Sound Design: Drowned World

In March 2004 I was commissioned to provide a small amount of incidental music, sounds and a song for Gary Owen's play, The Drowned World. Directed by Kate Wild, the play opened at The Storeroom, Parkview Hotel, North Fitzroy, on the 22nd of April.

It's a nasty piece of work, this play. Difficult to read as the four characters monologue between conversation and narration. The world it's set in is brutal, uncompromising... and yet, from the ashes some semblance of tenderness.

With the sound pieces completed the song was written and produced over an entire weekend. The lyrics are mostly comprised of a random scouring of text from the play.

Moon Song
Closing sequence - The Drowned World

I am the way I am and nothing more
This is how, how it begins and nothing more

They want to know how it feels, the ruined mouth
We would run into the flame and be gone, the haunted eye

Radiance will lead you to me
Radiance will lead you to them
We looked, we touched
No one need die
A moon appears and circles the sky

We would go to the valley, voices in the dark
With light enough to see our faces, and shadow enough to hide our scars

I stretch my arm n unfurl my fist, a hole in my palm
Your eyes gleam n blaze, to see the moon held in my hand

Radiance will make of you a fire
Radiance will rob of me my desire
The moon is a garden
thrown to the sky
Where no one need die

The song was not used in the play, but it has since been produced further for a growing collection of songs I am recording with vocalist, Mark Tallon.

Posted on April 16, 2004