Questions for Dean Wilcox, Sound Bricoleur

A lifelong music fan, Dean has spent the majority of his adult life atoning for his early love of Chicago. He is currently filling the gaps in his post-punk and ambient vinyl collection.  For decades, he has worked as a lighting designer, and he noted that while considering these questions,”I had a revelation that I structure sound the way I design lights by responding to what is in front of me.”

How would you describe what you do?  

Basically I push blocks of sound around. I have always had music in my head, but the computer is such a wonderful tool for those of us less musically inclined. To be able to see sound as well as hear it is wonderful. Eventually I have to force myself just to listen.

Is this different than what other people think you do?

I don't know what other people think I do. I do share sound files with people but no one has ever really asked how the sound was produced. 

How do you know if you’re on the right track with a project?

It really has to do with feeling it out. I have tons of projects I have abandoned because I didn't quite know what to do with them. Some are samples, some layered sounds with effects, some built up with real instruments. Occasionally when I come back to them I hear something in them that sparks a thought and then I can finish the track. Other times it is just best to move on.

How do you go about making choices?

I like using programs and filters that mangle sound, chop it up, create something I can't control. And then I listen. I may hear a small bit that catches my attention and so I magnify it by pulling it out of the mix or looping it. Typically one choice leads to another and another and so the track gets built up over time by adding layers, effects, and other sounds.

How do you know when you’re done?

I can usually feel it. In a way it is like structuring a narrative. The essential pieces are established in the opening moments and then they are developed. Some pieces can sustain a long slow build that can last five or ten minutes, others run their course in two or three minutes. Strangely I can usually hear that something is missing, some sound or build or chunk. I keep adding those until it doesn't need anything more.

What’s your workspace like?

It's everywhere. I have guitars and a bass in the back bedroom along with a USB mic set up to sample live sounds and drums in the basement, but I have also taken samples on my phone or from a cd player and a glitched disk - which basically means I wrote on it in sharpie, cut it, scratched it or whatever. You never know where it will catch or what sounds it will make so it is always a process of discovery. I actually would love to create a workspace where everything is always set up an accessible, but mainly I move from room to room so no one can hear what I am doing. I tend to head to a far corner of the basement when vocals are involved.

What are your essential tools?

Mac laptop and GarageBand no question. I bought a decent USB mic a few years back which works great for recording live instruments.  I occasionally use Audacity when I want to reverse a track which is hard to do with GarageBand.  I have a copy of Logic but it is so complicated I have yet to sort it out. The same is true for MAX/MSP. Basically I get an idea and I want to get it down quickly and GarageBand is great for that.

What’s the most surprising tool you use?

I guess it depends on what surprises you. Basically anything can make sound and with a combination of filters any sound can be bent or mangled or altered. I've sampled my furnace turning on, I have sampled skipping CDs, I even sampled the erratic sound of dripping water on a trip to Biltmore. 

What was your biggest mistake or the one you learned the most from?  

It's all mistakes. I have no idea what I am doing. That is the fun part. I listen to early pieces I made and I can hear that I really had no idea how to use the tools. It's all a learning experience and every time I get a new plug-in, a new effect, a new toy that makes sound I make mistakes all over the place. But these lead to a greater understanding and some very interesting and unpredictable sounds.

An example of Dean’s work:

The Temperature of My Departure

Shhhh I'm Getting Ideas

            Some times, when my wife asks what I did that day, I’ll reply, I was thinking and then I woke up. It’s a joke, and it’s true.  I find that dozing state, where you can move back and forth across the water line of consciousness, to be a productive area.  As I drift there, images, phrases, scenes, come into view. Bits of songs can be heard.  Strangers, long gone friends, and fictional characters start to talk.

            Most artists recognize the creative power of dreams.  Keith Richards insists the opening of “Satisfaction” came to him when he was asleep.  He awoke one morning to discover that during the night he had recorded something on the tape player next to his bed.  The tape had 30 seconds of the iconic chords and then 45 minutes of him snoring.  Similarly, Paul McCartney says that the melody for “Yesterday” came to him in a dream.  Coleridge insisted that the poem “Kubla Khan” appeared to him while dreaming (under the influence of opium), and in her diaries Dawn Powell frequently mentions her “Dream Self” has been doing a lot of work on a manuscript.

            Coleridge claimed to be interrupted by a visitor before he could get the entire poem down.  One key to dream ideas is to record them immediately.  Otherwise they float away.

            There has been plenty of research to support the value of napping and a list of the world’s great practitioners include Edison, Einstein, DaVinci, Brahams, and Benjamin Franklin.  Personally, I believe that Newton wasn’t sitting under the tree when the apple fell, but sleeping.

            I try to find a place to nap every day, no matter where I am.  If I’m not home, I lock my office door, flip my car seat back, or find a park.  I not only know where I can doze around town, someday I’ll write a guidebook “Naps Around the World.”  I’ve taken some great ones at Versailles, The Tuileries, the Royal Palace of Madrid, the Chateau d’If. Yosemite, everywhere I’ve travelled. 

            So, when I’m asked the question that almost all writers and artists get, “Where do you get your ideas?” for me, it’s simple.  I get a lot of them lying down.  If you see me somewhere and it looks like I’m asleep, I probably am.   But don’t wake me, I’m working.


Keith Richard's Satisfaction

The Value of Power Naps

Telling Two Stories

Eudora Welty said, “There is no story until there are two stories.”  Sometimes the second story becomes obvious as the narrative develops.  In The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, the story of an individual is set within a much larger political landscape.  Sometimes the other story is only suggested.  A title like “September 10, 2001” can evoke without mentioning the attack on the World Trade Center.  Greg Brown’s song “Brand New '64 Dodge” tells a seemingly simple story of a boy’s parents buying a new car.  The audience knows, however, the world is about to change with the assassination of JFK.

Money comes out of Dad's billfold.

Hankies come out of Mom's purse.

The engine hardly makes a sound

even when you put it in reverse.

It's got a push-button transmission,hardtop convertible, 4-door.

It's November of '63

and the brand new Dodge is a '64.

And we're rolling slow down Main Street -

the asphalt and gravel crunch.

Church is finally over

and we're going to have our Sunday lunch.

And then I will play football

with my buddies down in park.

Later I'll dream about my girlfriend

as I lie alone in the dark.

She's got short red hair and blue eyes

and her swimsuit's also blue

and her little brother is retarded,

but Jesus loves him, too.

And Jesus loves our president,

even though he is a Catholic.

There's a lot for a boy to think about

as he walks along the railroad tracks.

Sometimes the second story is suggested in even more subtle ways.  In the poem “Working in the Rain” by Robert Morgan, the narrator talks about his father, and, halfway through the poem (line 14 out of 27), he says, “I thought he sought the privacy of rain.”  The past tense, tucked into the middle of the poem, adds a complication, an uncertainty.  It would be a different line if it read “He sought the privacy…” or “I think he sought…”  But the past tense suggests the narrator has changed his view and come to a different understanding of his father. Thus, the poem chronicles both a past and present state of mind.  The two stories can exist in a single character as we change and age.


Greg Brown's web site

Robert Morgan's "Working in the Rain"

Some Book Festival Conversation

 - How many books, Joe?

- On the table here?  I don’t know.

- You don’t know how many books you’ve written?  I’ve written 18.  Mostly novels and autobiographies.  What are you working on now?  I’m working on a novel.  About my life. 

- What’s this?

- It’s my most recent book of poetry.

- Poetry?  I had to read poetry once in school.  Good luck.

- I open this up and the first poem starts off about garbage and the next one is about sex.  Why should I read these?

- Actually, I thought that one was a love poem but . . . .

- And this one is about drinking and smoking at a party.  You counter-culture generation…This one starts okay.  You mention Shakespeare, but then you drop him.  Your generation just doesn’t seem to have any literary values….I used to read poetry.  I don’t have time for it anymore, and none of this modern stuff is any good.  You’ll have to come see my book.  My booth’s over there.  You’ll like it.  Everyone does.

- My son-in-law is a poet too. Do you know him?

- No, I’m sorry I don’t.

- He’s very well known, but you probably have to be a literary type to have heard of him, someone who knows that kind of literature.

- Are you in a program?  I’m in a program?  What program are you in?

- I wrote my book from start to finish in 14 days.  I’m working on the sequel now.  I think it’s going to take longer.  Maybe a month.

- Oh, this is poetry.  You looked like a normal writer.

- I was asked to write a review of your book, but I didn’t like it, so I did you a favor and didn’t do it.

-       You would be interested in my book.  It has twenty-seven pictures.

-       Hey, are you from here?  Yes?  Then you should buy my book.  Let me go get it.  I take checks.

 - I don’t really like to read.  I just came with a friend.

The Graduation Season

We’re just about to enter graduation season, and that means all across America people will be spending huge amounts of time and energy to go sit somewhere and wait to leave.

My daughter and son both “graduated” from daycare. Yes, I was glad that they had mastered the pre-school skills. I honored and respected their achievements on the monkey bars and in the sand box, and I understand the impulse to mark the occasion of “moving on,” and yet, I found the idea of a graduation ceremony ridiculous.

Thankfully, there was no “commencement speaker,” but I suspect this may be the only time. In the upcoming years, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, there will be hours spent dressing up, waiting for my children’s names to be called, then going out for a celebratory meal.

The event itself consists mostly of waiting. We wait through the speakers. Then we wait and watch our sons and daughters, family and friends, troop by, almost indistinguishable in the auditoriums and gymnasiums. We wait as the names get read out for the one or two we recognize. Then there is the fleeting feeling of Finally!. Then we wait some more. If we can’t resist, we check our cell phones or fake faintness and sneak out. Sometimes we actually listen and wonder about the language. What are the “rights and privileges” conferred by a degree? Discounts? Club memberships? The right to move up in line?

With its tedium and its deliberate design to remove traces of individuality, the ceremony itself often seems symbolic of the worst of the education process.

Then there are the speakers. Why is it that no one on the “platform” can seem to resist dispensing advice? The official song of graduation should not be “Pomp and Circumstance,” but “Everybody’s Talking at Me.”

We nod our heads, laugh at the right time, even clap, yet immediately forget what’s been said. Is there anyone who remembers advice from a graduation ceremony? (Their own, not one that they googled like the addresses by Steve Jobs or J.K. Rowling.) Is there anyone who suddenly thought, “My God, he’s right. I should live for today. I should take risks/be happy/be all I can be.”

Some speakers go on and on with a laundry list of Dos and Don’ts as if they’re Moses. I’m not sure where this practice originated. Often it feels like the professor who, after the bell has rung, insists on saying “wait, just one more thing,” trying to jam in some last information, but it’s too late. At graduation, those present have either been educated or not. It’s done. Let them go. And let us go.

So, I propose that we commence with ending commencements. Keep them for when they’re important. Fifth grade? No. Eighth grade? No.

And if we must have speakers? Here’s my advice to them. No more advice

Small Doses of Poetry

I used to have a massive one- volume book containing the complete works of William Shakespeare. I owned it for years. I took it on trips. It was dense and impressive. But I never read it. It was too big. Whenever I wanted to read a play, I bought it in a single volume. This way it was not only portable and manageable, but pleasurable. The words weren’t in small fonts jammed in double columns. I could read not just for sense but as a sensory experience.

This same issue exists with poetry anthologies. As wonderful as books like Norton anthologies are and as cool and important as they look on the shelf, I suspect few people read them for pleasure. We buy them and haul them around for classes or use them for reference. In trying to be as comprehensive as possible, they sacrifice readability.

For many people, the poetry they read is in these texts. They do so because it’s assigned for a class, and usually they’re required to read dozens at once.

The problem is that a poem is a remarkable condensed and efficient delivery system. It’s the equivalent of a cigarette or a Belgian chocolate. It gives an intense emotional charge in a short period of time. So, too many too quickly will become overwhelming. Chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes, and you’ll feel nauseous. Eat a box of chocolates in one sitting, and you’ll feel sick. Poems are the same. Furthermore, even if each of those chocolates is distinctly different, you won’t be able to sort them out. They’ll blend together.

Novels can create their own space, entire universes, in which the reader can move around. A poem works differently. It may be that a book ingests a reader, but a reader ingests a poem.

Consequently, poems need to be read in small doses. To switch the metaphor to medicine, if a small amount of medicine is good for you and will heal you, that doesn’t mean a large amount taken at once will make you superhuman. Just the opposite. It usually will harm you.

So, maybe books of poems should have warnings or advice like on medicine or bottles of wine. For a healthy, fulfilling, lifestyle, take in moderation.

The Taxi Driver Who Quoted Poe

Years ago, I had a landlord, Lou, who worked as a night time taxi driver. During the day, he wore golf shirts and slacks. When he went to do his shift, he would put on a leather vest, jeans, leather fingerless gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat. “It’s important to look like someone who you shouldn’t mess with,” he told me. He was a big guy with a big black mustache, and he looked imposing (except when he was walking his wife’s tiny toy poodles Tinky Winky and Teeny Weeny. He was convinced that she had chosen the dogs and the names to embarrass him, but although he grumbled, he loved them).

Lou knew the fastest way to get around the city which, he would point out, wasn’t always the way you wanted to take. You didn’t want to scare tourists by going into some areas, so when a fare got in, you had to figure out who they were and the best route to take them.

Lou also knew hundreds of poems. Before he drove a cab, he was a long-haul truck driver, and he would spend the miles memorizing poetry, especially William Butler Yeats. Once he picked up two English professors at the airport. He heard one of them misquote “The Raven.” He corrected him, and then said he knew the whole poem. “I bet you a hundred bucks, you don’t,” the professor said. Lou took the bet, started reciting, and, at the end of the ride, the guy had to give him a hundred dollars. But, Lou liked to point out, “He didn’t give me a tip.”

Inspired by Lou I typed out short poems on index cards to learn while running. I found not only did the run seem to go faster, but I had to start making decisions about what poems I wanted to memorize. Which did I feel were worth the effort? Which sounded good? Which had something to offer? Suddenly, I had to come up with a personal criteria. I had no intention of reciting these to other people (which, unless you’re Lou or have an Irish accent, can come off as either pretentious or a party trick). These were only for me. They had to be short, they had to speak to me, and they had to be enjoyable to know.

I still have a stack of some of them in my desk drawer: Robert Frost “Fire and Ice”; Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Bean Eaters,” Gary Snyder, “I Went into the Maverick Bar,” Robert Penn Warren, “Treasure Hunt,” Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays.” And, although I no longer know them all by heart, I still carry many of the lines with me.