On February 9th, we’re rebooting a stand-out project amongst Spektral’s many commissions: Alex Temple’s Behind the Wallpaper, featuring vocalist Julia Holter. This stylistically omnivorous song cycle traces a character undergoing a mysterious transformation, and as the Village Voice put it: “[A dizzying collage of dreamlike impressions…somewhere between avant-garde composition, mysterious artifact, and sci-fi thriller.”
Alex is an exceptionally creative conjurer of sound, but just as important (to me) is her non-hierarchical approach to arts and culture…or perhaps more eloquently, her ability to be fascinated by expression regardless of its current position as (brace yourself) “high” or “low” in our society.
It’s going to be an evening of bewitching music and film – so snag those tickets, and in the meantime, enjoy this conversation with Alex!
Doyle Armbrust: Behind the Wallpaper is one of my all-time favorite Spektral commissions...we're so happy to be bringing this piece back to Chicago with you and Julia!
Alex Temple: Thanks! I'm really excited!
DA: Do you remember what you were consumed with, creatively, around the time you wrote it?
AT: I remember thinking a lot about the aesthetics of emotional repression — about things left half-spoken and strong statements delivered quietly. There's plenty of that in Behind the Wallpaper. I also remember being frustrated with cultural declinism and the way people idealize the past. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to feel like things are declining now, in an era of resurgent nationalism and authoritarianism. But at the time, it was important to me that the piece end with a suggestion that things will be better in the future.
DA: One of the most intriguing elements of the cycle is the way it jump cuts between styles from song to song. Does this choice have something to do with the unmoored feeling of a transformation, or did it prevent the story from being tied to one era, or was it something else entirely?
AT: To some extent it's just how I write, and how I've been writing for the last ... [looks at watch] twenty years. In this case the styles I evoke are also tied to the topics of the songs: Romantic for romance, Renaissance for a masked ball, and so on.
Funny you should mention the idea of avoiding being tied to one era, though. If you look at the lyrics, almost every song starts with a different time marker. ("Last night," "On Tuesday," "When you were twenty years old"...)
DA: Guilty as charged. Speaking of transformation, since the premiere, you've become more open about the more autobiographical aspects of the piece. How did this evolve for you?
AT: I actually didn't realize that anything had changed! But looking back, 2014 was a rough time for me, gender-wise. I was dealing with a lot of internalized transphobia, which has mostly dissipated in more recent years. The alienation depicted in the piece was a frequent undercurrent in my life. I can imagine that I would have been less comfortable talking about what was on my mind at the time.
DA: I remember so many audience members at the premiere, from all different walks of life, talking to us after the show about how personal the piece felt to them – that alienation is something pretty universally felt. Well, that, and the fact that they loved your string writing and Julia's delivery of your text. Is creating a communal experience where those of us that feel alienated feel less alone a priority of the music, or simply a beautiful side-effect?
AT: Absolutely a priority of the music! I've come to feel more and more in the last 5+ years that human connection is The Thing that makes being an artist worthwhile. Without that, it's a ton of work for ... what end, exactly? It's hard to write for posterity when the world seems to be in the midst of a slow-motion apocalypse.
DA: Those of us that know you know that just about any conversation with you will eventually lead to scribbling down notes of artists/authors/poets/memes/films to track down. What creatives are you obsessed with right now, that we should check out?
AT: I feel like I've spent the last year telling everyone I know to read Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater — a strange, fascinating, haunting, poetic, disturbing, and at times surprisingly funny novel written from the point of view of a group of ogbanje. Ogbanje, in Igbo tradition, are spirits that possess children and cause them to behave erratically, to die, and to be reborn again into the same family. Emezi takes things in a very different direction, though. I don't want to say too much. I'll just note that my first reaction was, "It's like if Hereditary were told from the point of view of the curse."
Also, as always, [the TV show] Steven Universe. Extra fun: both works are by nonbinary creators!