The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
http://www.deliberation.info/
I have been working with Sarah Gillespie for the last five years. Sarah is an incredible singer songwriter, a very unique combination of poetic power coupled with natural compositional skills. Sarah doesn’t follow the book, she doesn’t fit into any recognized genre. Through collages of sounds, beat poetry and broken associations she manages to communicate yearning, pain, disillusion, joy and sometimes, hope.
I spoke to Sarah about her new project, The War On Trevor – a narrative piece of music depicting the plights of a luckless London lad whose life unravels in 1 day.
To watch ‘The War On Trevor’ film click here
VIDEO
——————————————————–
Gilad Atzmon: Why Trevor?
Sarah Gillespie: Obviously it is a pun on the slogan ‘The War on Terror’. A pun is a figure of language that depends on similarity of sound and disparity of meaning. It matches 2 sounds that fit perfectly together as aural shapes yet stand provocatively apart in sense. The name ‘Trevor’, like ‘Brian’ signals safe, middle of the road, normality. ‘The Life of Brian’ would not work as a concept if the protagonist was called ‘Tarquin’ or ‘Joshua’ for instance. The joke relies on the implausibility that anyone called ‘Brian’ could possibly be the Messiah. Like Brian, Trevor is totally devoid of glamour, exoticness, power or danger. Therefore, in the title alone, there is already sense that Trevor is probably a harmless, ordinary plonker. He is the innocent twin of ‘Terror.’
Gilad Atzmon: Does our imaginary Trevor posses the capacity to dwell on The War on Trevor?
Sarah Gillespie: Initially no, because he assumes it has absolutely nothing to do with him. He just wants to go to work in the morning, get paid and live a normal life. That’s exactly what he is doing in the beginning when he gets caught up in anti Capitalist riots and needs to pee. He just wants to be in the world, but the environment around him conspires to make it impossible. Three cataclysmic events happen: he is arrested, he is dumped and he is misidentified as a terrorist. This trauma induces an awakening, a metamorphosis, which is played out in the final song ‘The Banks of the Arghandab.’ (The Arghandab is the main river running through the Helmand Province in Afghanistan).
Return to Article
