Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
In 1964, nineteen year old
poet, David Chapman was committed to five months in a mental
hospital for 'treatment' of his drug addiction. Support and
encouragement from friends including the writer, film
director and publisher, George Solomos (Themistocles
Hoetis), resulted in his release and avoidance of ECT. This
was subsequently followed by the publication of Withdrawal,
a poetic, experiential and reflective account of life within
the hospital. It is accompanied by black and white
photographic portraits of patients and evocative impressions
of the austere architecture of the hospital, taken with a
camera smuggled in to him during his
incarceration. In the authors preface, David
Chapman tells us much about the sickness of addiction and
the ineffectiveness of the treatment prescribed to him,
observations that are still relevant. Taken from the world
that gives him his identity, he is placed in the unreality
of a mental hospital, a Victorian institution where cold
baths and forcible restraint had not long been replaced by
ECT and drug treatment, its practitioners still in
attendance;'so much sickness and unhappiness in one place
for so long, it must leave its mark'. As a result of his
isolation, David Chapman became at first absorbed in his
immediate past. The people and objects associated with his
ritual of fixing up are described in a montage sequence of
images, violent, sublime and hallucinatory. One immediately
thinks of Alexander Trocchi for literary as well as personal
reasons, but the contrast in the age of the writer is
disturbing. At times Withdrawal has the
directness of a film script. Terse but telling detail gives
us an immediate image of the environment and the manners and
behaviour of its occupants. Other patients, shadows of
existence, are personalised and given back an identity in
his writing, something long denied them in the frozen
isolation of their confinement. They speak directly to us,
with strong and visually defined voices. However absurd or
tragic, David Chapman reveals a pulse not yet stultified by
the endless walls of the institution. In the final chapter, Vaya con
Dios, it is the night of the dance and the evening before
his release. Within the time frame of this desolate ball,
David Chapman describes his previous break from hospital and
his subsequent return. Now leaving once more he is to face
the denouement to an addiction that had merely been laid on
ice. He tells us that on no account will he return, such has
been his fear and misery while inside. David Chapman died in
his early 30s from an overdose. A film project inspired by the
book was attempted by George but was fraught with problems.
Funding was promised and then withheld. Conditional support
offered by the BFI rendered the project unworkable. George
turned to the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, a group of young
radical jazz musicians of the late 60s. He believed that
music in film should be as much a contribution to the
overall work as the words and the pictures, and was inspired
by their integrity and innovation. At that time the
Spontaneous Music Ensemble were consciously striving to
redefine performance and composition. They had adopted a
form known as collective improvisation and emphasised the
need for each musician to listen and give space to the other
players. (This was a progression from free form jazz, where
musicians had a tendency to outplay each other.) Beginning
with such a defined and committed stance, it is perhaps no
coincidence that each of the original line-up would later
achieve considerable respect and notoriety for their
collaborative and solo work. The Spontaneous Music Ensemble
forced the accepted distinctions between music and non-music
or sound. Since Withdrawal was composed as it was played, it
emphasised the individual searching as well as the
collective pursuit of rhythm and harmony. Music and sound,
deliberation and abstraction were inextricably linked. As a
soundtrack it questions similar distinctions between film
music and sound effects. Film scores have traditionally
separated these roles. Conventionally, the sound effects
track is expected to give a naturalistic, sonic impression
of a related scene. Film music, on the other hand is
obviously imposed on the visual and anchors our response to
the narrative. Yet since the sound effects track is as much
a deliberate contrivance as the musical score why not break
out of the conventions of naturalism and treat it as one
would music ? Film music has occasionally entered into the
realms of the sound effects track. Banging doors may begin a
rhythm that is picked up by the music. To take sound and
explore its suggestive, expressive or musical potency is
proposed by a soundtrack such as Withdrawal. Withdrawal runs for 32 minutes
(accompanied on the CD by a reworking of the original as
well as a new piece, playing for 78 min. in total). The
soundtrack for the still imaginary film was recorded after
each had read the book in preparation. It was then composed
live within the proposed time frame of the film. The
composition opens with the underscore of an obsessive and
vibrant drone from a double bass. A steady chime marks the
passing of time, ever present in moments of despair and of
deprivation. The voices of the different players reach out,
echo, harmonise and clash in discordant chorus.
Compositional micro-forms appear and disperse. Emerging from
this spatial and acoustic soundscape, a horn plays an
unforgettable, plaintive and solitary blues. For the
director, the soundtrack captured the essence of the written
work, in its atmosphere and construction. Indeed he viewed
it as a complete creative work and not merely an additional
underscore to the action, an achievement that he had only
begun to imagine for his finished film. An original recording of David
Chapman reading Withdrawal has been discovered. Perhaps this
could be combined with the finished soundtrack. Until then,
the unrealised film collaboration can only be appreciated in
our own reading and listening. The CD of Withdrawal is
published by EMANEM
music. Withdrawal by David Chapman will be reprinted by
ZERO
sometime in 2000. David Somerset is editor of
fiba Withdrawal by the
Spontaneous Music Ensemble (Kenny Wheeler - trumpet,
flugelhorn, Paul Rutherford - trombone, Trevor Watts - oboe,
alto sax, Evan Parker - soprano and tenor sax, Barry Guy -
double bass, John Stevens drums and glockenspiel). recorded
in 1966. Published by EMANEM,
1997. © 1998
Withdrawal by David
Chapman, published 1965 Proudstage books.