It Makes A Sound: Episode 1, Are You Listening?

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Hi, we at Nightfail Presents are really proud to give you our newest serial fiction show, It Makes a Sound.

This show is fundamentally different than any fiction show we've put out in some really cool ways, and I'm glad that you all will finally get to hear it.

It's written and performed by playwright and actor and longtime friend of Nightvale, Jacqueline Landgraff.

Let's take a listen to the first episode now.

If you enjoy it, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Reviewing it also helps the show.

Without further ado, I take you now to the little suburb of Rosemary Hills.

Hello, I'm Anya Saffer, the co-director of It Makes a Sound.

Thank you so much for lending us your ears.

In order to support our show, we'll need the help of some great advertisers.

And in order to find those great advertisers, we'll need to learn a little bit more about you.

So please go to podsurvey.com slash sound.

and take a quick anonymous survey that will help us to get to know you a little better.

That way we can show advertisers just how wonderful our listeners are.

Even if you've taken a podcast listener survey before, this one is specific to It Makes a Sound, so we really need you to take this one too.

Plus, once you've completed the survey, you can enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card.

Thank you for your help.

We really appreciate it.

So remember, go to podsurvey.com/slash S-O-U-N-D.

And remember, Wim Pharos.

And now, on to episode one.

When a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it,

it makes a sound.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we have found the music.

It had been lost

as so many things are lost.

Missing, disappeared, misplaced, vanished.

Every day, what falls into obscurity without anybody noticing,

without anybody paying attention.

What is locked in the attic?

I mean,

let's talk about some things that have been found in an attic or spaces like attics.

Did you know that Van Gogh's sunset at Montmeur, that beautiful painting was found in an attic?

Or that the original handwritten manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was found in an attic.

The Venus de Milo was, well, it's not an attic, but buried in a farmer's field, unearthed by a peasant who came across some stubborn soil.

Did you know that the only copy of the pilot of I Love Lucy lay under the bed of Peppino the Clown for 30 years until it was swept out by his widow when she finally cleaned up around the place and thought to herself,

this is is pretty funny.

All these masterpieces, just a broom sweep away from history's dustbins.

And today,

today,

recovered from a neglected attic of a suburban townhouse,

One cassette tape destined to be sold in a garage sale containing what is likely to be the first recorded concert of Wim Pharos.

So,

who is listening?

Hello.

I'm Deirdre Gardner.

And I welcome you to my new show.

It makes a sound.

It's the first and only show in the nation dedicated to Wim Ferros, native son of our Rosemary Hills, where together we'll be part of a musical legacy.

We will

prepare to receive the genius that is Wim Pharos

and to return him

like a prodigal son to this deprived land.

I will be the one to provide you up-to-the-minute news and information about the artist as I discover it.

The name

Wimpheros,

the subject, genius,

and its location.

Where is extraordinariness?

I ask myself, don't you?

Don't you ask yourself that?

Extraordinariness.

Where is it today?

Where are the truly exceptional ones who,

out of our sheer proximity to them, allow us to glimpse the intersection of our little lives with the profound?

Who walks among us?

Is there anyone?

Who walks among us?

All the little uses.

Uses

rolling lint off our pants.

Uses squeezing avocados at the grocery store and never picking the ripe one.

Uses driving up and down the side streets to work because the highway frightens uses.

Uses drinking chamomile.

Attempting inverted yoga poses, popping melatonin and crossing our fingers as we slink into bed for the night.

Where can we look here?

In this vast, wearied landscape of Rosemary Hills,

where our weathered old water tower reminds us in fading letters of past town mottos, such as golf capital,

or Rosemary Hills is alive with the whirr of commerce, or let's tea in the hills.

But where now the best boast we can muster is easy access to the highway.

Well,

here,

amidst the now abandoned golf course

and its neglected grass, amidst the shuttered strip malls

and these potholed streets,

the extraordinary has tread.

And the footprints

they linger

if you know how to look for them.

And I think I do.

My fellow people of Rosemary Hills, citizens of the world, what have you forgotten?

What treasures have we hidden under cobwebs and dust?

What beauty awaits us on the other side of that dry wall as we wrestle fitfully in our sleep?

What life lingers on these old fairways?

What wonders just passed us by as we bowed our head towards

a brightened three-inch screen?

Our necks hurt, our brains are zapped from too much screen time, our souls ache, and suddenly decades have passed us by.

Like poof.

What are we missing?

Do we remember what used to be held in

the delicate folds of our heart?

Don't we remember how things used to sound,

smell,

feel,

taste?

I want to.

It's time

to unpack the attic.

Today, we have a mind-boggling discovery.

A confirmed to be authentic tape containing what is known to be Wim Ferros' debut public musical appearance here in Rosemary Hills in the year 1992.

And so we're not going to rush this moment like we rush everything.

We're going to slow down.

We're gonna savor.

We are going to consider the tremendous significance of this relic in order to fully appreciate it.

And thus, it is my privilege on this day of days to hold in my hands this freshly discovered tape.

It's an ordinary-looking cassette tape,

but

it's possible some of you have never held a cassette tape.

I will explain.

Because

though it contains the stuff of wonder,

to the human eye, it is just a

three and a half by two inch clear plastic rectangle.

With two holes in the middle.

And these holes, they have six little black teeth, non-threatening teeth, so that you could feasibly insert a pencil or a pinky finger should something go awry, like if the delicate tape needs your manual assistance.

Now that tape is a very thin, translucent gray strip, of course containing some magnet

magnetic properties and it's spooled around the left hole.

And as the tape plays in the cassette tape player, the tape will run along the bottom edge of the rectangle across a tiny magnetic strip.

And the magnets pull the music out with magnetic force until it is fully spooled around the right hole, which means the tape is finished and you have heard the music.

And that's how a cassette tape works.

I'm Deirdre Gardner.

This is it Makes a Sound.

I am describing a cassette tape, perhaps the most important cassette tape that ever was.

Now, on this particular model,

we have a yellow sticker that covers the smooth section of the cassette.

And written on that cover, in purple felt tip pen, in bubble letters, is Wim Fa.

But a water spot has obscured the rose, leaving a purpley pink splotch.

It's very pretty, like a watercolor.

And underneath, with that same pen and font,

1992,

crudely drawn stars in multiple colors of pen speckle the entire sticker.

I mean,

it's great.

It's really incredible that one small object can capture so much about an entire era, even just aesthetically.

We all seek the soundtrack of our lives, don't we?

And we wish to be privy to the voices of our generation.

Yet it is

a profound rarity that an artist like Wimpheros crosses into your limited sphere of existence.

It's like an alien prophet touching down on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in a chain store called The Last Tupper.

Suddenly making the universe crack open to reveal infinite shards of meaning barely comprehensible to you.

Standing there in cargo shorts holding a casserole dish.

Yes, yes.

It's hard to determine the full effect of Wim Ferros' music on the simple town of Rosemary Hills in the early to mid-90s.

It's difficult to quantify the extent of

sacred devotion he inspired in his earliest fan base.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

That was a time without social media and its

incessant public proclamations to

hashtag trending desires of the moment.

Yesterday's youth

had to be more

intuitively united in our common affections.

Had to keep the faith that even in a friendless existence,

for instance, as an example, living in an inherited, furnished townhouse on the edge of Rosemary Hills gated golf course community,

there were kindred souls somewhere underneath that same blue sky, wishing and waiting for a connection just like you.

Though perhaps at times to love in solitude, from afar,

in the most generic of settings, was lonely and painful.

That melancholy was trumped by a feeling of purpose.

The purpose that comes from knowing that if someone out there could so perfectly capture the nuanced secrets of your soul, there must be greatness and solace in this universe indeed.

Isn't that why we listen to the music?

Isn't that why we listen to the music?

We must ready ourselves to listen to the music.

But I will say, even without the ease and the benefit of cached fan pages or blogs serving as testimony to the early Wim Pharos effect, the artist did manage to be a catalyst of cultural awakening in the town zeitgeist.

If a town can have a zeitgeist, can it?

Sure.

And there is archival evidence of the first reactions to Pharos's artistry.

In fact,

I I happen to be in possession

of documents from a Rosemary Hills resident who encountered Wim Pharaohs in his earliest musical phase.

Now,

some of these pages are enclosed within

a purple velveteen diary that I now have in front of me.

The writing

appears to be by the hand of a 12-year-old, I would estimate.

And the paper is wide-ruled.

And

I seem

to have come across

a lengthy series of haiku.

Perhaps I should share just a few of these with you for the sake of research.

It's a segment

we'll call it

the poetry of a little us

you have changed my life by allowing me to see even though you don't see me

I am hard to see in a golf community with many sand traps.

You have a a blind spot for almost nothing, but one in the size of me.

I am the catcher.

You are a rare butterfly that I cannot grasp.

Butterflies up close freak me out, but you fly free, beautiful and free.

I catch butterflies, yes, but I am afraid too.

A contradiction.

Faithfully you come to the window of my dreams singing la la la.

What is this music?

Like, I never heard music before you played it.

Now

Those are just a few haikus and there are

lots more

written here in Rosemary Hills, circa 1991, 1992,

likely dedicated to one whim Pharos.

If you're just tuning in,

hello.

Welcome.

I'm Deirdre Gardner, and this is the first episode of my show.

It makes a sound.

A discovery has been made in the attic.

It's Wim Pharos'

first live album.

It's the real deal.

It's not a hoax.

And it's so rare that the only known copy exists recorded from some distance on a cassette tape.

There is nowhere else in the entire universe where you will be able to hear a 16-year-old Wim Ferros shaping what comes to be known as the sound

of an epic.

E-P-O-C-H.

Stay with me and you will hear it here first, folks, because I have the tape and you're going to get exclusive access.

So.

We're discussing Wim Ferros' formative teenage years as a musician right here in Rosemary Hills.

We've just begun working towards a fuller understanding of the human behind the meat.

I know.

Oh no!

Are you okay?

I know you.

I knew you.

Are you asleep?

Are you?

Who's that?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Everything is good.

I'm back

and

I'm excited to introduce a new oral history segment of the show based on town legend and lore around Wim Pharos.

It's called

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

A light in the window of the second floor, the only window on the second floor, means Wim Pharos is in his bedroom.

And almost always, when he is in his bedroom,

he is drawing on the wall.

What was on that wall?

Everything was on that wall.

The winds of change blew on that wall.

The

unfettered scrawl of technicolor wonders.

The rainbow?

A paltry container for the variety of colors applied to that wall.

New color names would have to be invented.

The

ongoing, overlapping, shifting images and symbols, muraled, frescoed, applique on that wall.

All these ideas spewing forth from the eclectic multitudes of a single creative mind.

In a blue and tan flannel shirt, his right arm braced against the drywall in an L-shape above his head.

The bottom of his sleeve ripped and hanging down.

He looks like he's whispering secrets in a confessional, but he is drawing.

There's a lava lamp somewhere out of view of the window, and it casts blobby spots that climb up and down the room, catching Wim's distorted shadow when he's out of view of the window frame.

His left hand moves delicately or scribbles furiously.

He is left-handed, as statistics prove that most geniuses are.

And if you'd been watching over the course of several months, you would have seen his fantastic mural take shape.

In the center,

a five-foot-tall octopus

with the

uncannily rendered face of Diane Sawyer.

Her arms spread open, Christ-like, with magnolia blossoms and spiders dripping from her fingers.

A flock of owls flying over a forest of pine trees.

Each phase of the moon paired with a pizza pie of differing toppings.

Eight personalized pan pizzas for eight different moons.

A ninja army battling a family of squirrels throwing sharp acorns.

Pages falling from a Gutenberg Bible into the gaping mouth of a Native American chief.

Snoop Dogg.

Scully riding a Mulder Centaur as Ross Perot hoverboards over their heads.

He was getting political.

As the seasons pass, the wall incrementally becomes an intricate map of his fertile, fertile inner life.

Repetitions of hummingbirds, starfish, cans of beans, numchucks, later peacocks.

A dragon breathing fire, melting the iceberg.

Just before it sinks the Titanic, which passes into clear skies.

Dracula playing video games in front of a television set, flickering with an image of outrage from the Rodney King riots.

And toaster strudels flying out of toasters into the rings of Saturn.

Kurt Cobain

offering an origami swan to a sobbing river Phoenix.

and hundreds of other elegantly drawn details too small to make out from a distance

that create a constellation of

enlightened connectivity across the peeling beige wall

and almost every night

after all the lights in the windows of the bungalow go dark, if you cared enough to pay attention,

you would see

the single beam of a flashlight splice a path behind the house, pointed towards a lopsided shed some 40 yards away.

And if you were standing right up against the fence that separates Rosemary Hill's gated golf course community from the unincorporated land that stretched out behind the scattered houses on Camellia Road.

You would hear

a soulful strum of guitar

and a crescendo of drums.

Because in that decaying shed,

surrounded by the loneliest darkness that is suburban darkness,

is where young whim pharaohs made the music.

It was that music that pulsed through this town,

permeated the air,

pumped through the water.

Did everyone hearken to the call?

No.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

Well,

I'm here to tell you.

Trees have fallen.

Trees are falling.

And you may listen,

but do you hear?

People of Rosemary Hills, it is time to hear.

It is time to hearken.

Hearken.

I believe in your ears.

Wim Pharaoh sang for you.

You didn't know.

But he will sing for you again.

He has been lost in the attic.

But now he is found.

And maybe

I don't know.

Maybe

you've been lost in the attic too.

There was greatness in our midst.

Transcendence.

Eccentricity.

Nuance.

I'm Deirdre Gardner, and I believe that when a tree falls in a forest, it makes a sound.

And I'm inviting you

to try to truly hear

and to remember.

So stay tuned for my next episode when that music, lost but now found, will be born again straight into your ears when you hear the first track from Wim Pharos's debut concert

the first track perhaps

of the rest of your life

this has been the inaugural episode of the first and only show in the nation dedicated to the music and legacy of Wim Pharos.

Thank you for listening.

If you have any information about Wimpharos that you think should be shared with our listeners, or if you own a working cassette tape player, do not hesitate to contact me.

I guess for now, you should just email me at DDG at

no, let's not do that.

I'll create a new, yes, you can contact me at Wimpheros at AOL.

Actually, no

please contact itmakes a sound

at aol.com

Thank you.

I'm Deirdre Gardner.

Till next time

It Makes a Sound is created and written by Jacqueline Landgraff.

Co-directed by Jacqueline Landgraff and Anya Saffer.

Sound designed and engineered by me, Vincent Cascion.

Original music by Nate Wida, with Jacqueline Landgraff as Deirdre Gardner and featuring Annie Golden as the voice from downstairs.

It Makes a Sound is a Night Vale Presents production.

For more information on this show and other Night Vale podcasts, go to nightvalepresents.com.

We hope you'll rate and review It Makes a Sound on Apple podcasts and that you'll tell your friends and all sorts of other humans to listen to the show, to hearken to the trees, and remember Wim Pharos.

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You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies, and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

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Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Night Vale co-creator, Joseph Fink.

It's called Unlicensed, and it's an LA Noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles.

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