Naqoyqatsi

A letter to Philip Glass

Written and sent October 12th.

Dear Mr Glass,

I have loved your music for years. I play it often to calm my nerves - yes it is so. I saw you when you came to Ireland in 2018 and played for 4 hours - I was entranced. You had a woman with you, when she left the stage you and your male friends played music as if it was weaving together the very fabric of life. It lifted all in the room to another place. Yarragh, I believe this experience is called. Just before the woman came back on the stage the feeling dissolved and the moment was gone. But to the end of my days I will never forget it and I am grateful.

Two nights ago I had a similar feeling with your music on the very same stage. Not as profound but profound nonetheless. The Irish National Concert Hall. Your ensemble was playing and they proved themselves to be the very epitome of the Divine source that your genius draws down from when you compose. Sir it was miraculous, joyous, a true celebration of life and all that is good. I was filled with hope for the future of our species.

So I went again last night. Naqoyqatsi. Words do not do this experience justice. I sat in the front row balcony and had nothing blocking my view of the symphony orchestra, the screen, and your amazing ensemble. Michael Reissman - oh what a treat I was anticipating. I don’t know if you can appreciate what I’m about to say next. The monstrous and horrific imagery juxtaposed to your heavenly music twisted my heart so badly that I’m writing this letter to you.

Our Heavenly Father did not create us to be meat, to be cloned, to destroy ourselves and our world. The demonic imagery of the movie was akin to some torturous conditioning experienced by those boys in A Clockwork Orange. Yet the audience did not need their eyelids glued open to watch it.

I had to close my eyes, remove my glasses, watch the orchestra, watch the audience, anything but the rolling images of actrocity that played for 79 minutes. On and on it went, our bodies factory clones, meat and bones, atomic bombs, happy babies, gymnasts, turning into emaciated bodies in holocaust gas chambers, all of it cannon fodder. I have seen nothing as horrific since headless clone carcasses hanging upside down on a conveyer belt in the movie Cloud Atlas to be food for an unwitting human population. It was your music that compelled me to stay in my seat. And just when I couldn’t take it anymore, it was over.

This audience, these people from my country clapped and stood and cheered. I was frozen. I live with these people? Who are they?? And what was the purpose of this experience?? Your music as a delivery system for pure hate? I watched the audience watching the movie entranced. Are they that conditioned that they don’t know what they see?? Is there no end to evil?? The Weinstein name on the credits - Sodeburgh, Disney… could it be any worse?

Is all of this the work of my Creator? For it must be - the horror and the pain of the closing images - children in terror - it is pure satanic ritual abuse. Pure evil. The complete absence of God - why? Why???

All I could think of was this - If you walk down a street looking for dog shit you will find it. But if you look for beauty you will also find it.

I wish to know - how could you watch those images and create such beauty to wrap them into? Are you of God? Was I wrong to love your works? Are these hideous images also of God?

Could you not throw open a challenge to the world for someone else to use the very same music and create a movie to go with it that’s an exploration of beauty?

The Hopi prophecy has come to pass. And now it’s time to build something together that brings in light and hope, not death and destruction.

I don’t expect you to write back. This letter is a plea - it’s a statement. I see you. I choose God.

Sincerely,

Abby Wynne