Art Every Wednesday (28)

The Human Story is a audio project trying to tell the story of the human experience with songs and quotes. The idea is to collect songs and quotations and arrange them into a narrative. The six acts of this narrative are:

Act 1: "All manner of things..."
Everything is right and the sounds are in harmony. Crescendos depict the explosion of life into the universe.

Act 2: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
Discord enters and there is brokenness and fragmentation in the sounds you hear. The songs tell of pain and separation, isolation and loneliness.

Act 3: "Years of living among the breakage."
The music and quotes show the pain in the human story, and yet, also the moments of beauty and hope that are all tied in together with it.

Act 4: "Prayers for Rain (Interlude)"
These songs are prayers for something, anything, to enter the world and change it. A prayer for a eucastastrophe.

Act 5: "With a hollow rumble of wings..."
This is the beginning of the end. The broken pieces and fragmented bits of the human experience are beginning to be set right.

Act 6: "...Shall be well."
The consummation. Harmony re-enters the story, and creation is wholly healed, being that it was in the beginning despite the sadness of the first 5 acts.

Here are some sample tracks from each section:

1. God's Grandeur. This is the first track of the collection. It combines "Takk" by Sigur Ros with a voice over of Jerram Barrs reading "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

2. The Downward Spiral (Medley). This is the pain and brokenness of life translated into audio. Notice the fragmentation and discord. If it is disturbing to listen to it is because it is supposed to be.

3. Signifying Nothing. Shakespeare's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" and Explosions in the Sky's "Inside it all feels the same."

4. Diary of an Old Soul. This track is a mix of a selection from George Macdonald's long poem "Diary of an Old Soul" set to Explosions in the Sky's song "First breath after coma."

5. Now We Are Free. A quotation from Dostoevsky's "Brother's Karamazov" and "Now We Are Free" from the Gladiator soundtrack.

6. This is the Morning. The closing lines of C. S. Lewis' book, "The Last Battle" and "The Next Place" from the Meet Joe Black soundtrack.