What Would Hildegard Von Bangin' Do?

Imaginal Discs was recorded and produced by Alexis Gideon and myself in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during three extended pre-pandemic visits. I’ve known Alexis for over twenty years (and bear the honor of having introduced him to his amazing wife). He’s a precious soul brother to me, and one of the most fluid creative collaborators I’ve ever known. At times in Imaginal Discs, it’s hard to point to where my impulse ends and his begins. But there are some clear acknowledgments I’m eager to make, both to honor my dear friend’s talent and to extend my gratitude to an ally who helped birth a project that wasn’t easy to bring to term.

Alexis is a wildly imaginative engineer and instrumentalist, and in many cases I needed only provide the simplest cue for him to grab the thread. For instance, my saying: “trippy Hildegard Von Bingen organ,” required no additional reference before he laid down the organ tracks for “Here We Are.” Fuzzed out clavichord? He got it. Wet clave à la Eno’s In Dark Trees? Check. Later, as I was tracking beats for another of these nakedly devotional tunes, Alexis gave me the nickname “Hildegard Von Bangin’.” I love this nickname and it’s continued to be a cheeky north star for this project. And the gift of it is just one example of the number times my friend invited me out of an old, protective reticence and into a different kind of dance. That’s his generous nature.

Alexis is a fantastic guitarist who studied with the jazz legend Anthony Braxton, and while many of the guitar arrangements are mine, all the actual playing on the album is his. Most of the percussion and the simpler piano and keyboard parts are mine and all the vocal and backing arrangements are as well, though Alexis’s treatment of those arrangements is ultimately what makes them. We split up the bass parts, though the groovier electric tracks are his. Temple bells and gongs showed up early and kept returning, and I’m grateful for my friend’s firm permission to keep going when I began to worry it was a little indulgent. These sounds from the magical edges of dream space have become a favorite part of the album for me.

Laying these tracks down could be extremely emotional. The songs touched on things so core, so unmasking for me, that the exercise of getting them out could feel highly sensational. As I would describe it to Alexis, the intensity of sensation I experienced in these moments felt like the denouement of a lifelong sense of having believed myself to be “too much.” And to record these tracks was me finally turning towards this “too much” in agreement. Ah yes, my very Self. My too much Self. My radiant Self. My only Self. Here we are. My friend held steady in these moments and kept rolling and for that I’m humbly grateful.

The last thing I want to share about the time recording and mixing Imaginal Discs is from the magical edge of dream space I reference above. My visits to Pittsburgh were a mix of long studio days and joyous late dinners shared with Alexis and his wife. Some nights after dinner, Alexis would fire up the projector and screen a film from his collection. In the early days of my first visit, with most of my musical aspirations for this album still largely burrowed in my imagination, I was introduced to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. 

If you don’t know it, the film tells the story of a journey to a haunting, restricted site known as “The Zone.” An eerie figure referred to only as “Stalker,” is hired by two patrons—a professor and a disconsolate, drunken writer—to escort them illegally into the Zone and lead them to a room within its borders said to grant the visitor’s innermost want.

There is a good deal of very enthusiastic writing on this film and its director, including an excellent book by Geoff Dyer. (Zona: A Book About A Film About a Journey to A Room.) I have nothing to add in the way of critical observation. But strictly at the feeling level, this film was a holy experience for me. As I watched, I found that I could only become more still. I perceived a sudden kinship or common destiny with the Spirit of the sumptuous long shots. Which is to say, a sudden kinship or common destiny with everything. In reflection, I felt the film as much as watched it. And then that night, I had this dream: 

Alexis and I are beginning work on the album in an open, green field of the Zone. Instead of recording the album, we’ll be filming it. My feet are wet and embedded in damp grass near a small brook. The shot is being prepared and I too am preparing. I understand that if I hold a particular pose long enough, if I’m still enough, the “magic” will enter the album through me. And correspondingly, if the “witness” to the album is still in a similar fashion, the magic will in turn pass into them. The magic is a force of love beyond hope of belonging. Beyond deserving or undeserving. It simply is. The dream information presents itself as lawful, ordinary, impersonal; it is not special nor am I for having received it. I present my arms at my sides, palms upturned. I pass a quiet scan through my body, waiting for every cell to move into place. I can feel it when they do, and I close my eyes and hear the camera begin to roll.

Thank you, Friend.