I had only fragmented sequences of images, mostly involving the sun setting on a house that only had one light on in its windows.  And leaves.  Tons and tons of leaves rustling on the ground, blowing in the wind, falling from trees.  Little reminders of mortality.  And there would be a boy roughly the age of twelve wandering through these landscapes, waiting for something good or bad to happen. 

I had just seen Terry Malick's Days of Heaven for the first time, and it left me breathless.  That film's use of natural light and space to tell its story had a profound impact on me.  People weren’t making films like that in the 70s, and they still aren’t.  I thought if I could even approach something on that level of timelessness with this little movie that I was sure I was going to make for practically nothing right here in Maine, or better, in the Berkshires where I went to school, I would reconcile with that deep desire in me to tell stories.  Or something like that.

Right around the same time I discovered a little album called The Milk-Eyed Mender by someone who looked and sounded like what an elf must look and sound like.  I had read about Joanna Newsome in a review sometime before that compared her to Bjork, which is never a bad thing in my book.  A friend of mine had just purchased the album and was kind enough to let me borrow it.   

From the very first notes of “Bridges and Balloons,” I realized I had found the soundtrack to this great, unwritten film; Ms. Newsome and I were going to make it together.

 Newsome is a most idiosyncratic artist, armed with a harp that she plays like a classical guitar and a strangely affecting, childlike voice that you either love or hate.  More so on Mender than her acclaimed follow-up Ys, her music resembles new age as much as it does folk.

For all the wonders she cooks up with that voice, it was the harp that grabbed me.  Aside from its novelty, the way she plays on the album evokes the exact autumnal landscapes that I was and continue to be fascinated with:  Quiet, somber, celestial, auburn, hypnotic.  These same characteristics were to comprise the film's internal landscapes as well, projections from the frail psychology of a lonely adolescent boy growing up on a farm.  Unlike most modern recordings, Mender sounds like a person playing in a room by herself, for herself.

 “En Gallop” absolutely floored me, still does.  The harp does so many things, providing soft percussion, expressive harmonies, and melodic counterpoints to her tiny voice.  The song’s resonance comes from its surprisingly stark lyrics, though:  “And the halls were lined with the disembodied/And dustly wings, which fell from flesh gasplessly.”  Dustly wings?  Wow.  Like Maine during winter, I thought.  Beautiful but menacing.  “The Book of Right-On” contains a more coy illustration of violence in her universe.  It’s also the most instantly memorable line on the whole album:  “I killed my dinner with karate/Kick ‘em in the face, taste the body.”

When I started to compose the film, I would put these songs on repeat and write for hours at a time, the songs’ looping supplying me with more and more images.  It was like writing under a spell, which is much different than writing to the sound of relaxing music, like so many, including myself, do.  No, this was free dialogue between some unrealized part of myself and the notes coming through the speakers.

 I don't expect anyone to identify with my experience of the album, which may be why I get so much out of  listening to it.  I guess it’s something just between Ms. Newsome and I (or so I’d like to think).  To date, I still haven't finished my Days of Heaven, and maybe I never will.  It could be one of those things.  Until I do, I won't be finished with The Milk-Eyed Mender either.