The Freezing Eyes of Hell

Nov 13, 2020, 12:06 PM

Traitors to guests created by Bev Boyd.

" In this piece about the 9th circle of hell, Zone 37,  we encounter the terror of the inanimate souls of the underworld, whose grief can only turn inward as the tears freeze in the rims of their eyes. 

"Sue, a pensioner in her 70s, describes the pain she suffered when she developed Dry Eye Syndrome and the her frustration at changes to her prescribed medication. Her words intersperse lines from Cantos 32-34. I was drawn to descriptions in the text that referenced glass, crystals and a frozen lake. Their  jagged characteristics seemed to echo the sensations she suffered every day before finding treatment. Sue says she's not used to being asked for her experiences or point of view so I felt she knew something of the suspended voiceless beings in the text, and I hoped that came through.

"Sue's words weave in and out of readings of Dante's text and include some of our warm-up for the recording, in which we look at shapes made by the ice in her freezer tray. I felt it captured her sense of being a bit frozen and the two of us chipping away together.  Sounds you'll hear include the humming of a home freezer and ice crystals creaking on frozen vegetable packs as well as ice cubes which I knocked and stretched (before and during  editing). A bottle rolls on ice  with nowhere to go. They all seemed to have a place in Zone 37 as well as the life of Sue as she negotiates her changed medication with the pharmacist.
I added some notes and strums from my ukulele in E flat minor after finding it was traditionally felt to be the key which captured the soul's darkest despair; that if ghosts could speak, they would speak in E flat minor."

Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno