New Doc Celebrates Meredith Monk

In a new documentary, the likes of Bjork and David Byrne attest to the influence and importance of pioneering multi-disciplinary artist Meredith Monk. The film follows Monk, now in her 80s, as she creates her latest immersive work. "Monk in Pieces" will open in theaters on July 25. Meredith Monk joins us alongside director Billy Shebar.

Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart. Thanks so much for spending part of your day with us. As you have been hearing, public media is being defunded by the federal government. For New York Public Radio, that means a loss of nearly $6 million over the next two years. What we need is listeners like you to help fill this funding gap. You can do that by joining us right now at wnyc.org/donate. Your contribution makes what we do here possible, and that includes today's show.

On today's show, we'll hear some music from Obongjayar's latest album, Paradise Now, and talk with him about his creative process. Author William Hennessy is here to talk-- take us, rather, on a tour of Manhattan's Western waterfront, and we'll talk tacos with the New York Times' Where to Eat writer Luke Fortney. That's the plan. Let's get started with a new documentary, Monk in In Pieces.

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Tiffany Hanssen: 10 years ago, my next guest, Meredith Monk, was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. 30 years before that, more than a decade into her career, she received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement. Today, a documentary about her career and life opens at the IFC Center. Monk in Pieces was directed by my other guest, Billy Shebar. It's a collage of footage from throughout Monk's career, as well as reflections on her life and thoughts from critics and peers such as Philip Glass, who can be heard calling her a "self-contained theater company." Here's a clip from the film featuring commentary from David Byrne.

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David Byrne: I think a lot of what Meredith does, to the ear, it sounds like something that anybody could do. It's very relatable, but it's actually harder to do than it appears.

[music]

David Byrne: As somebody who's coming from a music background, I realize that the words are only one element, and they don't really have to take precedence. I also realize that, yes, you can do things without words, and it still has meaning. It still has an emotional connection.

[music]

David Byrne: Meredith opened up the possibilities.

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Tiffany Hanssen: Meredith Monk and Billy Schebar will be at the IFC Center tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday for screenings and Q&As. They both join us now. Welcome.

Meredith Monk: Thank you.

Billy Schebar: Meredith, why not? Let's just start with you. We'll dig right in here. This isn't the first documentary that has been made about you. Why were you so interested in being involved in this one in particular?

Meredith Monk: First of all, I have incredible respect for Billy as an artist and director, and his wife, Katie Geissinger, has been performing with me since the early '90s. He's been on tour with us over the years. I felt that he really knows my work very well, and he has a beautiful musical ear. He's really concentrating a lot on the musical aspect.

Tiffany Hanssen: Was there anything that you felt was left unsaid that you wanted to have said in this film?

Meredith Monk: I think to try to do a documentary about a person's life, you could do three documentaries or five. I think the only thing that was hard for him to integrate was the fact that even though I was struggling, we all were, the downtown world was a community, and there was the establishment that was really, in some ways, threatened by our work. That was hard to say that at the same time as there are a lot of really bad reviews in the film I didn't even see. It's like he was an archaeologist. I think at the same time, I got a lot of support.

There was the Village Voice. They would do beautiful writing for the Soho Weekly News, or there were also publications like Performing Arts Journal, and Yale Drama Review, and Tulane Drama Review. It was a little bit more complex that you can't just get that all into a film. He wanted to really concentrate on the music. That would be the only thing that I think would be inspiring to younger people to know that indeed there was a lot of resistance and some pretty vicious writing, but at the same time, I was also supported, because otherwise, how would I have been brave enough to go on without any support? Also, we had a built-in audience in those days. There was a community of downtown--

Tiffany Hanssen: By those days, tell us what you mean by those days.

Meredith Monk: I'm saying the '60s, the '70s, the '80s. There was really an audience of people that were really interested in artists that were trying to break through boundaries of the different art forms and really exploring and innovating. There was that kind of interest at that time.

Tiffany Hanssen: Does that not exist now?

Meredith Monk: I think it's a little bit less because the community is really spread out all over the place. It was really geographical at that time. It was the downtown world and the uptown world. There were artists from all different mediums that were exchanging ideas and trying to break through their own media. For example, the visual artists were making dances and the musicians were making plays. There was a wonderful exchange. I think it's more spread out now.

Tiffany Hanssen: The community of the Internet doesn't accomplish the same thing?

Meredith Monk: I think people don't know-- they're not able to find their real community with the group. What I feel is happening now, and I also say to young people that I meet is stay with a grassroots idea. In other words, I think that's a world that's very hard for young people to start as artists because of the financial issues, but also imagine the same thing that's going on with WNYC, that's going on with the arts. Now, there are no critics.

It's more like to try to form your own grassroots community of people that feel the same way, that want to try new things, that want to push forward, because I think artists, in a sense, they're the antennae of the society. The work is related to what's coming in. It's a reaction to what's coming in, in the world. I think that now, because it's such a sad period, we need a sense of healing from the arts, I think.

Tiffany Hanssen: Jon Stewart just had a quote about Stephen Colbert and said, "He's the banana peel in the coal mine." Which I thought was a very funny way to put it.

Meredith Monk: It's so true.

Tiffany Hanssen: Billy, back to your film. Tell us how you became interested in this. It wasn't simply just a matter of your wife works with her, was it?

Billy Schebar: I got to say, that's really what started it all, because I hadn't really heard of Meredith or listened to her music until, in 1990, Meredith cast Katie in the original production of Atlas. She started coming home with these fascinating fragments of material that they were working on. Katie's worked with her ever since, really. For the last 35 years, they've done every major piece. I've had this front row seat, both really coming to love Meredith's music and appreciate the work, the interdisciplinary nature of her work, and also to get to know Meredith. It dawning on me, over the time, that this would be a really great documentary for me.

Tiffany Hanssen: When she first brought that home, do you remember what your initial thought was, like, "I wonder what that's about?"

Billy Schebar: Yes, then once I started, as a result of that, listening to completed pieces that she had worked on since the '70s, I really found it mind-blowing. What David Byrne says is dead on, it manages without words to express the most profound emotions. I really think that's fascinating.

Tiffany Hanssen: For people who aren't familiar with Meredith, and a lot of people will say that her work defies description. We've been talking about the way it defies genre, but for somebody who's listening in this and is like, "I don't know who that is," what does she do? How would you describe it?

Billy Schebar: You got the artist right here, so she can tell you. The way I respond to it is, she's a rare case of somebody who's really exceptionally good at about five or six different art forms. She's a filmmaker, she's a theater director, she's an installation artist, she's a composer, she's a performer, and she does them all incredibly well. I suppose if you have to boil Meredith down to the essence, and here I am doing this right in front of her, it has to do with--

Tiffany Hanssen: She can turn the other direction.

Billy Schebar: It has to do with her discovery that she made in the '60s about the human voice and the fact that the voice is infinitely expressive without words. She just went about to investigate her own voice and what it could do and produce these extraordinary pieces that really can't even be successfully written down. Even though people are clamoring to do that, the score was never part of that.

Tiffany Hanssen: Did he get it right, Meredith?

Meredith Monk: I actually think that all these things are one thing. I feel like the Western culture is the only one that separates these elements. If you think about African culture or Chinese opera or Kabuki theater, all those forms, those perceptual modes, are woven into one form. I think that that's what I've always thought that, "Offer this as the richness of us as human beings." Also, I really work with trying to listen very deeply to what a piece wants in terms of the medium that I use.

The music is the river of my life. The music is the center of everything. I came from a singer's family, and I had done these interdisciplinary, multimedia pieces, but when I discovered that moment of my revelation about the voice, it was really coming back to, in a way, my bloodline, and knowing that that was the emotional center of the work. Then the other aspects I weave together sometimes, and sometimes I just stay with music because sometimes it takes maybe two years or more to make one of the large installation or interdisciplinary works, but I'm always writing music.

Tiffany Hanssen: If you can pinpoint when that discovery happened, were you a child when you--

Meredith Monk: I always sang myself to sleep, and music was like breathing to me and my family, because my grandfather was a bass baritone from Russia. My great-grandfather, apparently, was a cantor, and my mother was a radio singer. I was in radio booths in CBS and ABC because she was singing jingles every day. The music is very natural to me, but I think the revelation about the voice as an instrument, that I could really find what the voice could do on many levels. Within the voice, there are characters, there are landscapes, There are ways of moving the voice, almost like a dancing voice. That happened around 1965.

I had been in New York for a year and a half, and I had presented more visual gestural pieces in galleries with a little bit of vocal work, but then I was missing singing a lot because I went to Sarah Lawrence College, and they allowed me to have a combined performing arts program of dance music, vocal music, and theater. I was missing, really getting down to my singing. I went back to the piano, and I was just doing regular vocalizing.

Then I just had this moment where I realized, "Oh, I can actually make a whole language of the voice, like dance, like a nonverbal language of the voice that has all these different aspects in it." I knew that I had found what was going to be the heart of my work for the rest of my life.

Tiffany Hanssen: Billy, the documentary is presented like a montage. It's in pieces, not strictly narrative. How did you decide on that format?

Billy Schebar: I would say all of Meredith's theater work and film work is, I would say, nonlinear. It's not an ABCD narrative. She's the one who introduced me to the idea of a mosaic approach, which is wonderfully freeing when you're making a film. I could use the music that I love the most and the visual material that was the strongest from her archive and just present it in pieces. It was really inspired by Meredith's own work that I took this approach to the film.

I also just want to say how grateful I am to Meredith, because being the subject of a documentary is an incredibly huge leap of faith. It really requires a lot of vulnerability. The fact that she gave me access to her archive and agreed to be part of this film, and really gave me the freedom to interpret her music and her material the way I wanted to is just an incredible gift. It's really like a dream.

Tiffany Hanssen: Do you think the format is perhaps a better reflection of her as an artist in the way that it's presented? In other words, is it really like the viewer is, in the way the information is being presented, also getting a piece of Meredith? You're nodding.

Billy Schebar: That's exactly what I hope it is. That is exactly right.

Tiffany Hanssen: In one scene, there's a puppet show, some really colorful two-dimensional drawings. Just tell us about that. Describe that for us so we can give listeners a little bit of a-- Paint a picture.

Billy Schebar: I discovered the work of this animator, Paul Barrett. I think it was at a mostly Mozart production of the Magic Flute, where he had the Queen of the Night behind a scrim, and you just saw her head attached to a giant spider's body that was chasing Tamino around the stage, and I said, "I really want to talk to this guy." I called him. He works and lives in Margate, near London in the UK. We worked on another project together that hasn't quite come to bloom yet, but in the course of that, I said, "Hey, I'm doing this film about Meredith Monk." He's like, "I love Meredith Monk. I'll do anything, really." It was like that.

He's also one of these unbelievably gung-ho, just the best collaborator. We had access to Meredith's dream journal, and we found these two dreams. I had him animate those. Then that was so fun that I said, "Hey, could you take these little text sequences with the reviews and so on and animate the text so that it's not just static quotes. Then he did that as well. He ended up really giving a graphic look to the whole film, and it was just really a wonderful collaboration.

Tiffany Hanssen: Talking about Meredith's dreams, Meredith, at one point, you talk about dreaming about your turtle. Your turtle has a recurring role here. I guess twofold. Maybe just talk about broadly your instinct to write down your dreams and keep a dream journal, and then, two, how that translated for Neutron.

Meredith Monk: First, I wanted to say about the-- I was dreaming about her, but I called the piece Turtle Dreams because I was thinking, "Well, I wonder whether a turtle dreams. [laughs].

Tiffany Hanssen: I hope so.

Meredith Monk: "What would a turtle's dreams be?"

Tiffany Hanssen: I hope they do.

Meredith Monk: It went both ways. I think even from the time I was in my early 20s, I think that one of the things that my generation was searching for or exploring was different states of mind, different levels of consciousness. In a way, I think my work was very influenced by the surrealists at that time, especially my early work. Now it's quite different, but at that time, I was fascinated by these different levels of consciousness. I think that's why I started keeping the dream journal. It usually never got into the work very much, except for, strangely enough, one of the dreams in the film that Billy made about what you said, the puppet show.

It's interesting that you said puppet show. I think in the dream, it was puppets, and they were shiny green, emerald-like little puppets that these kids had brought into my house after they had destroyed my house. That image actually went right into Education of the Girl Child. There's a character in Education of the Girl Child that is called Death. She comes in, and it's like a very dark and funny, simultaneously. She comes in three times and takes one of the women away.

One of the images is she's got this long man's coat. My friend Diana Bryan made these little puppets that stayed on her shoulders. Her little hands have these little puppets, and a little puppet sitting on her head like little imps or something like that. That actually went right into the piece, but it wasn't usual that I did that. It's not a usual habitual behavior.

Tiffany Hanssen: Got it? Understood. We are speaking with Meredith Monk about the biographical documentary called Monk in Pieces. We're also talking with director Billy Schebar. The film screens starting tonight at the IFC Center. Meredith, though very quickly, I mentioned a turtle. Just explain for listeners who the turtle is, and maybe then, Billy, you could explain why this turtle makes an appearance in the film.

Meredith Monk: This turtle no longer exists. I had her 44 years. Her name was Neutron.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow.

Meredith Monk: She was a three-toed box tortoise. We never knew, when I got her, which was 1978, whether she was a full-grown tortoise or not. I think she might have been because I don't remember her growing very much. Who knows how old she really was, but I had the privilege of coexisting with her for 44 years. I just found there's something about the primal forms of these animals that have existed unchanged for millions of years. It was so incredible. Watching her eat was like watching a Godzilla film.

It would really take her time eating. She slowed me down. She calmed me down.

Tiffany Hanssen: I like that.

Meredith Monk: It was a wonderful, wonderful companion. She did have a little personality, I think, but I don't even know whether she knew Mommy after 44 years. I have no idea. It's hard to know, again, what is turtle consciousness. My peace Turtle Dreams was thinking about not only the dreams that I would have had with her, of her, but also, what would a turtle dream be?

Tiffany Hanssen: I could sit around with you and anthropomorphize her all day long, but Billy, why in the film? Why are we seeing Neutron in the film?

Billy Schebar: The challenge of a mosaic structure is to find these little threads that you can put throughout the film so that people are continually drawn through it. The relationship with Neutron is really lovely with Meredith, but also, I do think there's a metaphor that I think you're hinting at as well, that I think the turtle is so slow and deliberate, and I feel like that somehow is a metaphor for Meredith's-- the deliberate approach, the care, not rushing anything out. You see these images of the turtle just moving forward solidly. I think that made for a great through line.

Meredith Monk: I also think that my work is very much about time and timelessness. I always say there are two main branches of artists. Some artists are very reflective of their particular time, and they're telling the truth about what's going on in the time, and some artists are more interested in making art that's a little bit more timeless, so that it doesn't refer particularly to a particular time period. I think that's really what I've always tried to do. That idea of an ancient form of nature that's remained unchanged and continues to function is a metaphor for that timelessness.

Billy Schebar: If I could just add one thing about the use of it in the film, at a certain point, when I had of hit a wall editing myself and with a bunch of other editors' piecemeal, I brought in Sabine Krayenbühl, who's this fabulous documentary editor, and she really helped me craft that through line with Neutron and find that and a million other ways to create connective tissue that you need when you're using this mosaic structure.

Tiffany Hanssen: Meredith, I mentioned President Obama in his remarks when he was giving you the National Medal of the Arts. He quoted you as saying, "I've been in fashion, out of fashion, and I just keep trucking along." If that doesn't sound like a turtle, you just keep trucking along.

Meredith Monk: You know what he said that was so great. He said, "I'm sometimes in fashion and out of fashion." He said, "I can relate to that," and then everybody started laughing.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, I remember. I saw.

Meredith Monk: It's so great. That was a magical day. It was magical.

Tiffany Hanssen: Meredith, isn't the job of an artist, one of the jobs of an artist, to just keep doing the art? Just to keep--

Meredith Monk: Oh, definitely. I always say it's choiceless choice. I think I was called. I just finished a big installation in Europe of all my video and installation work, and it's called Calling. There's a difference between a job and being called. I think that in a way, you can turn your back on it if you're called, but I think that it really is choiceless choice. I vowed at a young age that I would devote myself to making art.

Tiffany Hanssen: I want to get back to that. You said the music is a river of songs or a river running through everything. I'm wondering what you think the music has-- Over the years now. We can look back now. Over the years, has taught you about yourself and your art.

Meredith Monk: Wow, that's a wonderful-- I'd have to really ponder that. I think it just affirms that I can trust my ear, and I have to listen to what it wants. That's the thing that's so amazing about being an artist, because you're doing something that's coming through from a larger-- You're part of a larger whole, and you can't force it. Music is a really hard form, and you cannot force it. You have to listen to what it wants. Sometimes you even have to give up your favorite thing to make the integrity of your form.

I wait a lot and listen a lot. I'm not fast. I'm at the piano, and then I might have one-- Also, I'm scared to death every piece after even 16 years when I'm starting, because I've always wanted to do something new. I never want to make the same shirt over and over again. I'm sitting there and very vulnerable, beginner's mind, I'm playing the piano or singing, and I might get one little phrase, and then I realize, "Oh, I've never heard that before. I've never done that before."

Then the fear turns into curiosity and interest, and then it's like a detective novel. You've got that first clue. That's what I've learned from making music, also that you can't force it. You have to trust. I do really trust my ear. I really do.

Tiffany Hanssen: There is a curiosity that's required of artists, I think, in order to stay--

Meredith Monk: Definitely.

Tiffany Hanssen: I'm wondering, how did you capture that?

Meredith Monk: I think curiosity is such an important quality, especially in this world that we're living in, where everything is filled in by the digital communication system. Imagination is something to really cherish and to really fight for. Everything is so filled in. I think I've always loved to learn. I would like to continue learning until I leave the planet. I think curiosity is such a wonderful quality to just want to know about other people, about the world that we're living in. I think art can offer that. Art can offer questions. Not necessarily answers, but questions.

Tiffany Hanssen: Billy, did you think about her curiosity when you were making this film?

Billy Schebar: Yes. I think I channeled it in a way because, really, my own curiosity drove me to explore all of her music and explore her archive, which is vast and huge. I think we even made some discoveries that you didn't know were in there. [crosstalk] It was a constant, really wonderful process of discovery, with a lot of help from Peter Shoscholi at the House Foundation, to just locate 16 millimeter film reels in the bottom of a box in deep storage and find that it was this gold mine of great stuff. Curiosity drove the whole thing.

Tiffany Hanssen: Speaking of that research for the film, Meredith, was there something that was unearthed that surprised you?

Meredith Monk: Yes. There's some footage from the rehearsals of Atlas that I had never seen. There's some early movement sequences. Oh, it was so moving. I have to say, "Meredith, how do you like the film?" "Well, I laughed. I cried. It's a good film." That would be my response. [laughs].

Tiffany Hanssen: That's a perfectly acceptable response, I think. Billy, before we leave here, I just want to mention the fact that our colleague John Schaeffer will be with you all tonight at IFC. He is also in the film along with David Byrne and others. When you began thinking about the voices of other people to talk about Meredith, what were you looking for?

Billy Schebar: I knew this was not going to be an interview-driven film because there was just too much great material. We were not approaching it to explain too much. A very, very targeted use of interviews. I knew John, and I knew that John would express so well how he felt about discovering Meredith's music. David Byrne, no brainer, he's such an incredible talent, and to find out that he was inspired by Meredith was like, "Yes, please, let's do that." Björk is the other who I'd heard in--

Tiffany Hanssen: That makes sense.

Billy Schebar: Yes, because Björk talks about when she was 16, discovering Dolmen music and listening to it nonstop and that it actually changed her direction and her thought about the human voice and how to use it and how to write for it. Then she went on to actually perform pieces of Meredith, like Gotham Lullaby. If somebody made sense and we could build a chapter, a piece of the film around it, then we went for it.

Tiffany Hanssen: Remind our listeners tonight-- Wait, tonight is Thursday.

[laughter]

Billy Schebar: Tonight. Yes, tonight at 6:45 at the IFC Center. It's sold out. John Schaefer. Then tomorrow, which is also sold out. Yay. Tomorrow evening with Nadia Sirota, who's gonna do the Q&A with me and Meredith. Then it will continue. The run will go through July 31st.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, great.

Billy Schebar: Please come. You can find out about all our other screenings on monkinpieces.com, which is our website. Instagram is @monkinpieces. I'm just trying to give the full plug here.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's great. We love the full plug. Our guests have been Meredith Monk and also Billy Schebar talking about the documentary film about Meredith called Monk in Pieces. Yes, it will be at IFC. Thank you to you both for joining us.

Meredith Monk: Thank you so much. It was a joy.

Billy Schebar: Thank you, Tiffany.

Meredith Monk: Thank you, Tiffany.