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> First, a challenge. Or maybe not. What's a one-word description for How Many Miles to Babylon?
Mind -movie
> And "Or, 13 Easy Pieces"? What does this refer to?
There are 13 pieces of text as it was written; -they are a bit divided up throughout the program.
>
Are the memories recited throughout the piece yours, or were they written for the script? Why did you choose to have multiple voices remembering?
they are based on my memories, but they are not exactly true
first of all I thought: I would like to do something about merry-go-rounds.
I don't know why.
There was a big exhibition of la fête foraine at la Villette which I recorded.
there is a merry-go-round museum (a truly magic place) which I recorded;
There are a lot of merry go rounds in the streets in paris.
I also got formal permission from the army (a colonel, no less) to let me go and record the horses at the école militaire.
then I wrote the text.
the story, like all stories, could belong to anyone.
for me one voice is one person.
several voices for me implies a fragmentation of idientity,
not a "german narrator". [ed. note : Kaye's referring to a style where one narrator dominates throughout a story in a formalized, official manner]
also there is no "message " in this piece.
it just wants to take you somewhere.
to open a space in which to be.
 > Much of the story unfolds from a child's perspective. Was it
difficult to access this point of view, or did it come easily?
the german artist jochen gerz once said to me:
when you live in a foreign country, or in any case outside the place you
were born in you carry your childhood with you all the time.
I do.
>
The teacher/tourguide/narrator character has a unique sense of humor, very subtle. What's his role in the overall program?
he was the guide in the merry-go-round museum, also a mountebank from a fête foraine in another real life..
his sense of humour was accordingly slightly lewd.
he also represents some of the reasons that I "wasn't allowed to go there by myself".
his role in my piece was to supply a bit of reality amid the fiction and the in-the- head memories.
He also is a useful narrative and informative device.
>
His caterpillar/ joyride story has a slightly different feel from the other circus memories.
What's your intention in including it?
this was perhaps the most acceptable of his sometimes slightly doubtful jokes.
but I kept it because I saw an image of young teen age girls in fifties style "full skirts" going out with their boyfriends and taking a merry-go-round ride.
something sort of dated and rather innocent.
but , now the question is asked, I think that if I looked up my notes, i would find that what he actually said was much more risqué.
> When producing a radio feature about notions and feelings (temptation, curiosity, memory, daring), rather than concrete subjects or stories, how do you decide on the corresponding sounds?
I don't know.
However what I do is record until I seem to have enough sound material.
I choose the terrain on which I will record, then record voraciously.
Then I edit and see what I have left.(I get rid of bad quality first, then what is less interesting etc)
Then I start constructing with something, a sound, an assemblage of sounds.
This something leads to another thing...
It is an instinctive process on the one hand, but it also has to do with a sort of an accoustical syntax (one might say).
in other words, this sound plus that sound might not make "sense" together.
the sense is nerve-end sense, rather that intellectual.
Or else perhaps (more pretentiously) it is like painting: this colour and that together will produce this sensation.
 > Can you talk about the structure? It seems to mimic the motion and rhythm of a merry-go-round - circling around, with repeated thoughts and scenes, music and rhymes.
I don't remember how intentional it was.
I do remember that the idea of the merry-go-round seemed like a metaphore(a light hearted metaphore) for the wheel of fortune ,
for life, for the ecclesiast's 'turn, turn , turn, for everything there is a season' to which I have been attached since childhood.
also:
there is a song recorded in the stables "quand tu danses" which was quite important to the structure and emotional climate: it is a love song, quite melancholy, and suggests a separation.
the guys at the école militaire( as is often the case) leave trannies [transistor radios] on all the time they are working in the stables
I just happened upon this song of Jean Jacques Goldman's ... a song I didn't know.
it is "found music"
> The pacing also feels very intentional - it's steady but reflective. Could you tell this story in 15 minutes, (or less, as we often have to on US public radio) or does it need the full 38 that it runs to unfold?
my work is often pretty slow in its pacing
you could tell another version of this story in 15 minutes...a different version.
and in point of fact there are a couple of other versions , one for the ACR [ed. note: Atelier de Création Radiophonique - France Culture radio] which is about 80 minutes.
> Extra facts / information from Kaye:
the singer of ring a ring a-rosies is ben cohen, alias benjamin diamond
he's quite well known in some circles (gold record in england for a techno album, though he is normally more in the style of nick cave)
ring-a-ring is thought to date from the time of the great plague:
the ring being the circle on the skin, the rosies & posies the bubon (ed note: a swelling, or bubble)
sneezing a symptom and then "we all fall down"
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