It’s not every day you go to a documentary film and the director, star, producer, and writer (along with Kerry Gilfillan) is A. in the room and B. plays a few songs after the movie is over. This multifaceted human, who is a pianist and the story’s main character, is James Carson. He was at the Avon Cinema in late March, for a limited two-day showing of his debut film, Cabin Music. In a mere 74 minutes, Carson, a piano, a cabin, cinematography that feels like double-exposure photography, and a collection of his supporters – including a Shaman – graced the screen and walked us through his journey of self-discovery and composition. Through this process, we saw a cabin being built, a symphony being created, and a life being lived.
I’ll skip to the end and then bring you back to the film itself, I promise. Carson shared many insights as the mysterious “voiceover” in the documentary and during the post-show Q&A.: “Everything has texture, everything has a different light… the whole universe is light… how do you compose that?” and “I composed by living something.” When responding to an audience member’s reflection, the filmmaker shared his thesis: Every moment is an opportunity to connect to the universe and to ourselves. He asserted that what ails us now is that we’ve forgotten how to live mindfully, to be present in our lives, the lives around us, and the places in which we live. Some of us have forgotten that we are connected, we are all magic – humans, animals, nature alike – and when we’re living mindlessly, seeking dopamine more from a phone (for example), rather than from each other and the universe, we miss it. “Life just went by and you missed it.” The purpose of the film then seems to be to help viewers experience things, sounds, sights, living beings, in a completely new way, showing us that if we pay attention, there’s beauty everywhere.
Though it’s not exceedingly clear in the documentary, we come to understand that an event occurs in Carson’s life that makes him leave what I would call “formal” music training (at the Boston Conservatory of Music). He has an existential crisis as he recognizes the illusory nature of all thoughts and experiences – every thought becoming a labyrinth. He described this moment in the talkback as very destabilizing, and the catalyst for his journey as both musician and traveler. In the film, we witness Carson playing the piano and explaining his practice as a composer and performer. He plays a song by Bach and says that he prefers to play what’s in between the notes, along the lines of “I’m letting it be wrong… I’m okay to play the mistakes…” As soon as I heard those words and listened to the beautiful (almost frantic at times) “in-between” notes, I got chills. It felt so good to be given permission to be human. Nothing is perfect – not a piece of music, not a performance, not a moment in time. I understood then too, what it must have felt like to leave behind a rigid interpretation of music in favor of freedom. His way of playing music seems to be about letting the music simply be, and physically being in a place that is more conducive to this way of creating sounds (cue The Cabin).
In the first third of the movie, the focus is on the sounds of the piano, the instrument as a tool, and the study of music. We see a piano technician talk about the instrument itself, “In the grand piano there’s five liers that are interacting with each other [and with] each of the 88 keys. There’s a lot of possibility within it.” Soon after, another person in Carson’s life is interviewed, someone who studies music. When the filmmakers ask, “What is music?” he says, with a smile on his face, “I cannot tell you what music is.” I would have been content if the movie ended there, only because I had no idea what else was coming. I hesitate to say too much, because I really want you all to experience this immersive piece of film, but I’ll say this, never have I ever seen a documentary using sequences of motion to allude to different perspectives. We see people, and birds, walking backwards in crowded streets, and we’re thereby made to look at an everyday event in a completely different way. Carson uses shocking technical choices to question the way we sometimes obliviously observe life. Pair this with everyday sounds and musical notes, and you have a glimpse into Carson’s composition.
The latter part of Cabin Music dives into how Carson’s travel informed his idea and supported the work it took to build the cabin (that now sits somewhere in the Canadian wilderness). He makes the point that in order to create, a composer must use their environment alongside their work. He explained in the talkback that the film spans years of travel that he embarked on, to understand himself alongside the human condition. He lived on a farm in Europe, traveled to Japan (where he had a breakdown), and was also in Russia, where he survived a life-altering accident. It is in Tuva, a Russian federative republic on the Mongolia–Russia border, where we are shown that shamanism is still alive and available for all to access via the grounding throat singing of the Huun-Huur-Tu. Carson told the audience at the Avon that “to travel is to listen.” Through his film, he helps us listen with both eyes and ears, if we’re willing to sit still long enough. •
Want to know more about the film and future events? Go to the website: Cabinmusic.earth
