Profile; Interview with William Eddy; Interview with Blanche Moyse; Interview with Michel Moyse

Based on his 40 years and five continents of experience in environmental consulting teaching and filmmaking UVM professor emeritus William Eddy has published a beautiful and unique book of essays that question our perceptions of the world. Join me for a conversation with Bill Oddie next on profile. He has seen and experienced the world in a way few of us have or ever will. His work for the Tanzanian and U.S. Park Services African Wildlife Foundation the Conservation Foundation and Peace Corps have taken him to East Africa Central America India Nepal and the Caribbean for a wide range of environmental concerns. His work has included consulting producing documentaries shaping curriculums and developing public awareness and environmental programmes. He was a popular and challenging teacher at the University of Vermont for over 20 years. The University awarded an honorary doctorate in 1993. His beautiful new work the other

side of the world is a compilation of thought provoking essays many read his commentaries on Vermont Public Radio at 77. Bill still skis treks in Nepal and climbs Burke Mountain regularly. He lives with his wife Beryl on a farm in the Northeast Kingdom where they raise a Scotch Highland cattle. Welcome. Thank you for coming down today. Thank you. Nice to be here. After graduating from Williams College you taught English for about a dozen years and I'm wondering how did that influence and then develop into your environmental work and filmmaking. Well there really was quite a separation between the two. I was very interested in teaching English literature. And I think that led to an interest in language primarily. And then when I started working overseas I became more and more interested in language and realized that it was the doorway to perception. For everybody. And the different languages lead to different kinds of perception and did

well. When did you first traveled to Africa in particular and what attracted you. To that. My wife Beryl and I first went to Africa in 1958 and we went just to look and to see as many people that had at that time. This was before independence for most of the countries we went to Kenya. And Tanzania and Uganda. When Kenya Tanzania at the time only. I was interested in wildlife. I was interested in national parks I was interested in the conservation of wildlife. But it didn't take me very long. Traveling there and then going back to work there finally in 1961. It didn't take me long to realize that. The it was the Africans themselves that would make the difference in the survival of the wildlife. And that just setting up Parks wasn't enough. The countries that were becoming independent really had to value that wildlife themselves

rather than having that value super imposed on them by others. So part of your work was was helping change that attitude. Right. So this meant that. There was a real need there were no Swahili language documentaries for African audiences and there certainly weren't theatres out in the bush so. I had to learn how to run a mobility film unit and make the films and then take them out and show them to the audiences at night time. And I would go out on some occasions and have I go to a little village and announce that I was going to show a film that night and I would get maybe a thousand people with spears and shields all show up. And it became a social occasion for the people. And they loved it. And they were they were listening to their own language their having someone there having other Africans talk to them about wildlife and its importance economically to the country and so forth. So that was great fun and very. Yeah I think film or photograph for the first time.

Well in many of them seeing photographs for the first time and that was a whole subject that I got most very interested in is how did pre literate people people who could neither read nor write. How did they. Look at pictures. Three dimensions on a two dimensional surface. I ran into a remarkable man with the Flying Doctor Service who'd been out there for 30 or 40 years. The name Alan Holmes and Allen had done a lot of work on the perception of objects in pictures by African audiences African viewers. And he found that very few people could see three dimensionally one two dimensional surfers. And he had come to the conclusion that this was a learned perceptual process something we had to learn how to do. And it seems to be very closely related to the capacity to read by looking at a page and focusing not on the individual words on the page but focusing slightly in front of the page so that you can skim quite a large part of the page at

one time that this leads to a facility with looking at pictures. That's that's different from people who can't do it. There certainly were instances where people that I showed pictures to couldn't really figure out what you were doing what you know what is this that we're looking at. But they could get oriented by sound to what was happening on the screen. The lion roaring right or a person talking to them. And then they would gradually fill in the bits and pieces and begin to learn how to do this interesting. Over the past 40 years you've traveled extensively to some of the most remote and exotic places in the world and you indeed have seen a world of change. What are some of the most obvious changes in places like Nepal or East Africa. Oh the changes have been dramatic. I first went to Nepal in 1972. And went back another eight or nine times and was most recently there only a year ago or so. Me. I would say that one of the great changes has been of course

increase in population increase in technology in terms of automobiles and the pollution of the Kathmandu Valley by those automobiles and poorly refined gasoline. Then the sudden explosion of video cassette recorders video rental shops video tape rentals where people are seeing Sylvester Stallone films without having any cultural preparation from looking at something like this. And then one would see the proliferation of rooftop antenna for picking up CNN all the American soap operas again with no cultural preparation for any of this. So that the jarring of these cultures is tremendous. These two different ways of looking at reality. So you find on the one hand many American people many women American women going to Naipaul to go trekking because they would call it but they're going there not

just to go trekking they're going there because they found something here lacking. In this culture and they go to a Hindu or Buddhist culture and maybe find a guru a teacher or maybe in a place they can go and study and they find that an appealing world. And yet the very people from that culture would throw all that aside the young people particularly to get to Walmart and Disneyland. So you find many people from Europe and America who want to go to Asia for the psychological the spiritual fulfillment you find many of them wanted to come here for the material gain. And nobody is talking to right. Right. Yeah they get this incessant presence of our stuff. You talk a lot about changing perspective certainly are images of change perceptive of people's lives in in in April I'm wondering how can we gain a new perspective through language or change our habits of thinking for a better world

especially in light of September 11th. What what do we need to begin to. How do we need to shift our perspective of the world. Gosh that's a good question and a hard one to do to deal with in a very short space. I think that there is such a separation that has taken place in the last 300 years in the western world. That really began with Deckard and the idea that there was. There were the things of the mind and then there was the real world. That these are quite separate from each other. I would argue that they're not as suckered as we think that there is a tremendous in a relationship between us and our surroundings. The ecologist talk about it in a in a physical sense but I think talking about it in a psychological sense are our languages like a template that we superimpose on sense experience. And. We superimpose a template that requires that we break our sensation. It's our physical

sensations down into nouns or verbs before we can start communicating with each other. And when you break the world the world doesn't know anything about this kind of breaking the world up into nouns and verbs. It's only humans that know about the earth filter everything through language filter everything through language and acts and as I said like a template that we superimpose on nature and we try. We come away feeling still separate from it without realizing that what we see out there is very much a process of what's going on in our minds inside and that there's a dance between the inside and the outside not a separation. And certainly I think in terms of what we call nature we are as part much a part of that in our minds as we are in our bodies and are breathing in our all of the the organic structure of the human being like an organ ism and which are. We are we are part of nature in ways that we really don't understand at all.

When we walk in the woods. We say oh I hear a crow. If we stop and think about a little bit. Our ears don't hear crows or hears hear sound. It's the mind that's doing the cross stuff. So that the mind and the Crow have a very has a real affinity here that by previous experience the new sound that we hear on Tuesday and what we heard last week we can say that's a crow because we can make some sort of comparison. But by the sound that we hear and the meaning of that sound we don't smell coffee cooking. We smell. We have an olfactory experience. Right and our mind is doing the coffee part of it. So there seems that there's a there's a lot of work to be done around changing the mind around and one way we can do that is by looking at your wonderful book. You. Know really this is a this is a it's beautiful it's called the other side of the world. It's really a beautiful book because it was

also printed by Steinhauer press who do wonderful work there thought provoking essays. I wondered if you would read a little bit from this it was actually just chosen as one of the top 12 books in Vermont by the Vermont book Professionals Association. Congratulations. Might come out on top. This is just a passage so people get a sense of where you're coming from as an environmental philosopher and you have just seen a gorgeous sunset at a Navajo reservation and you have these thoughts. This was written about an experience I had in the canyon the shame which is unknown. I have a whole. Area. Part of the National Park Service. I spent a week walking through the canyon to share with a number of elderly Navajo. People. At night before we went to sleep under the stars a Navajo storyteller we counted one of the many tales of

First Man and First Woman. As all such tales It began with the words. Once upon a time and we were led once again through that familiar doorway into timelessness into the story of how children were first given to the human race to return from that world to one to the one of airports and rental cars is not an altogether negative experience because for a short moment one is privileged to be poised between two worlds occupying neither And briefly one's perception of both is heightened. What sets those worlds apart for me is the way in which time is measured in each. The Navajos live immersed in slower rhythms. In time that's measured by a shadows change as on a sundial or by falling sound as in an hourglass. In such measurements one may read it in a single view. What has been what is and what is yet to come. You know our world the measurement of time is digital on clocks that have lost the simple humanness of

face on clocks that speak only of what is now in which there is no past the visible and the future too is on scene. It reminds me this passage of some of your thoughts about the lack of imagination and the problems that are created by that about not being able to see the past or the future. If we can't imagine it if we don't expect it we can't even see it. And you talk about somebody missing a significant humanoid skeleton more not being able to envision 7 generations much less 5 years. How do we nurture the capacity to look beyond eyebrows. I think I think the only way we can nurture that capacity is by having alternative experiences. One of what I would call the basic correlatives of of environmental perception is that it's impossible to perceive any environment except in the

context of another one. So one Saint Paul says when I was a child I spake as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child. That's not a statement a child could make. You have to become the adult in order to appreciate what youth is all about. And that kind of perspective is what takes place when the Peace Corps volunteer goes from Akron Ohio to work as a as a Forest manager and I don't Molly and much to Africa that young person male or female can never look at Akron Ohio again the same way in which they become more conscious because they've got something to compare everything to. Meaning comes through comparison. It's the only way it comes. So when they go off to some foreign place and come back somebody says What was it like. What to a comparison between the familiar and the unfamiliar so that they can gain greater understanding. It's very difficult to increase consciousness but it's crucial

to us as a species is that where you talk about metaphor being able to change us it kind of puts poets and artists in a in a very good light if if you do that but that metaphor indeed as a comparison can help us get to another place. The Habit of our thinking is that metaphor is a kind of frill of language is something that Shakespeare sort of did and it isn't it isn't something that we take seriously. It's fancy writing. But I would suggest that that all languages basically mirror metaphorical. When I go up and climb camel's hump and I come back to Burlington and meet a friend I try to put into words what was not a verbal experience. The climbing of the mountain. So that if you will the verbal experience is a kind of comparison of the non-verbal experience of climbing the mountain. They're not the same thing at all. And we give prizes to writers who are able to recount a sense experience particularly well. This comparison is where the

meaning comes. So metaphor is how we compare one thing with another in order to increase meaning. So when when Shakespeare says like us the waves move toward the Pebble Beach. So do our minutes hasten to their end. He's making a comparison between this rhythm that we're familiar with of the ocean and looking at it in terms of a human life or time to increase our understanding of the process. Where there's even then there's a wonderful example where you were working in Central America and you said let's look at nature not as law not to a female thing that could be exploited and has as women have traditionally been in that culture. But Islam modern I didn't did that have an effect. I think it does. I think it had a tremendous effect and the concepts of law natural Aiza. As being feminine. And language like Spanish is so polarized between the masculine and the feminine of

everything is either hell or long broken up into this way a lot of it is a totally unconscious level but it's built into the way the world is looked at. My feeling was that if if if much of the land of. Let's say Honduras where I was working at the time much of that land is owned by the military or owned by businessmen. And they cut the forests down and they're exploiting the lead and making it difficult for tenant farmers to move to get a subsistence living because of the payment owed to the land owner. This is a form of exploitation and where. And my feeling was that if you began to look at nature not as an object for exploitation the way much feminine stuff was exploited that the idea of nature as as as a moderate as the mother the nourisher. And also because of the strong associations with the Catholic religion marry all of these elements would make a difference as in an education program.

When you started calling nature instead of a monitor laser called a moderate. Another connection that you highlight in your book is the connection between overpopulation and its effects on the environment. How much is too much. It's hard to answer that. Obviously we could touch the earth pipes put in an awful lot more people on it than we have now and I'm sure it would support them. But what what changes is the quality of life so much. I mean if you figure that everything about every 60 hours. The world increases by the empire the population of the state of Vermont by a 600 6000 people something like that every 60 hours. It's very hard to it's hard to imagine quality being preserved for any length of time. All of the education quality of diet the quality of medical care. I worked worked in places in India for instance where after

30 days there I realized that the population while I was there for 30 days it had reached by a million and a half people. And these people. How can you run bus system food system educational systems for that kind of increase you can't do it indefinitely. When you're working in places like that and you're talking about overpopulation or you're talking about the environment and you're coming from the United States where we haven't signed the Kyoto treaty yet and we are great polluters. Did you run into resentment of you as an American bringing these ideas or were you. Basically embraced by the work you did overseas. I think it's the way you go about it that makes a difference. I think if you're going in there with the idea that we know best or something like that we really don't know best. I think we're better off if we go in with a certain kind of humility that really says well let's sit down and look at the problem together and see if there's some way we can work out

a solution to that problem. People are terribly anxious and willing to be helpful and supportive. If they don't feel threatened by someone super imposing a value system on top of them. Sounds like a great message for all of your students I've been told they were spellbinding lecture and that probably more students signed up from the Peace Corps after taking your courses than than from any other teacher in Vermont and yet you still keep up with some of your former students who are all over the world. What what kind of impact do you strive for as a mentor and a teacher. I think I want them to be courageous enough to take risks. To do the thing which is a little threatening. Because they will grow as people from that experience. And I think that's that's what I really am concerned about is their own budding consciousness of themselves and awareness of their own capacity to do things and accomplish things.

And. Once they've done a Peace Corps standard taking a semester abroad they come home and there they walk taller and they have more confidence. They behave totally differently. That also brings me to you talk a lot about human beings are unique because they have self-awareness. And it creates problems as well as you know the wonderfulness of of what and who we are how well do we use self-awareness. I think self-awareness can be confused with self centeredness and I don't. I've certainly not advocating that. The idea. Of trying to get outside ourselves to find out who we are by comparison is what's essential. To go to a culture that looks at many things differently than from the way we do we are we are being forced to do this with the Muslim religion. Now we are being forced to do this with

the presence of a considerable amount of Buddhist emphasis or concern in this country. And. Some of our old values are being questioned and many people find it frightening very threatening. I think younger people don't find it quite so threatening as older people. And I think this is one of the the clashes between generations because of the threat of change. We've got to change if we ponder survive as a species and the young people are really the vanguard of that whole thing. You don't think they're afraid of that or that that feels like too much pressure on them what are you feeling to young people you've taught. Are they are they ready to go out there and do it. I think I think many of them are. I've had. Certainly. Whole Maciel a hundred fifty students at UVM who've gone either for a semester abroad and then come back and gone into Peace Corps after graduation. I think they were never the same again. And they write me and say thank you. For

for urging me to do this and they're the ones who did it. That's the important thing. And. I think their awareness of what they're capable of it increases and that's that's that's a marvelous kind of self-confidence. Well you have inspired them I'm interested in who has inspired you I I've heard it said that you're the most well-read professor ever to come through the University of Vermont which is quite something. What what author or book. Really sparked you or goodness that's a difficult question. Many Yeah. Lauren I was a lady who was I think Benjamin Franklin professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania I think many years ago. He was a major influence on me as a young person. A great many poets he Cummings was a great influence. Robert Frost was a great influence but intellectually I did find one of the most stimulating people is a very not well known and

tall died not very many years ago a man him Owen Barfield from England. Wrote a handful of books. And those books I think were revolutionary and still are. Speaking of books a final question your photographer as well you have stunning collection of images. Is there a book coming out. I don't know. I'm working on some things right now to do with. How we see by comparison. And I'm I'm I want to do a book called The metaphoric mind. And that's what I'm working on at the moment. Terrific. Well thank you so much for coming all the way down here from the Kingdom today it's an absolute delight. Thank you friend L.A. been great. And thank you for joining us on profile. At 92 critics say she's still at the top of her game blow small ways as a

legend who brought her world class musical talents to a small Vermont town. And this continued to radiate from there for over 50 years. Join me for a conversation with a dynamic Madama Weise. Next on profiles. One of the men we screw up in Geneva Switzerland and by age 16 began winning critical acclaim as a violinist in Paris she later studied with a preeminent flutist of the time Marcel Moyse Marcel and his son Louis joined Blash to form the acclaimed when we stray o eventually married Luis. And at the end of World War Two friends and right in the growing moist family to Vermont to establish a music department at fledgling Marlborough College which indeed she did and taught there for 25 years. Together they later created the Marlboro Music Festival and Madame always founded the Brattleboro Music Center where she continues to this day as

artistic director in the mid 60s trouble with her bow arm forced an end to Madama wheezes performance career. Undaunted she turned her talents to the study of Bach choral work and conducting soon the New England Bach Festival was born as well as the corral and the rave reviews keep coming. But I'm always has just received notice that she's been awarded the cross of the Order of Merit from the Republic of Germany for her lifetime work as a performer and teacher. Congratulations. Thank you for coming up today. Was this award a surprise you've had many in your life including three doctorates was this one from Germany a surprise surprise. They both thought that to be me. It pleases me very much because there's no country. Well but much before wonderfully put them to the person who makes me the.

Well it certainly makes sense as one of the preeminent interpreters of the. Going back your love of music came early. You went to the Geneva conservatory and graduated with first prize at the age of 16 as a violinist and then you studied guitar with Andres Segovia. Then you moved to Paris in your early 20s to study medicine. Why did you want to become a doctor and what changed and I'm not a doctor. Good that she had a professional doctor taking care of people responsible you can do that. And I thought that was so wonderful. She lived because she gave them to people. And she was very successful. Success was to cure a little girl that

was reliant and then to be blindfolded by the doctor. So you were going to follow in her footsteps I thought that was a wonderful poor fish and I wanted to Primo violin and go on being a professional bodies. I wanted to do. So you at some point decided that you could not do both was that when you when you moved in with a family after when you stole did too but I discovered that I was sick because Steve Phillips still practiced six or seven olds of it. So I understood it was quinsy idea completely clear. So you created with Marcel Moyse and leave them away stray Oh you won many awards including the International Grand Prix to

disk you traveled all over Europe. The greatest composers were writing for your trio This must have been an exhilarating time in your life. It was it was wonderful. And then eventually you married Louis in 1940 and you gave birth to twin boys and you gave up your solo career though I guess you skeptical of will if you cleared a little bit of to it well here I stopped. I see you raised you began to raise children in occupied France. How difficult was that that led to your deciding to move to the United States Zolo it was in the Zs speel you leave to the Pearl. It was when we came back to where we had been living in should you too also. People thought we knew we should it will back it. Fortune and UNO

just couldn't stand it. You know you had moved to the country for some period of time. Yeah yeah. So 50 years ago were moving through time very quickly. But 50 years ago you moved to Brattleboro with your husband children father in law at the invitation of your family's friend Rudolph's Arkan and your former teacher Adolph Bush to establish the Marlborough College Music Department which indeed you did you had it for 25 years. And with this group you also co-founded the Marlboro Music Festival a few years passed and U.S. stablish the Brattleboro Music Festival which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. How did you handle so many start ups with by this time a family of four children. This seems like a lot of bacteria they think of it but it seems to be good meat.

Is it lives with difficulty in the world to still want to be a good book. But I wanted to be as good as I could and I think I did well. And also you are the mother certainly of the Brattleboro Music Center. Has it met your expectations. Well it's difficult to see. Nothing lives quite to my expectation. But I'm very happy because I feel it to the leg. It takes care of every aspect of teaching music and film for me music you know. It goes well we teach the bee. And the city's music making for us do it for fun of it. But I mean the fun of it but I don't

like this. He goes full reviews it gets so much fun. I hope the people who come to have funds they discover also about to be discovered in music. You've been an educator much of your life. So what is the connection between musical instruction and academic development. What does music do for people for the rest of their lives and for their academics. Well it depends of course of home much music to you. Life is like for me it's his music is my life. I don't do anything else well. It's told me everything I feel and think about life and his world. But it's not like the whole if you will but I think what I'd like to do with the music

center I would like to teach is a sea of music so that nobody comes to the Music Center with old feelings that this is a world but it's music. And it's an incredible and lead shipment and foals are people who take it. She'll Yes. Yes. After 40 years of professional playing your bow arm had had a problem and forced you to make a decision about how to continue your musical career. Well I had to stop my plea and you became a conductor and in a way the chorale became your instrument because I had seen when I was young in Geneva going oh there was a little group of city singing. The woman at the head of the fantastic gold since that was not my first go interact with music. I felt very good contact

and steadied in my head and when I came here I started having a call and then also I started to get called us and then when I really thought I really want to do more with the cause and start to whom I meant to steal Slayton poor fish and that they will not be official. But my teaching was right. This is the fault of much of my life. Do you think that your violin or string training is a good way to move into conducting or with any musical background help someone step into conducting any musical called helps but I think that

to be a St. Louis Paul fashion helps a lot if you will be music before ducting as people question. You could go to and of course I don't know what I learn I'm know to conduct a lot of old same old ways I may post plated for a living. Maybe you know and. That makes a big difference I never said really as a conductor and living myself as a false pleated violinist and sees all my colleagues so they look not to have been stopped. But you have doing. Been doing this remarkably for several decades. A Wall Street Journal reviewer wrote of your performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion that your Chorale and I quote reached heights professionals rarely even dream of. How do you get that kind of

performance out of amateur singers. Or are they amateur or after working with you for so long. Yes I believe in hybrids and do they work in a profession. So my musicians they are all highly I mean first professionals from New York and Boston and. I don't know why is he like me so much I don't know. Well you do have a reputation for being a rather harsh taskmaster. You're not. It's not easy I would think to be in your corral. Especially in my oldest because ill all of that is so good I mean professional. Taken exactly a need to understand what I say and of course being a violent ex I know how to

talk to him. To us it's much more difficult to because I treat Paul Fishman and he said it took me years to discover that you have to be a psychologist to I mean. I don't know as a psychologist. Yeah because because Americans take things so very deep blip gets offended so easy so so I had to learn to do to teach in a better way which I think in the hallway but they should have to do it which is a be full discouraging. You have an extraordinary musical talent you can hear and understand music. Above and beyond most ordinary musicians and choral members it must. Does that get frustrating for for you or lonely at times that

in Brattleboro there isn't a community that you can really talk to about the way you hear that other people. Can't. Make love to you. Lowkey i feels that. Very good falls a festival. I feel that the greatness the beauty the truth. But I feel in music i. Don't know how and why. I'm just lucky. Please alleged that my way of doing it reaches people again feel it I feel it in me I just feel it in my back but I feel it when I see them and especially when see it see if you will talk to me before leaving so a hole you know. And. Nor is the me that I know it is not me I thought

just to conduct those who come for me it's called for. And why it is so beautiful. Not much to do. Well it seems to me you do have much to do in in getting the emotion. Not only the technique but the emotion of the piece. From everything that I've heard and seen. Yeah. I can't believe I'm the only one to feel CMO should think about the jewels because I don't talk about much to do. Not a good conductor I don't exactly want to go home to Boston of one Boston to Tokyo to go duck to know what to do in a tub so I haven't or don't and it's simply vote for foam. That's why why back it's true you have dedicated the last several decades of your life to bah and his music.

It's really great music some people I meet many people I was always out this question and I answer very often it is because Beethoven didn't like to hunt it down taught us. That the greatness of music is in music because it to be an artist you have to get out of you. What's goes for all the tools for whatever you want to see makes you be a Nulty is do you have to give it. You have to quit it's something. I myself I'm not an artist and I need to put those on the floor. And that is what the composer Phil SST Souter who told this incredible color works but also old Chicago Bulls as loft will have going see it the L suit peel you know if he has something to see

that everybody understand it which is so great. Musician. And it's so evens of musicians themselves of cool bulls will look at him like a father of them all. You weren't tempted though to try something else because this is what you do. Where is it. It's 200. OK. Yes I love to. I have gotten if you is all things even with concerts I bought some folk which I think you'd see it work in to see him steely true quality. Do it for the fall. If you also works at all faults and who is very close to you in a lovely documentary about you know called blogs by Alan dater. You seem to reserve your harshest criticism for gifted people who

rely on their talent and don't work hard enough at it. Why do you find this so irritating. Be cool. Everybody is capable of giving much think. And unknowns. I haven't ever had is too important. Much more so that he or she thought capable and CeCe is what excites me because I know I can dig any musician and make them go for the count and I can't stand the people doing well. Clearly did Brattleboro Vermont you have. Chosen to stay there. Where you are really world class you could be in New York or Paris or a larger place. Why did you stay in Brattleboro. Because I had been raised into coaching and I think it's

essential to have a world as it is created even chewed to Hauser's insists. PLEASE I HAVE BEEN is a cult leader. All my life but I am able coming to the house I know we have a long view if we review on the heels. I've never before push it the right to say it is it nature or you never never level. I didn't know that before didn't have such an incredible view. So you bring the world to you. I read that you said professional music now is more like sport than art. Is this why you don't do more recordings or. Yeah no.

50 years ago 30 years ago I feel that young people know. Back wanting music to keep them old just to parked it's a difficult sport and that pleases me. And Sultan why some of them are like me I think it's people's phone needs a month or so on his boat and. I'm happy to see people that seem to feel it's him way so what are they doing now that they weren't doing before that the sport was to play as fast as you can or the way I tell you. Fifty years ago of to lead off the fun being in college didn't yield a boat. I asked Babbitt to come and talk about what he said about music and he came and he bowled a lot of his scene that the music seems like that.

And he thought and he said that music left still domain of human emotion and knows that it was the experiment to assassinate teaching in school in school but had nothing to do with human emotional animal. And now with the just write a book about a young composer 54 years old and see all talk about music governing ultimately it's too technical an experimental stage and wanting to see it all said once they wanted was to talk to us or people who knew seats at a Celtic Good to see and really gave me an incredible joy. Yeah because I was still with the Beatles. Finished music. Do you think that choral music touches that of emotional core more deeply than the music without the human voice or.

It depends what homosexuals agreed. No sir. Go pulls those feet. I understand you do to help people who are gifted to. Do to put to music. Seems like this is not so great Mills says is true. You know a lot of quality good and classical composers wanted to clear their music so it's not that classical music gets out of love if you get tossed off in. A few people remain as vibrant through their 7 days 80s and 90s. You made your debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 78 though you played in New York in the centers of the world before you played at the Metropolitan Museum of Art just last year. You continued to be

the artistic director of the Bach Festival and the Brattleboro Music Center. Has age limited you in any way. Oh yes I can see I. Have no smell. Well you certainly fool a lot of people if you think gold. What is what but what is your secret to this vibrant longevity. I don't see an extinct special. What do you eat for breakfast. You don't see anything special. Is it is it a passion for one thing. Oh yes of course. Yeah yeah. You certainly seem to get your energy from from what you do. Are any of your children professional musicians.

No. The all gifted No. You will go through this book. It could be the book Beautiful flutist but also flirted with me until today. Although it is difficult we will actually be speaking with Michele on the show and another couple of weeks. Wonderful. Tell me just. Again about. How nature. Because that was so moving the passage you talked how nature effects what you do and possibly how you teach. I feel that is a boat. I mean these are books I shouldn't talk about that because it was all things wouldn't get motivated bocce blow one whole fees of the fields out of Michoacan dick

into the police in the life in anybody's life but it's good to get a lot of police. Oh nothing much you know and I mean I don't know when it will just go well. He is a jeans you'll know how you'll be is what feeds the age. He's also so it's told in two adults will you. You'll see how we say if you know you'll never see one thing one single day like and all the yeah so it could be but it is going to new beauty. That is a ploy to Walty a poem a bolt made show moves so that they can still extol him isn't it beautiful and deed and your music is you are continued to conduct you'll be in New York City May 29

the Marlboro Music Festival in July and next October the B Minor mosque is being brought back to the New England rock festival thank you so much for being with us. My family thank you and thank you for being with us. Little. LULU. The show Moyse pushes boundaries in thought provoking ways. He's an entrepreneur

painter educator and acclaimed experimental video artist who challenges the mediums in which he works. Join me in a conversation that may challenge the way you think about art. Next on profile. Michelle noways was born in Geneva Switzerland. Lived in France until the age of nine and in 1050 emigrated to the United States with his renowned musical family. He graduated from Brattleboro Union High School and Marlborough College then earned a master's degree in arts education from New York University where he stayed in New York employed as a sound editor in film and television working for such directors as Otto Preminger Woody Allen and Brian De Palma in the 1980s he moved back to Brattleboro and founded a film acquisition and development company a video production company and eventually with his wife Linda created the Center for Digital art and

independent media incubator and educational facility. Michelle's awards include this year's first prize in the experimental category of the New England Film and Video Festival. Thank you for coming up today. Thank you for inviting me. Now you come from a very musical family of the famed movie says you got a master's in art education which makes sense now with the center but you wouldn't necessarily figure that would go into a sound editor's career. So how did you end up in that line of work as a sound editor. I when I got married in 1983 my wife and I moved to New York City and I was at the time after graduating and majoring in philosophy I was interested in pursuing my studies as a philosophy major in graduate school which I did. But we rented a small apartment and I needed to find some employment and I went to an agency an agency geared me directed me towards professional sound editing house and

I started working there is delivery boy and two three months after somebody said to me one of the editors said Would you like to learn sound editing and I said Sure why not. Wow. And that's what happened. And you probably have a good ear. I did. But after about 15 years of working as a sound editor years ago we used to work on a piece of equipment called the moviegoer and we worked without earphones. And in order to work there are really two processes to sound editing one is dialogue editing. Cleaning up the voice striking the other one is actually cutting into sound effects and music. When I started in 1983 the sound editor did not only the dialogue but the sound effects editing and the music. And in order to clean dialog you really had to crank the sound up very loud so over the years I lost a little bit of my hearing in the process. Wow. What was your most fascinating project as a sound editor you know. Probably breaking away with Peter Yates in a 1970s sound editing became a

freelance and film sounds was a place where I worked in the beginning and. In 70 71 the business changed to some degree. I started freelancing and I worked almost exclusively with. Feature Film people and one of the most interesting projects was breaking away yeah. And it you know it was a kind of film where there were not a lot of sound effects it wasn't a lot of pyrotechnics and and bells and whistles but it was kind of subtle work that if you looked at it it would mean something to you but it wasn't in your face it wasn't the kind of thing where you would necessarily pay attention to the sound. But it was there as a kind of a background and it was fun working on not only because I think I enjoyed the film but I worked with a director who was really a nice person and made you feel comfortable and treated everybody and in a very warm and congenial way. So you clearly had experiences with some directors who weren't congenial.

Yeah that's a few. The first actually the first feature that I worked on as a sound editor it was a feature called such good friends directed by Otto progress. And I was 23 or 24 at the time and he was a tough tough director. I mean all of it lived up to his reputation. Now how does sound affect us as an audience. It's subtle most people think of film and video they think about the image. Yeah well you know as you know you know a film is primarily a visual media but I think more and more now with the with the introduction of sound and all of the capabilities of manipulating sound and integrating sound with a musical score. It's more and more becoming integral to the film process soon. I know not yet for example if you think of Hitchcock and you you know and he used to say that students of film should really start making silent movies because they would explore than the visual aspects of the film more than sound but if you've had the experience of listening to a

film without looking at the visual. Or looking at the film without hearing the sound. Personally I think more often than not I would prefer listening to the sound than just looking at the visual particularly the way films are made now where the Hollywood blockbuster is dialogue driven and the information the storytelling is told through dialogue. Perhaps more so than through the visual information. Or if the sound doesn't work it's more grating then that image Yeah. Well it tends to be amplified You know if you think of sound. It's not quote unquote realistic sounds that you're using in film. It's what you. Do what you think you should hear so that you have for example in Raging Bull when you have a fight sequence the editor will not put in simply the the punch of somebody getting hit on a job but he might subliminally and you might hear this add the sound effects of glass breaking the sound of maybe a lion roaring and

makes all this sin so that it becomes. And I've struck an abstraction of what sound is like in a way like if you think of photorealism in painting where you think of that tradition where. The representationalism amplified and augmented. This is what actually the sound editor does. Well you certainly challenge us as listeners to listen differently in your work. Howard's there even might be a weather forecast that's blaring and you're still you're straining to hear the real dialogue. What are some of the things just before we see a clip that you're trying to do with sound much less image and cowards. I think what interests me in the process is first of all the experimentation of working with something that is that is to some degree non-linear that is has some aspects of multiplicity but in terms of the sound what part of that which is to break away from the linear from the

storytelling from the the more reality of a conclusion if you will. What I like to do is to introduce elements that are in Congress or. Outside of the expectations and. You know I do this to some degree purposefully but to some extent that's just the way I am I like to fool around and have some fun with this. But. It I think what it does is introduces the viewer towards perception of what is happening in a way that's out of convention out of the conventional and that. Allows for sensing for sensing outside of the normal routine of breaks the routine and that brings And I think it opens you up it opens a viewer to more sensing and and deeper perception. Well it's certainly interactive I mean while you're here you have multiple screens that you are using for your works now so the viewer has to choose where they look.

We have a a. You provided us with a taped version of Howard's which is very limited so I'd like you just a first before we roll that describe how cowards should be seen going and then watch the spin. OK well you're going to see it on on two on one screen and a fight with two different images. OK. And the way this film should be seen and has in fact been seen in my studio is through a combination of two projectors two large projectors which project an image one slightly above the other. These two images which are I think when you saw it with they were about 12 feet in diagonal each overlapped by about three or four feet in the middle to create a third yet a third image. And there are a roll of smaller monitors on the floor which are fed from four additional separate sourced source tapes. So the whole thing works as a kind of an installation if you will it has it's fed from six

source tapes which are run in synchronicity through time code and through a computer. And so the whole thing is. As you point out you know you look at one thing that you look at another thing then you're something else is going down in the bottom and there are temporal and spatial perspective all over the place so let's see this excerpt from cowards now and then we'll continue to talk about it. Why why why why. Well when it's going to

start seeing monsters so. Lots going on for us to try to deal with and anything else you want to say about what you're doing with the peace in the way of bringing artwork into it. Different Yeah. I think that we were talking before about introducing other elements because. I think the whole nature to some degree the technology that we're working with now the computer in the computer software is and so on are really introducing a revolution in art making. And what fascinates me is the way in which these technologies open to some degree new forms of creative expression and. The multiplicity of images. Allow a shift and a change in the way storytelling is normally

normally conducted. I like I like to use what I call psychic gestures or representation of psych adjusters in tandem with the images or with the or with the dialogue with the storytelling. Because of course there is a narrative here. Yeah yeah sure there is a narrative in the narrative. You know if you look at traditional filmmaking that drives the story. This is still driven by narrative but there are subtext to the stories that are brought in and my interest as a painter of course has also been from a visual point of view to introduce different colors and different tonalities to the piece and this multiplicity of images allows me to do just that. I had a hard time coming to that because. Working in video I was really disappointed particularly coming out of the 35 millimeter feature film tradition where you look at an image that's you know 50 feet across and so on and the resolution is just fantastic. And when you're working with video it's a very different medium. Of course it's a different tool obviously. But

when I was I remember going back to the projectors as they were about 10 or 15 years ago the color was really pretty awful so there are great strides have been made. Feeling a little better about that though. Yeah it's interesting that there's this narrative as the topic is sexual and emotional abuse. A couple really having a hard time you also had a documentary called Heart work which looked at let me explain the artistic expression of abuse what is it about this topic that you came back to. You know I think that I've been choosing if you if you and I know you're going to bring up the runner before I've been choosing I think that one of the. Interesting questions that I have in terms simply of of an approach to life is what is the nature of pain and what is the nature of of contentment. And I think in some ways we're all trying to find vehicles. And processes that will bring us towards a form of happiness and contentment. And I think that if you will from the other point of view what is it about my life and what is it about

life in general or and specific with my friends for example that creates problems and I'm interested in solving the problems. I'm interested in finding out the nature of pain what is the nature also of pain that leads to violence. And I think another reason that I'm interested in this is because we live and this is my own sense that we live in a in and a world that is to some degree governed by a very kind of quotidian routine you know and so we don't we don't look under the table we don't often see what's going on in a basement or underground. And I mean this psychically of course you know and so I'm interested in tapping these energies and going beyond what we would normally called you know the daily habits of living and going beyond that and trying to understand what's really going on and what is at the core you know. Well one of the decisions you made I don't know if it was painful or not was to move back to Vermont. And you had some on your entrepreneurial side came out maybe it was because you have

to when you moved to Vermont. Yeah that's true you have to be. To support your pain you came back to paint and now and then it up creating some companies. Yeah one movie you produce is why me it was a very serious film that aired in the 80s and did very well the ratings were quite astounding for it. Why do you think you that film had that success. Why did I have that success. And I don't really know because it was good. But why did you continue to produce movies so you decided that was. Well yeah because I mean I was I was vice president of a company called Dublin films and as part of the function that I had been in that company it was to try to raise money and to make deals with Hollywood and so on to be in other words a producer. And I found that role disconcerting I didn't like it. I didn't I didn't want to be a producer I didn't want to deal with getting options on stories not only because I found the process

difficult complicated a lot of you know steps to go through and uncertainties but also because it took me away from a hands on approach to the work and as an artist as a painter and as a sound editor all of these things are really hands on and you have an immediate you know feel for what you're doing as a producer I was removed from that process and. That's probably what happened. So you got back into filmmaking and actually your twin brother Clode who lives in Geneva filmed your works cowards and I think maybe the runner as well. He was yeah he actually lives in Albany New York and he did for a while if intonated anybody years ago. What's that. Do you have him come because he's your brother and it's great to work with him more. Well I did. I mean he started actually in a video production business way before I did my husband in a video production. More on the commercial end of it for a long time but when I got a crew together for the runner we talked and he showed an interest

in being sort of a talker for me and I said fine let's do it and we shot it in a three week period over the summer in fact it was a first my first actual teaching experience in video. Because. That. Film The runner was done in the context of a workshop that I gave for students and out of my studio and was proud of them. We're actually going to just go ahead and roll that piece it was a piece that you did on nine screens. And so we have it here now it's there are many perspectives that are that are coming at you. It sounds like an editing nightmare to me. But here's this write everything I've done has been in this thing. And but it does raise the tension here we know the people in the car are harassing a runner and we're not sure what's going to happen at this point. Yeah actually what you're looking at is is a representation of the actual piece because that

piece again like cowards is meant to be seen on nine separate individual monitors and they were what they called a three by three video wall without the processor so I couldn't process the image and come composite into one folder one screen image. Right. So you're looking at a condensed version on one tape of individual sections. So this would usually be on a like 15 by 15 huge one of the monitor the better the better. Oh and we're back. I had a lot of fun doing a runner it was a kind of my introduction to integrating video production which took me a long time to get into and my artwork and my background and semed editing and film editing. Yeah because up until nineteen eighty or 81 when I started to do well I started to do my own video artwork up until that time. I had kept my

life. Not by choice but by by necessity necessity and circumstance fairly separate. I was sound editing freelancing out of New York City doing some film work film editing occasionally and then coming back to Vermont to do some painting two dimensional painting with oils because I did a lot of work on plastics and glass as well. Yeah. And when I was in my early 20s the work that I did really. If I look back on it is almost you know directly linked to the work that I do as a video artist now because I didn't realize it at the time because I was working with white boxes and fooling around with motion and different planes and so on and it's a lot like television and motion even some of your. Paintings that are in your pieces there are like moving paintings because they're kind of being created or they're moving while they're in a very interesting collaboration between those two mediums. The other thing about having multiple screens is in a way you have

less control it's so interactive that you have less. Control about what the audience is going to see when it will absolutely is that of concern or is that I mean it's all in the film. It's a great joy to me. It's less controlled in a sense and I think the audience participates in creating the piece in a way perhaps more than they they would if they were looking at one image. But it's also because of the multiplicity of screens allows you for example and I play with this in a runner much more than I do with cards to show simultaneously the past and the future. Yes. And you know I don't have to have quick dissolve and go to black or white to show the past these conventions you know that you see in film now and I think. I had a lot of fun I had a lot of fun playing with these ideas you can show the interior and exterior at the same time and I can look at you and videotape you and so you would see a physical

representation of you on one screen but on another screen I might be trying to imagine what you're thinking about or or you know whatever it is so these two images would run simultaneously and that this location the fact that you're looking at more than one image and that you're adding your own perception to it creates something that I think fairly radically different than we're normally used to seeing at least in terms of narrative storytelling. And I'm not so much in terms of video art because video art explores the situation but the storytelling if you think in terms of the Hollywood filmmaking the storytelling you don't normally explore those other areas Thanks functional areas. Are there other artists that you really admire who are pushing boundaries like this. Yeah there are lots of artists there is there is. I mean Bruce Nauman Tony Arcelor I think is a wonderful artist. Bill Viola there are a lot of many artists I think this you know it's the kind of thing where I feel that I'm kind of

tapping into a kind of energy that's that's present and that we are we are exploring and it's odd because it's not local It's global. It's not an energy that OK it happens to you because you're a Michelle voice and you're living in Brattleboro Vermont. It's an energy that happens to you because you're living it in the present right now. And I see these experiments with these multi screens and these these issues of what it is that is relevant and how do you express yourself being explored throughout the world and. Very exciting very exciting. What what kind of what is the struggle of the contemporary artist now. Well so many definitions kind of blown open. Well I mean it is I think there are broadly speaking two answers one always what they've been they haven't changed and the second answer is colored by the specific circumstance of your culture and location. So.

In a sense in terms of the first answer they are what they have always been to define yourself the reality to define what reality is to try to tap into something that expresses something larger than yourself I mean that's a kind of incantation if you will leaving of a Trace You know Francis Bacon said the Artist as a snail leaving a trail. And the artist is leaving a trail. In that sense it's age old. It's been like that for many many years in terms of the second answer. It's specific to our culture and I think it's specific. Not to the American culture but to the culture of the modern world with with all of our tools and technologies and conventions and the ways in which we're so inundated by so much stimuli only time you know and also the way in which entertainment has encroached on art and that's and you're mimicking that a lot in what you

do. Well I hope not. But I mean a lot of stimulus that it was. OK I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend you but actually before we're getting close to the end and speaking of family you come from a family that has quite a legacy of creativity. Your father father Louis Moyse is approaching 90 and he's just put out a CD. Your mother is the Intrepid brilliant conductor and founder of The New England Bach Festival your grandfather who did a documentary about was the preeminent flutist Marcel. What was it like to grow up in such a creative household. Well I think it's very interesting I mean particularly since I was born in 1940 and lived in Europe in the beginning during the war years and we were we were moved around quite a bit from France and Switzerland that we ended up spending a year in South America and then coming here. But from a personal point of view. The idea which was very strong and

meant a great deal to me about the earth the value of art in the family and the value of being creative of following. I was going to say your bliss but of following something you know that you really enjoy doing and not to do something simply for the sake of making a living or or you know. Yeah but we just have the pleasure of being an artist and and having that process not the goal but the process the goal is that the process is the goal. Well and that process and goal is being born in the Center for Digital art for many young people as well as artists in the Brattleboro area. And unfortunately I just want to mention it because we're all out of time. Please keep your eyes open for what's happening at the vigil at the Center for Digital Art. And with Michelle always thank you so much for being here today. Thank you very much. And thank you for joining us.