Today we explore, among other things:
A mid-century parable of what can happen when public institutions trust creative types.
The world of see-through audio tape technology, which fortunately never caught on.
Finally, a sound-truck!
Library for the people
This post is brought to you by librarians — yes, all of them. But especially the ones at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
These particular librarians have to wade through hordes of smug Congressional staffers disembarking at Capitol South Metro to get to work each day. Technically, the librarians share they same bosses as the staffers, and these bosses (Congresspeople in search of cameras) have the power to shut down the Library of Congress for weeks on end. This behavior, of course, is abusive, but librarians show no signs of being timid. When someone visits their windowless domain, they might, after retrieving all the requested items, suggest an extra unknown treasure. Because they want more people to know about it.
That’s how, earlier this year on a research trip to the Library’s Recorded Sound Research Center, I found myself listening to the voice of a young Arthur Miller in a sound truck. One of the reference librarians, Harrison Behl, insisted I check out this 15-minute documentary about Wilmington, NC, narrated by Miller. The year was 1941. Miller tells the story of a city on the verge of war via a kaleidoscope of scenes: a gospel song rewritten and sung as a strike song; an old lady reminiscing in a rocking chair; the rumbling of ships under construction by workers who’d just arrived.
Much later, Arthur Miller married you-know-who (Wikimedia Commons)
Last week, after the Eye of Sauron had moved on from its latest 43-day federal government shutdown, I returned to the Library to learn more about the story behind this doc, and others like it.
A documentary series before its time
Back in 1941, Miller was a playwright barely able to make his rent, so it made sense he might try his hand at radio. But his little doc sounded like nothing else on American radio at the time. It had field tape, cross-fades, music, and a quiet, understated pacing. Miller wrote and narrated the piece, but a team at the Library of Congress created the sound.
And that sound, as I said, was not like other stuff on the air at the time. As I’ve written, radio didn’t really become a tape-edited medium in the US until well after World War II, when magnetic tape technology became viable. Almost everything before that sounded studio-bound and scripted. But this series — out of a library no less — was totally different. How did that even happen?
Here’s the short answer: Antifa.