At this moment in time, I’m currently between two relatively heavy audio-visual essays.  The first (which is now finished and will be going online in segments from the end of the month) is about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, The Sacrifice (1986) and how it has parallel aims with that of the Russian composer Scriabin and his unfinished work, Mysterium.  The second is looking at Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and how Ligeti’s Atmospheres (through musical techniques and ideas) foreshadows Kubrick’s and Clarke’s narrative.

I’m not merely writing this article for a cathartic exercise but because the essays are starting to interlock and I’m finding that one is helping with the understanding of the other.  This is an understanding of the films rather than simply a flimsy use of academic excessiveness.  By applying the theories from one essay to the other, for the first time in a while, I…