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Pop Culture
Sep 21, 2023, 06:28AM

Of Course, There Were Many

A 2023 BOMB Magazine interview with artist Jenna Sutela vs. 1985 Guitar for the Practicing Musician interview with musician David Gilmour.

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David Gilmour: A beautiful chord sequence can be very provocative and emotional. I try to get disoriented, if you like.

Jenna Sutela: A realm of infinite potential.

Gilmour: Of course, there were many.

Sutela: So many forces within our lives outpace our available language to parse what’s at hand.

Gilmour: We all fall into our own cliches so easily.

•••

Sutela: I think it was Carl Sagan who called us transitional creatures at some vague, intermediary position between the primeval mud and the stars; and this was on the day after the birth of his child.

Gilmour: It’s actually a metallic disc that spins around. I couldn’t say where it arrived from. He lent it to me but he wouldn’t sell it, so I had it copied exactly.

•••

Sutela: Imagine the sound of an instrument body the size of the Earth or a string so long that it could reach Mars from here.

Gilmour: I sat down to try some of those ideas and I can’t do it. I wish I could.

Sutela: Scarcity and endurance seem important.

Gilmour: I’ve been working on that for years. You could never risk having a drink before the show—it was so precise that I couldn’t afford to let my attention wander.

Sutela: I’ve become very interested in low tech.

•••

Gilmour: You can only be one person on the stage; you can be an orchestra by yourself in the studio.

Sutela: But I turned this around and had a neural network trace patterns, signs, and meaning in the blobs of liquid and color in motion inside the lava heads, which are also my neuroplastic portraits.

Gilmour: They get damaged and stolen too regularly.

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