Radio broadcasts, 1982, KAIR, University of Colorado
Each show is approximately 30 minutes
STAN BRAKHAGE (SB): Hi, my name is Stan Brakhage and I’ve very kindly been asked by Len Barron first of all, to try to
make a weekly radio program, to share some of my thoughts about the arts, and most especially to share with you some of the
recordings of poets, of music, some of the plays and dramas that I’ve collected over the years - things that are very, very
special to me and that I’d like to be able to give somehow to people at large. What we heard at the beginning, which will be the
Introduction music for this program from now on, is Gregorian chant - specifically some parallel organums. They’re directed
by Denis Stevens and they’re part of a Musical Heritage Society Series called “The History of European Music, Volume
Two.” And like a great deal of what I’ll be playing on this program they’re out-of-print and obscure to begin with - not well
known. They were recorded by the Accademia Monteverdiana Holy Trinity Church, London, and what they essentially
represent to me are a high point for me personally of music from the fifth- through the thirteenth-centuries. I want to lay
emphasis on the word ‘personal.’ I have to be free in doing this kind of program to be nothing but personal, which is to say
sometimes, often maybe, always a fool in a way. I’ll mispronounce things and falter now and again and my knowledge is one
that comes, is ‘amateur’ in that sense of ‘lover.’ And maybe I have stature in the world more specifically in relationship to film
but otherwise film doesn’t represent itself very well on the air and the best you’ll have of that is opinions from time to time. For
instance I want to encourage film that’s as out of the mainstream as some of the music and some of the poetry that I’ll be
presenting. And most specifically would like to encourage people to go to the ‘First Person Cinema’ which is every Monday
night at eight o’clock in the Fine Arts Building at the University of Colorado, where you’ll be able to see a variety of films
made most individually in the one sense, but in the other, to me, though that’s a hard-to-prove, as an attempt to make art.
Contributed by
Juan Pablo Macías