Wk. 5 Inglorious Music

Janek's second speedwriting piece, written to “Zyklop” by Thomas Koner:

"I can hear them coming, the roar, the march, the murmuring machines. And before the fall, just the individual footsteps of 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the last, who stands above me, stands on me, across my chest, steps onto my face. “Don’t scream!” I tell myself “Don’t breathe!” The steps pace, devoid of voice, and so of thought or spirit of feeling. Just steps, crunch of stone, clap of wood, and the murmur of the machines, waiting. A ride in pitch and slow in pace. Then, they’re gone. No steps, no crunch and clap, just the rising and falling of the murmur of the machines. “That’s all?” No, there’s more. There must be more than this. The great terror in Paris, the night of burning in Berlin, the Polish wave, and all inspired by this? Inhuman footsteps and murmuring machines? A clap, and another, then clicks and scrapes. The machines awake No, too small., and the machines are too slow. Smaller machines, wielded by the men, held above their footsteps. A code of sorts, a click “hello”, a clap to indicate we are here, another points out where. A foreign language crates by footsteps to disguise their chatter from human ears, and to storm human minds."


Again, I got lots of atmosphere, and next to no story. I've written based on music before, but of course it's a lot easier when there are things like lyrics, melody and tone. Even if I don't directly transcribe what's going on in the song, I can generally ween something interesting out of it. But I remain unsatisfied with these pieces; it's puting some perepctive of my weaknesses, and I generally like having nothing to do with those. This time, however, was Quentin Tarantino to the rescue. Having just seen Inglorious Basterds last week, the development of this scene is based on what happens in the very first scene in that film.

In it, a German officer arrives at a French farm house and, being exceedingly polite and genial, convinces the resistant farmer to identify where he's hiding a Jewish family, who are, at his word, massacred, except for one. This was written about the one, and if anything had actually occurred in the music, that would have been her escape.

One thing I did like was the disembodiment of the footsteps; in a longer, more thought out story, I'd like to use that to better effect.