The music of Text of Light, the improvisational collective centered around guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht, is not the soundtrack to Stan Brakhage's 1974 film The Text of Light. Granted, the group performs while that film or others screen above them. But, as Ranaldo says, "We're not trying to illustrate the film. Our view is that the music and the film are two events happening simultaneously." "You can paint yourself in a corner if you watch the film too carefully and try to react to it," explains Licht, a Wire contributor. "We're reacting to the film no more or less than we're reacting to what we're playing. Sometimes the flicker from the projector is something we react to more than the film itself." "Often when you watch improvisers, there's not a lot going on besides the music," adds Ranaldo. "Giving the visual focus over to the film has actually meant that people listen to the music more."
The Text of Light, a stunning 71-minute montage of rays refracted through a glass ashtray, might be Brakhage's most abstract work. But all the silent Brakhage films Text of Light screens (so far the group has also used Dog Star Man, Anticipation of the Night, and Ellipsis ) are pure studies of light and motion. They exist, as Fred Camper explains in his By Brakhage DVD notes, "primarily in a kind of virtual space within the viewer's imagination, and in the subjective interaction between viewer and film." Text of Light explores similar spaces - the area between sound and picture, and between finished work and live improvisation - as well as the infinite ways those elements can interact.
