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Every Time Her Eyes Closed, She Was Lost to Me

by Todd Lent

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1.
I 07:14
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2.
II 03:33
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3.
III 05:00
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4.
IV 08:37
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5.
V 05:18
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6.
VI 06:36
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7.
Sa Folie M'Infecte 2021 16:16
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about

When I began this project, I approached it as a way to explore and embrace the fragile and unreliable aspect of our memories. The fact that they are not filing cabinets full of documents, or flawless film captures of cherished moments. Rather they are constantly reconstructed, altered, and mostly lost forever in a blank haze of obscurity.

What I realized as I worked on it, is that creating this video has become a way of processing the recent loss of my mother – in stages, through dementia and debilitating illness… Of witnessing the gradual dissolution of a personality. She told me every time she closed her eyes, she saw unfamiliar faces – like she was watching films or musicals. Often she didn’t know whether she was conscious or dreaming. And neither did I. And when she emerged from these closed-eye revelries, she frequently didn’t recognize where she was, even though it was always in the same living room where she had spent the majority of the last 50 years.

These are not my home movies, nor hers. But the overall effect is my abstract imagining of what she, or others in her situation, might have been going through. Or perhaps more honestly, it's my way of making it seem less scary. Less tangible. Less real. Attempting to make something akin to beauty out of an unabashedly ugly process.

Every time her eyes closed, she was lost to me. And then even with her eyes open, some days I still couldn’t find her. The pain of watching her slip further from view, day by day, still lingers. So I can’t fathom what it must have been like for her to be going through it, month after month. Losing herself. Feeling disoriented. Appearing in strange foreign locations. But always in unrelenting pain. Just wanting to be at peace, away from everything.

This is for her, and for all those suffering like her. And for those who have to watch on helplessly as a loved one is cruelly stripped away from them, piece by piece.

The music is a selection of a score I originally wrote in early 2020 for Dans Brute, a dance performance by Alina Noir (www.alinanoir.com), which unfortunately had to be postponed due to the pandemic. In the meantime, I revisited the music, and selected specific tracks to be presented in this more intimate, stripped-down manner.

The video footage began as several hours of public domain home videos that were then dissected and manipulated into this finished piece.

The video can be streamed here:
youtu.be/C1ZnKqVHoLU

credits

released May 19, 2021

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all rights reserved

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Immara image

Immara Albany, New York

Todd Lent (Immara) is an experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist who incorporates influences from around the world into pieces spanning across various genres including modern classical, glitch, free jazz, noise, and dark ambient soundscapes.

He also regularly collaborates with choreographers and filmmakers on dance, film, and experimental mixed-media productions. ... more

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