{"id":6190,"date":"2012-03-30T17:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T17:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/?p=988"},"modified":"2023-08-02T12:47:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T19:47:28","slug":"the-inner-pulse-of-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/the-inner-pulse-of-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Pulse of Alzheimer&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This week&#8217;s premiere of Scott Kirschenbaum&#8217;s <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/youre-looking-at-me\/\">You&#8217;re Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don&#8217;t<\/a><em> has prompted an outpouring of stories from our viewers about the devastating disease. We caught up with the composer of the film&#8217;s score, Nadia Shihab, to find out how she approached putting the story to music. Her violin-based score is minimalist and melodic, incorporating repetition, delay, looping techniques, and improvisation. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>How did you first become involved with this film?<\/strong><br \/>\nI first met Scott Kirschenbaum at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where I had just finished performing as part of an art\/sound collaboration. Soon after we were introduced, I learned that he was making a film about a woman named Lee who has Alzheimer&#8217;s and that it would be filmed entirely in an Alzheimer\u2019s unit. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more, at which point he expressed an interest in collaborating on a film score.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What were your thoughts at the time?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I was a little unsure at first how it would work. I\u2019m used to working alone and just improvising with my delay pedal, so my music has a solitary wildness about it that can be unpredictable at times. I wasn&#8217;t sure I could deliver a polished body of work based on the vision of another artist and be accountable in that way.<\/p>\n<p>Also, here in the Bay Area, we live in a hotbed of experimental noise. You can\u2019t throw a stone without hitting another looping violinist or experimental sound artist. So it wasn\u2019t clear to me why Scott was drawn to my sound more than anyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What eventually persuaded you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, I met Lee. Watching her odyssey within the walls of the Alzheimer&#8217;s unit, I understood why Scott wanted my music to be the soundtrack of her journey. When I play, I start with simple repetive rhythms that move suddenly into spaces of tension or discordance. I sensed the same unpredictability with Lee as she moved through the confines of her space. Her emotions swung like a pendulum between lightness and darkness, but then there was also this incredible joyfulness and resilience that came through when you least expected it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How did you approach the score?<\/strong><br \/>\nFrom the beginning, Scott was really open to experimentation, so we used my own intimate home recordings as a starting point for discussion and temp tracks. He was deeply immersed in the extremes of \u201ccoherence\u201d and \u201cincoherence\u201d in Lee&#8217;s world, so I tried to let that come through in the improvisations that followed. The end result was a score that is quite minimal, but hopefully does justice to expressing the texture of her world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anything else you\u2019d like to add?<\/strong><br \/>\nI\u2019m thankful to have had the opportunity to contribute to such a great project. I hope audiences appreciate the film and come out of it with greater empathy for the individuals and families affected by Alzheimer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s premiere of Scott Kirschenbaum&#8217;s You&#8217;re Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don&#8217;t has prompted an outpouring of stories from our viewers about the devastating disease. We caught up with the composer of the film&#8217;s score, Nadia Shihab, to find out how she approached putting the story to music. Her violin-based [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[937],"tags":[277],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-6190","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-behind-the-films","tag-making-of"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Inner Pulse of Alzheimer&#039;s | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The composer of the score for film about Alzheimer&#039;s You&#039;re Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don&#039;t, Nadia Shihab, talks about putting the story to music\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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