By JILLIAN KRISTINA
Sometimes, the score of a movie can play as pivotal a role to the film as the characters themselves. Sometimes, a soundtrack is just as crucial to the unfolding of a storyline as a script. With today’s official release of Ryan Glover’s THE STRINGS soundtrack, we’re given the rare opportunity to experience both.
In a nod to Teagan Johnston’s straight-to-tape recording process, as seen in the film, the original motion picture soundtrack is divided into two sides: Side A features Johnston’s original songs, while Side B features the haunting original score by Adrian Ellis. Incorporating keyboard, synths, vocal processing pedals and looping pedals, Johnston’s musical and lyrical journey through grief becomes a critical lens of interpretation throughout the course of the heavy liminality of the film. Each recording session is a progression that demands attention because it’s in these moments that the truth of what Johnston’s character, Catherine, is desperately trying to convey begins to seep through.
It was also this very interplay between the story, the creation of the music, the space the soundscape came to occupy and the shape it took that reminded me of the story that forms with a simple tarot spread – nothing but the pulling of cards (the strike of a key), and yet, something so profound emerges from the images (intonations), from the meanings, and more importantly, from our intuition. Songs speak differently to each and every listener, and tarot is no different, which poses an interesting question: If a song were an archetype, what would that look like? If you could map a song like The Fool’s journey, how would that look? What shape would it take? What images could it conjure? What feelings, memories – blockages, even – could it uncover?
What’s beautiful about the title track is that it truly begins with the archetype of the first card in the major arcana of the tarot – The Fool.
I went wandering
Wondering what it would bring
I went walking
Talking
Til I could sing
Within the film, this speaks to Catherine’s recent break from both her boyfriend and her band. She sequesters herself in a cabin in the dead of winter, looking to retreat, reflect, and create fresh music – music for her, by her, and no one else. In this way, she is The Fool, stepping off the ledge of what was known into the complete unknown – no guarantees, only her past experiences to inform and guide her. Her music is her guide, her compass, in this new space, as well as the very medium that begins to manifest this new world she is trusting herself to.
But we need more than The Fool if we’re to navigate the frozen tundras of winter – the forgotten realms of our darkened, isolated internal landscapes. And this is where the next archetype of the major arcana rises to meet Catherine – The Hermit. We cannot move forward without first going within. We cannot meet who we are becoming before we come face to face with who we are, and this is the invitation of this card. The wizened elder stands before us, offering a lantern for us to take as we begin a journey without our journey – to the caves and catacombs of our core. To the places where we must sit, listen, and breathe. To the places where rushing doesn’t exist because it isn’t allowed – there’s no forcing our way through this. Here we sit. And listen. And wait.
I’ve been haunting
Everything
My lovers bring
I’ve been wanting
A love of my
Own to bring
What are we waiting for? Reconciliation. We’re waiting to remember who we once were and to call those pieces of ourselves back. We’re waiting with The Lovers card. While so many interpret this card as purely romantic, an archetype of two lovers coming together in relationship, in marriage, in union, the deeper meaning simmering beneath this flowery surface is that this card is inviting us home to ourselves. It’s a reunion of the self. An acceptance, perhaps in a way that we’ve never accepted ourselves. Of an unconditional love. One we’ve maybe never felt and are looking for in all the wrong places. As Catherine begins her next chapter with The Fool, she’s invited into the blackened, liminal caverns of the past to be present for and bear witness to her own homecoming… with herself. But will she accept this invitation? Or will she continue to reject the past, reject the memories, reject herself, and in doing so, reject reality?
This is where duality lies within the tarot. Some define the duality through either the upright positioning of a card or the reversal (upside-down positioning). But I don’t think there’s ever purely a this or a that with any card. I believe it always represents both sides of the spectrum, and all that lies between. This is where our intuition comes into play because only we can truly know the message of each card.
As Catherine continues to make her way through this confusing liminality, she begins to sense she’s not alone. She begins to sense something’s off. Wrong. She can’t sleep. She’s seeing things. Hearing things. She begins to lose her grip.
To hell
Hell
To hell
Hell
Like you did
In this way, Catherine is in the throes of confronting the next archetype – The Devil card, or in some decks, The Shadow Side. I prefer the Shadow Side interpretation, as the traditional perspective on The Devil card is far too puritanical and just doesn’t resonate. It plays into the guilt of dogma, and if anything, that is an area in which a reconfiguration into something more constructive rather than so severely critical would benefit us all. Here, Catherine is presented with an opportunity to confront the strangled echoes of the past that keep tearing through the fragile fabric of a slowly deteriorating reality. It’s almost as if Catherine’s being given the opportunity to face her darkness and confront the heartache and pain and grief she’s drowning in – a blacked-out abyss she can’t quite seem to navigate. Here, she finds herself teetering on the brink. Losing sight. Losing her mind.
And yet, there’s always a choice. Everything is a choice. In every moment, every day, with every word, we either walk forward or fall further into the deafening, blinding ditches of denial that we dig for ourselves. And those ditches expand, and consume others as well, if we’re not careful. If we veer too far off the path.
I saw the edge
I saw the end
I saw the strings,
They took my friends
Took my friend
Here we are, at the end. And as mysterious and ambiguous as the ending of THE STRINGS truly is, one thing we do know – something has come to an end. A life. More than one, maybe. But Catherine now finds herself at the precipice, at the edge – a much different one than the ledge she leaped from with The Fool archetype. Now, she becomes The World, the final card in the major arcana. The final card in the journey. Arms outstretched, invisible strings holding her, guiding her closer and closer to that edge. To the point of no return. Only now, will she have another chance to rewrite that story. To break that chain. To begin again. And again. And again.
As we come to the end of our journey on Side A, the raw vortex of gnawing crescendos and plummeting pit-of-our-stomach freefalls of Side B await us. This is the kind of auditory nightmare that keeps pulling us back into sleep after each startled jump back to waking. We try to stay awake, desperate to not dip back into the slippery, murky pitch beyond the pale, but we don’t have a choice. The door is open, the tension buzzing as if we never left. This black static holds us. Traps us. Enrapturing us, as we dance and sway and collapse into ourselves. Into our own hells. I wonder which cards are waiting for us there…
THE STRINGS soundtrack is available today on most major digital platforms via https://thestringssoundtrack.ffm.to/thestrings.
