of the last

(23:19):
big piece that Pauline did where she worked with some non-hearing musicians in Bergen.
And then over the credits, I have the audience do the tuning meditation.
And then the film opens with this very abstract kind of hypnotic image that is the opening

(23:40):
title.
And that my idea was literally to try and kind of hypnotize the audience a little bit
and try and like bring them into Pauline's world, like right from the beginning and get
them, you know, almost like doing, you know, almost like some of Pauline's sort of Tai-Chi
exercises that she does before you start practicing listening.
This was sort of my, so I did have a beginning and the end, but I didn't know how I was going

(24:00):
to get from one place to the other.
So that's where I really applied, you know, this principle of, you know, paying attention
and then, you know, taking action to see where it would lead me.
And that's really great that you mentioned the tuning meditation, which you introduced

(24:22):
as the final bit in the film.
And you had mentioned to me that you wanted to bring the audience into the film in a new
way by including the tuning meditation, but you were a bit leery about this and what kind
of response you would get.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to, I don't know, come to terms with

(24:48):
that?
Because as a filmmaker, you know, it's already in the can and it's not like it's a performance
thing where you can sort of adjust the performance as you're responding to the audience.
So how did you kind of come to terms with, and oh, maybe you should explain first what
the tuning meditation is and then speak a little bit about your reaction to the audience's

(25:15):
inclusion.
Well, the tuning meditation is one of the sonic meditations that Pauline wrote in 1971.
Very, very, very simple text based score that can be performed by non-musicians.
In this case, it really is just about making long vowel tones, listen to what other people

(25:39):
are doing, try and do something similar to what they're doing and do something different,
try and listen to the whole audience.
It's very, it's very simple.
So one thing really, again, and this I think comes down to one of these, what I'm calling

(25:59):
byproducts of deep listening is community.
Right?
That's honestly, for me, that is the main theme of my film and probably of Pauline's
work.
As she says in the film, one of the most popular quotes is, I never tried to build a career,
I just tried to build a community.
And as bringing this film to the world at this point, it's really unbelievable.

(26:28):
She did that.
And when you build a community instead of a career, the thing that's really incredible
that I came to realize only once I started traveling with the film is that her career
isn't over.
Oh, no.
Her career doesn't end with the person because she's built this community that was her career
and they're still out there.

(26:48):
Because of the nature of Pauline's work, they're using it in ways that maybe Pauline never
even thought of.
You know, just off the top of my head, I met a deep listening certificate holder in Leeds
who is working with, he's an architect, he's working with hospitals and public spaces to
incorporate some of the ideas of deep listening in architectural practices.

(27:13):
So anyway, so that comes back to this idea of the theater.
And of course, a theater is a community.
You're watching this film together, you have a shared experience.
Sure.
You know, now, you know, I try it, there's humor in this film, of course, because it's
Pauline.
And, you know, if you see the film with the right audience, there's a lot of laughter.

(27:35):
So that helps to bring sort of to highlight for people that they are in a community, they
are sharing this experience.
So I think the tuning meditation, of course, is the ultimate way to really, right, you've
just, you've just watched, you know, almost two hours of Pauline's brilliance.
Now, let's put it into practice, you know, let's see how it works for you with the people

(28:00):
sitting around you.
So yeah, I really, it doesn't always work.
It's true.
You know, like it's some, some audiences don't do it, but some audiences do it really beautifully.
And it's, you know, it's a decision I definitely don't regret.

(28:23):
When I saw it in Reinbeck, the audience was really hyper engaged and so excited about
participating and clapped heavily afterwards.
They were just, it was, the response was so palpable because they were so excited about
participating with Pauline, even though she was not physically present.

(28:50):
Yeah.
So unbelievably crucial to Pauline's work, you know, inclusion and, you know, she really
wants people to learn by doing, you know, like, kind of like I said with the film, she
did just like, give me a document that told me what her career was, right?
She's like, go talk to these people.

(29:11):
They'll tell, they'll, if you listen, figure it out, you know?
So I think she, it's just so central to kind of the beauty of her work.
And obviously, you know, since we're talking about deep listening, you know, the tuning
meditation is, so she often sort of jokingly referred to these tech scores as algorithms,

(29:35):
right?
So she didn't do that too much because she thought it would scare people away and she
wants to be very inclusive.
But it is, tuning meditation is kind of an algorithm.
It's sort of a, if you really do follow the instructions, it's a really nice sort of way
of bringing deep listening, you know, into your consciousness because you're, the tuning

(30:00):
meditation is like, you're practicing listening to the room, you're practicing the focal and
the global, right?
She asks you to focus on one other voice, then she asks you to focus on a voice that's
farther away.
And, you know, so you could start to, and I felt like you've just seen Pauline talk
so much about this and when she talks about it, she talks about it with such ease and

(30:21):
confidence, you know, and I think I wanted to show people that in fact it is easy if
you let yourself get to the right place.
You know, deep listening is totally accessible to anyone and as you see in the film, even
people who are non-hearing.
Yeah, yeah, because sound is vibration.

(30:45):
So people that are not hearing can feel it through their bodies, which makes listening
a really important and profound topic.
But, um...
You can't hear me?
Oh no, I can hear you.
Yes.

(31:06):
I could see your lips moving and I thought, oh, is he mumbling?
But, you know, I want to talk to you a little bit more, a little bit less about Pauline
for a minute and a little bit more about your filmmaking.
Of course, the two films that you had mentioned in your bio, they don't call them Lady Composers

(31:29):
and Montage for Improvisers, are certainly about Pauline and her work.
But I wanted to learn a little bit more about these films and how you stumbled into making
those and how they fit into the overall PO scope.
Yeah, I mean, well, in terms of those two films, I mean, Montage for Improvisers was

(31:53):
really made specifically when Pauline passed away to be performed at...
Well, initially it was for the first sort of memorial that I attended, which was on
in Beacon.
And then it got used just to explain Montage for Improvisers is it generally...

(32:16):
It's a silent film made up of footage that is in or was collected in the making of my
film.
And it's supposed to be...
It's a score, essentially.
So the film is projected and musicians watch the film and improvise based on what they're

(32:40):
seeing.
So this is something which...
This goes a lot to kind of the...
I spoke in the beginning about kind of the difficulty in some sense of applying some
ideas about deep listening to film because of this idea that you've got to be focused

(33:03):
in one place and you don't want to be distracted, et cetera.
So this is something that I'm struggling...
Not struggling with, but that I'm inspired by trying to figure out ways to think about
film that maybe tear down that concept.
So I felt like this was one step in that direction where you have a film that's a score.

(33:27):
And so the audience is focused on...
It's okay to look at the images or to look at the musicians or just to close your eyes
even and listen, right?
Which is...
You never tell someone go to a film and close your eyes, but with this one, you can do it
and you can express the film through the musicians and their listening and their interpretation.

(33:50):
So that film was really exciting for me because it opens up some kinds of things that I hope
to explore more in the future.
Don't Call Them Lady Composers is...
I have to be honest, I can't really remember exactly why I did that.

(34:17):
I think initially I was thinking it was gonna be a part of my film.
I know I did it because it's just an amazing essay.
Don't Call Them Lady Composers is an essay that Pauline wrote in the New York Times and
I believe it was 1971 also.

(34:37):
I can't remember it off the top of my head, but back in the day, at least there's an encyclopedia
of composers that was really important in the composer community, I don't think much
outside, but they never included women at all.
And Pauline had written letters and was annoyed by this.
So finally they come out with a new edition and they include women in it, but they don't

(35:00):
say women composers, they say lady composers.
So anyway, Pauline writes this amazing essay, pointing out the misogyny in the music and
artistic community and also a plea for a world where all people would be treated equally.

(35:26):
It's just a really, it's a beautiful essay and funny too.
And so I had always had this idea that I wanted Pauline to perform the essay for me, read
it, perform it, and then she passed away.
So it's sort of an homage to her.
I just reached out to a lot of the unbelievable female artists that Pauline had introduced

(35:52):
me to who are still kind of carrying her flame or colleagues of her like Laurie Spiegel and
Laurie Anderson who are in the film.
And I just had them read the essay to the camera.
So that one is really, I mean, that's not a deep listening thing.

(36:14):
That's really Pauline highlighting her, just her skill as a writer and social commentary,
which she did not do much of at all, honestly.
She generally let her work speak for herself.
She was not big on making big social statements about identity or anything like that.

(36:35):
But I think in this case, she really couldn't help herself and bless her for it.
It seems like her work makes her statement.
Yeah, exactly.
And the work, because this idea of, she ends that essay while she talks a lot about, of
course, how women have been held down particularly in the world of music, but also throughout

(36:58):
society and more so back then than today.
But sadly, a lot of the stuff in that essay still rings true today.
But in the end, she ends it with the ideal vision for her is a world where everybody's
treated equally.
It always comes back to that for her.

(37:19):
And that is exactly, her work just says that in every way.
I mean, just everything she does is about trying to open up this world of music and
creativity to anyone who's willing to do it.
She hates any kind of elitism, any sort of exclusivity.
That's why she, right, when she was taking off as a composer, right, I mean, she, before

(37:47):
she started doing electronic music, she had one, two, I mean, she was on her way to being
a major, new music classical composer.
And she just left it all, stopped it completely to do the electronic music.
And I think part of that was because she just didn't, she didn't like the restrictiveness

(38:11):
of it, that instruments can only be played in a certain way, that you had to have this
set of skills to be an orchestra.
She didn't like conductors.
She really did not like this elitism.
So electronic music was a way that she and her colleagues too at the San Francisco Tape

(38:34):
Music Center, I mean, Mort Zabotnik was, he was playing for the San Francisco Symphony.
It's a clarinetist.
And they just left all that behind because they just wanted to hear new sounds and think
about music in a new way.
And that just, you know, leads then to Pauline's like just countless experiments over the years

(38:57):
with Second Life Orchestra, which was like a performance based group within this, the
Second Life software world, whatever you would call it.
And can you hear me?
Am I getting too far from the mic again?
Yeah.
You have a tendency to lean backwards.

(39:20):
Watch my movie.
She's always like lounging.
Maybe that's one of the reasons we got along.
We like to lounge around and talk.
So anyway, yes, so this idea of changing what music is, she started with that.
And then that opened up then to this idea that anybody can do music or anybody should

(39:46):
be able to do music.
And Second Life is a way that she brought that.
You did not have to be a musician to do that.
You know, you just had to, you did have to listen and understand the concept, but you
did not have to be a musician.
And that's the way it is with her tech scores, with the work she did with opening up music

(40:07):
to people with physical limitations who maybe can't play instruments in the way that we're
used to instruments being played.
And then of course, in this final piece of working with instruments designed to be perceived
by people, by non-hearing people.
So she really, I mean, God knows where she would have gone with it, but she really wanted

(40:29):
everybody in the world to be a musician and a listener, you know, specifically.
Sure.
Well, and that leads me to wonder about in your bio, you mentioned that you've directed
several shorts and films, some of which were experimental films.

(40:56):
And I was curious about what is an experimental film for you.
And it seems like this, the nature of this intrigue must have helped seed the future
work and creation of these last films on Pauline.

(41:19):
Yeah, I think those certainly montage for improvisers is, you know, at least experimental
in concept.
You know, experimental film, how to sort of define that without probably angry.
I mean, it's certainly film that falls outside of narrative form or documentary form, breaks

(41:46):
with any kind of conventional form.
I mean, much like Pauline's experimental music, I mean, her electronic music, I should say.
This idea of breaking all the conventions.
So true experimental film does its best to tell its story or make its impression outside

(42:11):
of normal film conventions.
So this idea of a live group of musicians performing an improvised soundtrack for a
film, I think qualifies as experimental.
A lot of the other experimental films I've worked on is through a collaboration with

(42:33):
a friend of mine who's a choreographer.
So we've made a number of dance films together.
And that gives you a tremendous amount of freedom because I'm really making a film about
movement.
So I don't have to worry about story.
I can really play with sound.
I can play with, come up with new ways of filming movement, with new ways of editing

(42:57):
movement, for example.
So I really love those projects that give me the freedom.
And that was my, as I spoke about earlier, I really wanted to have more of that approach
to this film.
And in the end, I just couldn't do it.
And it's not a problem at all.
I mean, I'm happy, totally happy with this film, and I told it, I think the way I structured

(43:19):
the film, the way it needs to be structured.
I always tell people at Q&As that now that I've made this film, if there's anyone else
out there who wants to make an experimental film about politics, do it now because I've
told this story.
Her career is so incredible, and there's so much information that I had to get across

(43:40):
in that film.
But I think you can also have experimental, you can combine sort of traditional and conventional
filmmaking with experimental techniques.
For example, I had a narrative short film that I made in which there was no dialogue

(44:04):
at all.
And this is one of the things where I think where Pauline and I kind of clicked before
I even knew a lot about her work beyond the electronic music.
So I sent her, after my neighbor mentioned this, and we traded a couple emails, and I
sent her some work that I had done.

(44:24):
And this one film I did, it was like a 20 minute film, there's no dialogue at all.
And the entire soundtrack was pretty much like, it's sort of a post-apocalyptic story
of a man who thinks he's alone in the world.
And the entire soundtrack was basically the sounds of nature and static from a radio,
which I didn't even know, but those were two sounds that Pauline was completely obsessed

(44:49):
with her whole life, which I think I got a little bit lucky there.
But that is, you can use experimental techniques.
And I do that in this film to some extent.
There's certainly some imagery that is pretty abstract in the deep listening film.

(45:14):
But you can also take non-abstract imagery and combine it with abstract sound.
I mean, there's so many different ways of creating experimental or experimental sort
of adjacent film.
But I think that experimental is such a tough word, pretty much anybody seems to call it

(45:35):
pretty, a lot of people use that word to describe anything that just doesn't fit stereotype.
I wish there were some better words for it.
Like people say Pauline, experimental music.
I mean, she's also called a classical musician.
That's not really, doesn't fit either.
So even though she has those chops, for sure.

(45:57):
So yeah, for me, experimental is breaking away from convention and that can be done
in any way.
So that's really hard to just define specifically what is an experimental film.
And then you have video art too, which is also experimental film for me.
But these sort of genres and labels are, in the end, it doesn't mean a lot to me.

(46:26):
As you're describing it, it seems to me like you're describing something that's the opposite
of composed.
When you have something composed, you're controlling all the different components that go together
into making a composition.
Whether it's the instrument that's being used, the way it's tuned, the way it's played,

(46:51):
the arc of the music, all that is controlled.
And experimental, it seems like it's the opposite.
I think for me, that's definitely the case.
When I get into what I would call experimental mindset, I'm really embracing this idea of,

(47:14):
again, that sort of what I was paying attention, taking action.
It's an improvisational process.
However, I think there's definitely people who do experimental film who don't work that
way, who are actually very calculated in what they're doing.

(47:35):
I think you can achieve an experimental film by being very, very, very, very calculated
in what you do.
I was thinking of an example of that.
I don't know if you're familiar with Matthew Barney, for example.

(47:57):
Of course, yes.
His films, like the Crime Master series, very, very experimental, extremely planned out,
I think.
I do not think there's much improv.
They had to be.
Had to be.
I mean, the sets, the costumes and all that stuff.
So, it's just an example of my approach to experimental is definitely... And that probably

(48:22):
is highlighted a lot by my experience with Paul.
I think it was there already, but the whole time that I... And I know we keep coming
back to Pauline, but I love to talk about Pauline.
She had a huge impact on me.
I worked with her in person for a while and then worked with her work intimately on a

(48:43):
daily basis for 10 years.
She has had a big, big impact on me.
But unfortunately now I forgot what I was about to say.
Well, to segue away from PO for a while.
That's what he's taking away.

(49:05):
I'm curious about your band, Tallulah.
Tallulah is basically just a rock band.
We do improvise.
I have a dear friend who's actually kind of the person... Probably the reason I'm here,
which you could say is the reason I ended up making this film.

(49:28):
He moved to the area where I live several years before me.
I started to visit him up here from the city.
Anyway, he and I played music together since we first met at age 18.
So when I moved up here, he had this band Tallulah and I just jumped right into it.
What is his name?
Jason Broom.

(49:48):
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So he and I have played music together forever.
This is a band that ended playing 15 years, I think, in the Hudson Valley, 10 years with
me.
It's really rock, pop and rock.
Although we have performed Pauline's pieces before.

(50:09):
A couple of Pauline's pieces at some... He has invaded your life.
Oh, it has.
I love it.
I do it.
I introduce it.
Anybody I'm playing music with now, I always... And here we go again, getting back to
Pauline.
But I always try and introduce some of her improvisational tech scores because it's just

(50:29):
such an amazing way to get tuned into each other as musicians.
So yeah.
Tell me what instrument you play.
Well, my main instrument is guitar, but as you did mention in passing that I'm an engineer,
so I'm also a recording studio guy.
And when you're a recording studio guy, you kind of learn to play everything a little

(50:53):
bit.
So guitar's my main instrument, but I can fake it pretty well on several other instruments.
But I'm really not... I'm not a virtuoso musician.
My focus has been more on recording and writing.
I'm a songwriter, and I like to write music and collaborate with people on that.

(51:17):
And I love to be in the studio and record improvised music.
That's a blast.
And I improvise as much as I can.
I just haven't done it much in a performance based scenario.
It's much more just something that we do for ourselves.
And when you perform, what kind of venues do you perform in?

(51:38):
Well, we just performed at the Rosendale Street Fest last weekend.
And clubs, outdoor venues.
In the Hudson Valley you have, unfortunately, COVID really killed some wonderful clubs in

(52:01):
Kingston, which is sad.
And BSP and The Anchor were two really good venues for not only rock music, but world
music and jazz, and just wonderful spots.
Those are gone, so it's a little slim Pickens right now.
But there's the clubs in the summer.
There's of course, you have various apple orchards and farms and stuff that bring in

(52:23):
bands, and that's always fun.
And festivals here and there.
But Rosendale Street Fest we play pretty much every year.
And we also do sort of an acoustic version of the band, so we can perform in smaller,
more intimate venues as well.

(52:45):
House concerts and stuff like that.
But this last year we've been really focused on finishing up our next record.
So it's been mostly in the studio and not so much on stage.
Sure, sure.
Well, that is, it takes a lot of time to do that.
It does take a lot of time, especially when you're dealing with a bunch of people with

(53:06):
families and jobs.
It's not like when I've been doing this a long time.
It's not like in my 20s where it was like the band first and then everything else was
secondary.
Now it's like the band is kind of at the bottom of the list.
But it's fine.
It's a love, and I do it for the love and the passion.
That's about it for me.

(53:27):
Well, speaking about your passions, it also extends to Forge Media.
Yeah, so Forge Media is, I was director of Forge Media for about five years, and now
I work for them on more of a freelance basis.
But another thing I really wanted to do when I moved to the Hudson Valley in addition to

(53:52):
make a feature-like documentary was to start working more with young filmmakers in any
capacity possible.
So there's a wonderful organization in Poughkeepsie called The Art Effect.
I think it's the largest youth arts organization in the Hudson Valley.
They have wonderful fine arts programs and media-based programs for kids from, I would

(54:20):
say, eight to 20.
So I've taught classes there, and that's really super important to me, trying to pass on whatever
knowledge and experience I have to a new generation.

(54:40):
And Forge Media is really cool because it's basically an apprentice-based production company
that hires as its crew the most advanced students from the film programs.
So these are going to be people who are probably 17 to 21.

(55:02):
So we do just normal production jobs, mostly for other nonprofits in the Hudson Valley,
which is also really nice because when you're living in New York City and you're working
as a freelance editor, you don't always get to work on stuff that you feel like is making
the world a better place.
So up here, I've been able to do work for places like Scenic Hudson, Children's Home

(55:30):
of Poughkeepsie, Hudson Housing.
These people are just doing unbelievable work trying to help people.
And we get to sort of make videos to help them raise money and raise awareness of what they're
doing.
And I get to use these wonderful young artists as my crew.

(55:53):
So yeah, that's my other, besides the music and the filmmaking, trying to be an educator
is something that's really meaningful to me right now.
Very nice, Daniel.
I can't wait to hear what's next on your list.
Me too.
Me too.
Right now, the main thing is trying to get this film, my film into the deep listening

(56:20):
film into its next stages.
We've really, because of this, because of both the demand for screenings for this film,
which is so exciting, and widespread and very international.
And this concept that I said that I feel that one of the primary points of the film is this

(56:45):
idea of building community and the theater as a community.
So I really feel like I wanted as many people as possible to see the film together in a
theater to have that and take it away.
I feel like if you go to the theater, you watch a movie with other people, you leave
that theater, you're more likely to maybe take it with you.
And people need to take that deep listening out into the world.

(57:09):
I think it's super important, probably for our survival as humans.
But that obviously doesn't work for everybody.
So we're looking to get this into a streaming platform.
And that's a lot of work.
So it's hard for me to focus on my next project.

(57:32):
But I do, you know, it's coming.
I got a couple ideas cooking.
Oh, good, good, good.
Something that's going to have a lot to do with sound, one way or another.
There's a few things that really interest me about sound that I think have really good

(57:59):
stories behind them.
But one thing that came to light a lot and something I thought about for many, many,
many years is this idea of how, I guess, what we would call more primitive people and their
relationship to sound.
When Pauline did, or not Pauline, but Claire Chase brought Pauline's piece, The Witness,

(58:22):
to Carnegie Hall not too long ago.
They had with them as part of the performance, they had a shaman from, I believe from the
Amazon who was there as sort of a witness to the witness.
And he talked some afterwards.
And there's an amazing anthropologist from McGill University.

(58:44):
I'm sadly blanking his name right now.
But he brought him there.
And they were talking about how Pauline's text scores and these instructions that she
is giving people, it was very easy for the people, even children in this tribe in the

(59:06):
Amazon to get their heads around it and perform these pieces.
It taps in a lot to a relationship with sound throughout all of humanity and how important
it is.
And I feel like it used to be a lot more important.
And over the millennia, we've become this more and more of a visual culture.

(59:30):
So I'm really fascinated with this idea, whether it's, I have a couple ideas either through
documentary or narrative form to maybe examine this a little bit, maybe what we've lost somewhat
in terms of our ability as humans to listen, I think used to be much, much, much better.

(59:53):
Well, when I think of tribes that come together and live together as communities, long before
we created cities, the focal point was to come together and to make some form of music,
whatever the form it was, whether it's pinging on a wire or a thread, or if it was wrapping

(01:00:20):
on a rock or wrapping two rocks together.
So sound, it seems, I'm not an anthropologist, but it seems like it's a very, very primary
production of human engagement and it's a tool that brings people together.

(01:00:41):
Musicians always talk about how the power of music in that way.
And I think it's a human, actually, now that I'm thinking about it a little bit more closely,
because the body is, I think it was 75% water, that we feel the vibrations through our body.

(01:01:08):
And as urban people, we become kind of separated from these kinds of sensations.
But in the tribal environment, you're actually experiencing the vibrations in the body.
So it becomes a bodily sensation as well as a sonic experience.

(01:01:30):
So I think that there's maybe some kind of way that that's all put together in the human
experience.
And that brings people together to experience as a group this vibration that is shared in
the community and then is imagined as part of the cosmos.

(01:01:51):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
Sound in a sense gives a physical manifestation also to something that I think exists that
we're not aware of, which is that these vibrations are happening just through the electricity
in our bodies.
It's always happening and sound is a really nice representation through vibrations and

(01:02:15):
other ways of how we're sharing this.
But also those societies, because they had to use that listening muscle so much more,
they were using it to survive.
Because that's how you know if a predator is coming and this kind of thing.
I think a lot of what deep listening is doing is maybe strives to recapture some of that.

(01:02:44):
Even just as how we grow.
So for example, babies are amazing.
If you think about babies as deep listeners, first of all, when we're born, we are global
listeners, only pretty much.
There's probably been some vocal listening like on this voice, but that's happening remember

(01:03:06):
through more vibrations than heard sound.
The vibrations passing through the mother's body into the infant's body.
That's why there's probably those of you who had young babies who know the trick of putting

(01:03:27):
on a really loud vacuum cleaner or something so they can sleep, which seems crazy.
But that's because they're hearing so much.
They're hearing everything all at once.
It's incredible.
We lose that over time because we start to focus just on language and our ears, the connection

(01:03:48):
between our ears, which Pauline calls microphones, and our brain, which is where the listening
really happens.
It starts to degrade in a sense and we lose some of that actual ability to hear wider
frequency range.
Then when you add to that, on top of that fact, the incredible vocal listening that's

(01:04:09):
required from a baby to learn language, they're just learning to speak from listening.
It's amazing and we can't do that anymore.
Right?
I had to listen for 15 years to French in school and I barely learned a thing.

(01:04:31):
I think that probably people who live in a more primitive environment maintain more of
that special baby listening throughout their lives.
I always felt like that was something that deep listening was striving for, in a sense,
just to recapture almost the more innocent way of listening to the world.

(01:04:55):
It's just totally open and with no bias either in terms of frequency range or psychological
bias.
Yeah.
That's a beautiful thing.
Well, on that note, Daniel, I'm looking forward to our future conversations about what you

(01:05:17):
will be doing.
Thank you so much for your time.
It's been really insightful and wonderful to speak to you about all of your accomplishments
and to listen to you.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for thinking of filmmaking as a listening practice.
Not everybody does.
I've been honored to be on here with you.

(01:05:42):
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Listening with China Blue.
I hope it inspires you to build your own listening practice.
This begins as a daily practice of attentively listening without judgment.
And you can ask yourself, what is your own version of silence?

(01:06:03):
The music for this podcast is from China Blue's Saturn Walk, co-composed with Lance Massey,
the creator of the T-Mobile ringtone.
If you want to learn more about me and my work, go to chinabluart.com.
And also, please follow me on Facebook at chinablu.art, at Instagram at chinablu.art,

(01:06:29):
and on X at chinablu.art.