I Am
My Own Messiah
Jim McIntyre 2006 - 2011
This work is about my life with a debilitating illness, chronic fatigue syndrome, that has been terribly exacerbated by a severe, long-term adverse reaction to the antibiotic Levaquin.
Seriously ill people encounter great challenges when trying to relate their experiences. Drastically altered realities, deeply affecting emotions and strong, often long-lasting sensations are difficult to convey with any effectiveness. These challenges are magnified by the profound physical isolation my specific health problems demand: how can I expect anyone to comprehend what I'm dealing with when I'm forced to experience it in solitude? My condition also amplifies problems of communication with doctors. At this time, there are no tests or procedures doctors can do to directly diagnose CFS or antibiotic reactions, and only a few limited tests offer glimpses into the extensive workings of these disorders in the body. Those methods of communication are trivial at best. I'm left with words to explain my plight to doctors and words seem woefully inadequate for the task.
The title refers, in part, to
my struggle to connect with my situation. Doing so is critical because I must
shape my behavior in ways that lessen my symptoms and mitigate the long-term
toll these health problems take on my body. It took more than six years to
complete this project because I could only work an extremely limited amount of time, usually for only a
few hours a month.
1. Koan Luke 9:51
9:57 9:58
James Tenney/Marc Sabat/Father Ted
Tyler
"As the time approached for Jesus to be taken up to heaven, he resolutely set out for Jerusalem. As they were walking along the road a man said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go'. Jesus replied, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head'." - Luke (abridged)
The spoken audio used here was taken from a
Youtube video uploaded by Father Ted Tyler, a Catholic
priest of the diocese of Parramatta in Sydney, Australia. The music samples are
from an mp3 encoding of a
recording of Marc Sabat performing James Tenney's
Koan, as it was originally written for solo violin. Koan is one of Tenney's
Postal Pieces, so named because he had
them printed on postcards; simple instructions are given for performing each
piece. Koan continually oscillates between two notes, starting at the G below
middle C and the D just above it, and rises using a "very slow glissando" so the
performer will "gradually move toward (the) bridge, until nothing but noise is
heard", encouraging listeners to be especially attentive to both the moment
and the overall form.
This graphic shows the progression of the two different
note lines in Koan. The arrows connect the phrases of the Luke passage with the
locations of the short Koan samples they are paired with.
2. In the Waiting Room
Elizabeth Bishop/ReadPlease 2003.1.10 software
The most important
thing I deal with is the fact that any exertion intensifies my sickness, causing
my symptoms to flare. This includes the exertion required by reading. Reading
makes the skin on my hands wrinkle and turns my scalp to a white, oily film. It
causes my skin to tingle with peripheral neuropathy. It makes my head hurt and
gives me what is known as "mental fog", which makes thinking difficult and
painful. It inflames my tinnitus and makes me more sensitive to light, sound and
heat. It causes my achilles tendons to ache. It increases my crushing
exhaustion. So I tried using the ReadPlease text-to-speech software to turn
reading into a listening experience. This was far from a perfect solution,
though; the software read the web text, but I still had to expend effort copying the text and pasting it into the software. The intellectual
depth of the reading, or listening, material matters as well. Reading or
listening to articles about sports requires much
less effort than reading or listening to poetry or art analysis or music theory.
The idea of the waiting room itself is a painful one for me. I saw a doctor in Lancaster, Kentucky who
claimed he could cure my chronic fatigue syndrome when no other doctor could. I
will never forget sitting in the waiting room, which I think of as not looking
much different from the one Bishop experienced as a child. The doctor's office
was in a very old house and the furnishings seemed like they hadn't been updated
in many decades. During my final visit, the doctor took a sample that was
difficult to give. I yelped when I produced it; my cry was heard in
the waiting room by the friend who drove me to the doctor's office that day.
The doctor was an arrogant fool, a quack who was
heavily into the "anti-aging" scene. He was also a Christian interested in end
times and the Apocalypse. He was charismatic, with a conviction that
he could heal me, and I was desperate for help. He had me taking vitamins and other supplements
along with
various exotic substances. He prescribed a litany of different medications as
well, culminating in a high dosage of Levaquin -- a powerful medicine that
wasn't properly vetted by the Food and Drug Administration even for normal amounts (in the years since I
took Levaquin, the FDA has
multiple times updated the drug's labeling to include
stronger safety warnings). I suffered an awful
reaction and for more than six years have existed in the aftermath of an absurd
transformation.
3. Death by Levaquin Triadic Memories
John Fratti/Morton Feldman/Markus Hinterhauser
This section pairs audio from a Youtube video with
samples from an mp3. The Youtube audio is from a
video entitled "Levaquin reaction FDA failure Google: 'Death by Levaquin'
for my website" that was made by John Fratti and uploaded to Youtube by Bob
Grozier. John also suffers from a severe, long-term reaction
to Levaquin, as did Bob to a related antibiotic, Cipro (Bob died in 2015 after
suffering horribly from the after-effects of the antibiotic). John has become
a leading advocate for the awareness of the dangers these quinolone antibiotics
pose. The audio of John speaking is coupled with samples from an mp3 encoding of
a recording of pianist Markus Hinterhauser performing Morton Feldman's Triadic
Memories.
Triadic Memories is built around the use of the
piano's sustain pedal; Feldman emphasizes the decay of the notes and chords to
poignantly evoke memory. I truncated this decay in the first sample I used, when
John says "I took a drug called Levaquin". At the end I did the opposite,
removing the last 3 chords, leaving silences that are followed by the sounds of
the chords decaying. Memory weighs heavily on someone in my or John's position,
as it does for anyone who has experienced significant loss. Remembering and
forgetting can both be agonizing.
The composing process Feldman used for part of
Triadic Memories was what he
described as, "a
conscious attempt at 'formalizing' a disorientation of memory". He composed, forgot, then reconstructed,
so that in the result, "there is a suggestion that what we hear is functional and
directional, but we soon realize that this is an illusion; a bit like walking
the streets of Berlin -- where all the buildings look alike, even if they're not".
This seems a lot like living in the netherworld of debilitating chronic illness, where the days
pass in a disorientation of sameness and uncertainty.
I manipulated John's audio more than any other sound
source used in I Am My Own Messiah. I slowed his voice down by about 50 cents
and lengthened the time between phrases to add gravity to his delivery. This
also had the effect of fortuitously matching the rhythm of John's speech with
the tempo that Hinterhauser chose to play Triadic Memories -- our instincts
paralleled. I chose the starting points for the two longer samples, placing them
in gaps between John's words, but the way they fit with the speech as it unfolds
is due to chance and the likemindedness between myself and Hinterhauser.
4. Al-Noor Grido del Venditore di Pesce
Carl Stone/Unknown/Angelo Vitello/Luciano
Berio
This section
is an audio representation of the written graphic in the
photo below as well as a representation of how the act of
speaking causes my symptoms to flare. The photo is of the Kolakoski
mathematical sequence, written by myself on a piece of paper, and includes
evidence of work done when generating the sequence.
Like the next section, 18 Hours in 18 Weeks, this
section represents my day-to-day experience with illness. 18 Hours in 18 Weeks is
a macroscopic view of months of my existence while Al-Noor Grido del Venditore
di Pesce focuses on the toll just one conversation can exact. The biggest
difficulty I face is the fact that any exertion causes my symptoms to worsen.
Talking is very strenuous; every utterance carries a cost. The written Kolakoski
sequence afforded me the opportunity to represent this with audio. The buzzing
drone, created using square waves, builds with the repetitions of the sampled
voices. The sample repetitions increase the volume and pitch of the
synthetic-sounding square wave drone, as the words I speak increase the severity of my unnatural,
Levaquin-fueled symptoms, until I am overwhelmed and must stop speaking. Ceasing
the activity doesn't immediately stop the inflamed symptoms, however, and ending
the sample repetitions doesn't stop the square waves. My symptoms, like the
square waves, only die down in due time. Unfortunately, unlike the audio, my
symptoms never die down to zero. There is always a baseline of discomfort and
my inflamed symptoms last for a much longer time with respect to the length of a
conversation than what is represented here. The increased distress created by an
hour conversation can last
for two or three weeks or more.
The Kolakoski sequence is an infinite list of numbers
that consists only of the numbers 1 and 2, alternating between them. To generate
the sequence (from
Wikipedia):
(1) write 1; read it as the number of 1's to write
before switching to 2;
(2) write 2; read it as the number of 2's to write
before switching back to 1;
(3) so far... 1,2,2; read the new 2 as the number of
1's to write;
(4) so far... 1,2,2,1,1; read the new 1,1 as the
number of 2's and then 1's to write;
(5) so far... 1,2,2,1,1,2,1; continue generating
forever.
One thing that becomes readily apparent when writing
the Kolakoski sequence is that it's impossible to write the sequence without
keeping track of the last number consulted (in the photo, the tick marks I used
to keep my place can be seen). This is because there is an increasing lag that emerges between the number consulted to generate the next number(s) in the
sequence and the last number it generates (the leading edge of the sequence). The
number consulted to determine the next segment of the sequence proceeds
ordinally, from the first number to the second, then to the third, fourth,
fifth, sixth, etc...never skipping a number. However, the leading edge of the
sequence skips ahead when the number consulted is a 2 because two numbers are
written before consulting the next determiner. As the sequence becomes longer,
the leading edge moves farther and farther from the number being consulted. This
lag is delineated by the lines in the photo. The lines connect the number
consulted with the last number it generates and naturally get longer as more of
the sequence is written.
The first number in the sequence is a 1 and has no
line drawn from it. This is because that first 1 only generates itself; the lag
has not emerged yet. The second number is a 2, which when consulted generates
itself and the following 2. Thus, there is a line drawn from it to the next 2,
indicating the first appearance of lag. That first line covers one space (the
space between the first and second 2). Each time a 2 is consulted, the distance
of the lag (counted by spaces between numbers for the purposes of this
composition) is increased by one whole number. The last number in the sequence
in the photo (which is not the last number in the composition, I extended the
sequence after I took the photo) is a 1 and the line from it extends 17 spaces
back to the 2 that was consulted to generate it. I stopped drawing the lag lines
long before the end of the sequence, if I had drawn them all they would have
extended past the end of the sequence as the square waves extend past the end of the repeated samples in
the audio.
The audio was created from two samples, one of a male voice and the other
of a female, that were combined and later overlaid with square waves. This
combined sample (from here on referred to simply as the sample) corresponds to the numbers in the photo and the square waves
correspond to the lines. The sample was then resampled from 44,100 Hz to a rate
of 2000 Hz. These two different sample rates take the places of the 1 and the 2
in the Kolakoski sequence:
Lower fidelity (2000 Hz) sample = 1
Higher fideltiy (44,100 Hz) sample = 2
Square waves = lines
I inserted silences between the sample
repetitions to facilitate the translation of line lengths to square wave
durations. This can be seen in a screenshot of an early
version of the audio file:
Later I added a new square wave immediately after each sample
repetition to re-create the lines.
The audio starts with the lower fidelity sample (representing the 1), immediately followed by the higher fidelity
sample (representing the 2). There is no time between the sounding of
these first two samples because there is no line drawn between the first two
terms of the written sequence in the photo. Next is a section lasting 6.076
seconds that is filled by a 50 Hz square wave (representing the first
line). I made this space between the second and third samples (the first
two 2's) equal to the time of the sample twice, 6.076 seconds. I then
divided that amount into fourths, which allowed me to cut and paste two-fourths
or three-fourths of the 6.076 second section between the repeated samples
throughout the piece to make the increasing lengths of the square waves
correlate with the increasing distances of the lines in the photo. For example,
the line from the 8th term in the sequence in the photo (which is a 2) to the
last number it generates (which is also a 2, the 12th term) covers 4 spaces
between the numbers. So the square wave that begins immediately after the 8th
sample lasts for 4 x 6.076 seconds = 24.304 seconds, from the end of
the 8th sample to the beginning of the 12th sample. The
sequence in the photo contains 52 terms and the longest line covers 17 spaces.
The audio composition is extended to 113 terms, and the longest, final square
wave (beginning immediately after the final sample) is 58 spaces long
(352.408 seconds).
The loudness of the individual square waves rises and
falls as the lines in the graphic extend outward from and back to the number
sequence (the pitch of each individual square wave stays constant). This translation exposes problems encountered when converting a
graphic to audio, especially a graphic not specifically designed to become sound
(there is software that
translates digital images into sound but that didn't allow the specific symbolic
expression of experience I wanted here). The square waves represent the lines
but the need for each square wave to begin at 0 decibels, thus relatively
mimicking my symptoms, means the two have conflicting properties: the square
waves can't fall and rise like the lines drawn below the number sequence. Also,
sound waves interfere with each other as they are overlaid. Each line in the
graphic can be followed and distinguished, but the same can't be said of each
square wave in the audio composition.
I chose to use square waves instead of sine waves for
a few different reasons. Square waves with lower frequency fundamentals are
heard as having higher pitches than similar sine waves. This property allowed
me, essentially, to use a more compact range of prominent frequencies than if I
had used sine waves. Also, square waves seem to convey the buzzing, electrical
feel of my neuropathy, and the higher frequency ones used at the end of the piece better
approximate the sound of my tinnitus.
The frequencies of the square waves used in this
section were generated by dividing the frequency range into equal increments.
The first square wave has a fundamental of 50 Hz, and the frequency of each
square wave added after a higher fidelity sample (to keep the frequency range
smaller, the pitch of newly added square waves only increases after higher
fidelity samples) is increased by 5 Hz, up to 335 Hz (the frequency of the
fundamental of the final, 352.408 second, square wave). When deciding
what gradation of frequencies to use, I had to take into account the fact that I
didn't want the first frequency to sound too low, it had to have power, or the
last frequency to be too high. The highest frequency had to be in a comfortable
hearing range, first and foremost because my illness has made me extremely
sensitive to higher frequency sound; a square wave begins to become painful to
me when its fundamental is about 400 Hz.
The female voice sample was taken from Carl Stone's
Al-Noor and the male sample from Grido del venditore di pesce, a Sicilian
folk song. Grido was included on an ECM New Series CD of Luciano Berio's Voci
and
Naturale, which are both based on Sicilian folk songs, as reference material.
It is a recording of
the cry of Angelo Vitello, a fish-seller advertising his product.
For Al-Noor, Stone manipulated a found recording of a woman singing a Vietnamese
lullaby. The sample of Al-Noor I used is untreated by Stone; however, it's from
early in the piece before the transformations begin. As Al-Noor continues, he
uses software to add Western-sounding harmonies to her originally monophonic
vocal.
William Kolakoski himself
experienced severe medical problems; he suffered from chronic schizophrenia and
struggled with prescription drug issues. From a letter written by Mike Vargo, a
former classmate of Kolakoski (via
Wikipedia):
"Here was this extremely active and facile mind...yet
there was this thing living within him that was always threatening to take
over... So, given this paradoxical situation, one subject which preoccupied Bill
was the question of free will. This was the central question of his existence.
He wanted to think he was free, yet he knew all too well the power of an
"invisible hand," and this drove him to determinism. Back and forth he went...it
seems to me that, given this quandary, it was very natural for him to try to
create a self-generating number sequence. You 'invent' the sequence yourself, thus exercising free will - and
yet - it was already 'there' waiting for you, wasn't it..."
5. 18 Hours in 18 Weeks
Unknown (freesound.org)
18 Hours in 18 Weeks
deals with the translation of experience most directly.
I'm only able to interact with people an average of about an hour a week, anything more is too taxing.
Usually this is with my family. I live alone and my mother, sometimes
accompanied by my father or nieces, visits once a week to deliver groceries and
attend to things I need. 18 Hours in 18 Weeks recreates those visits. It is an
hour and 25 minutes in length but more than an hour and 24 minutes is
silence. This silence corresponds to the roughly 3006 hours I spend every 18
weeks without human interaction. The other 30 seconds is the only time the
silence is broken. That 30 seconds is audio, downloaded as a wav file from
freesound.org, of girls having an animated conversation. It corresponds to the
roughly 18 hours of contact I get every 18 weeks. The girls' audio is broken up
into 18 sections and interspersed somewhat regularly throughout the silence to
approximate the rhythm of the weekly visits I receive.
I've tried to find the
audio of the girls' conversation again at
freesound.org but have been unable to do so as of fall 2011; thus the
uploader's username is not credited. The file may have been removed from the
website.
6. Streaming Webcam Gaza, the Morning of January 12, 2009
Unknown
The last section is
audio recorded from a streaming webcam located in Gaza City, early in the Gazan
morning of January 12th 2009. This was during the Israeli attack on the Gaza
Strip known as Operation Cast Lead in Israel and the Gaza Massacre in the
Palestinian territories. The camera was placed on a tall building looking out
over the city.
Evidence of people trapped by technology is
inescapable: the constant sound of Israeli propeller-driven reconnaissance
drones overhead mixes with occasional gunfire/explosions, ambulances and Israeli
fighter jets. The
use of white phosphorous by
Israel is also notable. It is a nasty substance, an incendiary
munition that causes severe burns and absorption through the burned area can
lead to organ failure. I watched this webstream from my sick bed 6000 miles
away, during the Gazan nighttime, and
saw white phosphorous being rained down on Palestinians from Israeli
helicopters.
Download Text
von hemmling (at) h otmail. com