Simulation = Memory + Emotion
Amy Kurzweil: I looked up the definition of simulation just to sort of wrap my mind around what all the different things that word means. And one of the definitions was imitation for the purpose of study. And I think about writing and creating and, you know, making art as this kind of simulation for the purpose of study or for the purpose of insight.
Something interesting that I've experimented with in my book is myself playing the role of an algorithm. Part of the argument of my book is making a bit of an analogy between an artist and an algorithm. Algorithms play themselves, a billion times in order to perfect itself. And I think there's a version of that metaphorically that I'm doing as an artist and writer that I am going over and over and over things as a way to perfect my understanding of the world and my understanding of myself.
SARA ORTIZ: That was writer and cartoonist Amy Kurzweil.
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SARA ORTIZ: Welcome to Black Mountain Radio, broadcast from the Mojave Desert. I’m Sara Ortiz.
[Phasing, hiphop music plays in the background]
NIELA ORR: And I’m Niela Orr.
ORTIZ: Niela, welcome back! I wish you were here. I say “back,” but, clearly, you’re still in Philly, where you were last time, and I’m still in Vegas, but I still wish I could hug you in real life.
ORR: Do you remember the hologram the WLL.I.AM used to beam into the CNN studios the night president Obama was elected?
ORTIZ: Yes.
ORR: Okay, well, they should do one of those for me. Gotta work with a company to develop a Niela hologram.
ORTIZ: I mean, I can see if KUNV wants to sponsor that [both laugh]. We’ll find a sponsor to sponsor a Niela hologram so that you’re seated right across the studio from me. That would be so cool.
ORR: That would be amazing.
ORTIZ: … Well in this episode, we’re looking into different kinds of simulation, its effect on loneliness, it’s relation to memory, and how it’s ever-present. I think back on Mary Karr. Mary Karr, for those who don’t know, is a nonfiction writer, perhaps best known for The Liar’s Club, but she wrote a book called The Art of the Memoir, and she makes a comparison that memory is like a pinball inside of a pinball machine. And she talks about how it messily ricochets around between idea and image and fragments of scenes and stories we’ve heard. It kind of changes over time, and works of art, like fiction and nonfiction – they are replicating something.
But, bringing us back to our episode [laughs], in an accidental turn of events, all of our guests today, or most of them, are former Shearing Fellow Alums. For those who don’t know, every year, BMI hosts writers to live and work out of Las Vegas, where they engage with our community and spend a number of months with us in this desert valley. And one of our folks is Amy Kurzweil who you overlapped with while you were here in Las Vegas, Niela.
ORR: Yes, when I was a fellow, I spent a lot of time with Amy Kurzweil in Downtown Las Vegas when we both lived there. Amy is a cartoonist and a writer - she’s the author of Flying Couch, which is a memoir about three generations of women in her family. Amy’s also a regular contributor to The Believer, BMI’s flagship magazine, where she often contributes to the comic section. In fact, I really enjoyed a comic she published in The Believer about her trip to visit Bina48.
ORTIZ: Me too.
ORR: Yeah, it’s amazing.
ORTIZ: It was so good.
ORR: Bina48 is a humanoid robot that was created using a real woman’s memories, feelings, and beliefs. I actually don’t know how I feel about saying “real woman” in this context because, having listened to all these pieces today, I’ve just been thinking differently about “real” and “simulated,” and how we use those terms.
ORTIZ: Well, I’m curious to know how Amy would react to what you’re saying right now. You know, while she was here, she was busy at work on her next graphic memoir, which features her father, Ray Kurzweil, and his father. The new book encompasses themes of artificial intelligence and simulation of identities, and love, and family. And I wonder what she would have to say.
ORR: In this segment, we’ll hear from both Amy and her dad, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil. Ray developed the technology for voice to text and chat bots and is connected with the concept known as the “singularity theory,” which posits a hypothetical future of intense, technological growth and super-intelligent, self-directed computers.
ORTIZ: Yes, and among his inventions are the first print-to-speech software for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the sounds of a grand piano and other orchestral instruments.
ORR: In this segment, Amy and Ray discuss art as simulation and as a device to emulate emotion.
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ART ACTING AS A SIMULATOR
[Whirring sound, as if from an old film reel, is heard in the background]
AMY KURZWEIL: Something that strikes me about the theme of simulation is it gets kind of a bad rap. The idea of a simulation, often, people will say, “it's not the real thing,” or “there's something cheap or degraded about a simulation,” but I think both of us maybe relate to the concept of simulation in a more positive way.
I am Amy Kurzweil. I'm a writer and a cartoonist. I'm the author of Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir. I'm also working on another graphic memoir, which is called Artificial: A Love Story, and it features my father and his father, who I never met, and the themes of artificial intelligence, simulation of identities and love and family.
RAY KURZWEIL: I'm Ray Kurzweil. I've been involved in artificial intelligence, actually, for 60 years. When I started that nobody had even heard of a computer let alone artificial intelligence.
AMY KURZWEIL: I'm also the daughter of Ray Kurzweil in case that wasn't clear from our shared last name. [laughs]
RAY KURZWEIL: Really? Wow. Amazing.
AMY KURZWEIL: My new book is in progress. The through line of the book is that my father has this storage unit where he saved decades of documents from his father, who I never met, who was a musician in Vienna, and he fled Vienna in 1938. His life was very kind of climatically saved by this American benefactor who had heard him conduct a concert.
[Emotive, almost inspirational, orchestra music plays]
And she mentioned to him, “oh, if you ever, if you ever need anything, reach out to me in America,” and that was 1937. And very soon after was the Anschluss, and, as a Jew, he needed to get out of Vienna. And so, this was this really dramatic story that I grew up hearing about this grandfather, who I never knew, who we have all these pictures of him.
And he's so Regal looking. We have these dramatic, black and white photos of him conducting music. And now, hearing these stories about him, he just became kind of a mythical figure to me. And this dramatic idea of, as an artist, your life is sort of saved by your own art just really captivated me.
If this woman hadn't heard him play and wasn't so moved by his music, he may not have had a way out of Vienna. And so that's always been a really moving story for me. And then, the idea that my father has saved all these sort of artifacts from my grandfather's life in the storage unit, because my grandfather died in 1970 of heart disease.
And he died relatively young, which is why I never met him. And so, he left behind all these letters and ledgers. He was very meticulous recording his financial life because, I think, you had a pretty stressful financial life as an artist. There's a lot there and there's also a lot missing.
And I just have found that that experience of wading through his documents and asking the question, “can I know this person that I've never met?”—that's been a really interesting experience for me. So then, enter the impetus of the book, which is that my father collected all the writings from my grandfather and entered them into a chat bot.
The algorithm searches through the writing of the person and provides you with answers to questions. So, the algorithm does understand your question in a sophisticated way, and it returns passages from the person based on all the documents that it has. And so, I've interacted with this chat bot and I've also, of course, interacted with the documents themselves because I was one of the people who actually entered these documents.
[Sound of typing is heard in the background]
All the handwriting that first I couldn't read and then I figured out how to read it and then I typed it into the computer.
So, I was both a part of building the chat bot and also someone who's interacted with it. So, the question of the book is, “to what extent do I know this person who's not around? And how do I know him? Do I know him through his written artifacts? Do I know him through my father? Do I know him through the AI experience that I am having?” And then, swirling around with that question, “are these other memories and reflections from my life?”
RAY KURZWEIL: Well, I've been actually trying to emulate intelligence since the beginning of my career. My first project was actually to create something that would compose music. And I started this actually around 1963, so, that's over 55 years ago.
[Inspirational orchestra music fades in]
AMY KURZWEIL: From the beginning of your career, it seems that you've been thinking about technology as a way to not only simulate what humans do, but actually improve upon what humans do.
RAY KURZWEIL: I've always hated the idea of artificial intelligence. It's challenging if you actually achieve it. It's not real; it's artificial. What we're actually trying to do is get over the artificial aspect, achieve something that's real intelligence. And really doing that now, creating things I can actually write, for example, language. You can ask, for example, GPT3 a question, and it’ll actually answer you in a way a human would.
AMY KURZWEIL: GPT3 is an algorithm that basically can write about anything, and you give it any question.
Ray Kurzweil: You can also actually give it a sample of a particular person and it will emulate that person. That's a very good example of simulation and, really, an example of what artificial intelligence is trying to achieve.
[Off kilter electronic sounds, as if from a computer running complex calculations, is heard in the background]
AMY KURZWEIL: So, one of the features of the chat bot of Fred Kurzweil's that I've interacted with is that it does not create new language. Something interesting that I've experimented with in my book is myself playing the role of an algorithm that might create new language for Fred based on my deep understanding of how Fred would talk, which, I think, part of the argument of my book is making a bit of an analogy between an artist and an algorithm.
Algorithms play themselves, a billion times, in order to perfect itself. And I think there's a version of that, metaphorically, I'm doing as an artist and writer, that I am going over and over and over things as a way to perfect my understanding of the world and my understanding of myself.
So, to be more specific about that with this book about my grandfather, I am reading his language and then I'm processing in my internal computer, which I don't understand how my brain works, but I'm processing his language.
And then, I'm able to then spit out things he could have said that he didn't actually say, and I'm also able to spit out things he did say because I have all of that recorded and written down. And that is this way in which I'm sort of acting like an algorithm, that I'm thinking about all the possible versions of what he could have said, but I'm also thinking about what it meant, which is not necessarily something that the algorithms are doing yet, but they could, one day, think about meaning.
So, your father is not around to fact check my book about him and he's not around to fact check a potential algorithm that might take liberties with his language. I think about that a lot because, so far, I've only written books that involve characters who can fact check what I share about them, and sometimes have strong opinions about it.
And I try to ethically integrate those strong feelings about their representation. But Fred can't do that. And I'm conscious of that as I'm writing this book, and it's difficult to know what choices to make. I'm curious what your experience is like relating to that chat bot. Does it remind you of your father? Does it feel, sometimes, like it is him or how does it strike you?
RAY KURZWEIL: He didn't actually speak that much, but the dialogues we have do sound like him.
AMY KURZWEIL: I mean, I looked up the definition of simulation just to sort of wrap my mind around all the different things that word means. One of the definitions was imitation for the purpose of study. And I think about writing and creating and making art as this simulation for the purpose of study or for the purpose of insight.
So, you create this new world and you walk around in it or draw around in it, think around in it. Sometimes the world that you create is a reflection of your memory, or it's a reflection of things you think about, or it's fictional. For me, the definition, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is like a little blurry.
But, you enter this world and then you see what's possible within it. And memory I think, functions that way for humans. Memory is both for imagining the future and for recollecting the past. Part of the purpose of memory is to imagine what could have happened.
[The sound of pages turning is heard in the background]
RAY KURZWEIL: But, I mean, art is a way of acting as a simulator because we're trying to recreate something. I mean, if you have a book, it's not just paper. You're actually trying to go beyond the paper to actually create a story that someone who really feels like they're in, and that goes beyond the book itself.
It's the same with music. Music tries to emulate emotion. And if you actually get into the music, you don't just hear sounds. You hear emotion that goes beyond the sounds.
[Off Kilter, binary computer sounds play]
AMY KURZWEIL: Something people might not know about you, dad is that you majored in creative writing in college, and you actually wanted to be a poet at some point in your life, which I love that detail. And it's actually something I learned because I was in this storage unit, looking at documents that you'd saved and found this letter you wrote to your grandfather where you're arguing passionately for your future career as a poet, which you then shifted a little bit and decided to pursue writing and technology.
But I'm just curious what you see as a sort of relationship between writing and the other things that you do. Why were you attracted to poetry? What choice did you make with writing in your life and why?
RAY KURZWEIL: Well, I mean, I did generalize poetry into writing in general, and writing is a way of inventing using the technologies of the future.
AMY KURZWEIL: Yeah, writing as a place to imagine your inventions without having to actually invent them. [Laughs]
RAY KURZWEIL: So, I can create something that will be a possibility 10 years from now, 20, 30 years from now. So, the fiction, I can actually react to the technology and see how it actually impacts our experiences as human beings.
[White noise and glitching sounds from a computer are heard in the background]
AMY KURZWEIL: I think the impulse to save documents and to save items of people that we love is a kind of recreation. A theme that's come up for me as I've been exploring these topics is just really seeing something like a chat bot or an avatar of somebody who's passed away. That feels a lot less strange to me than it used to.
It really feels like an extension of things that we've always done. I have some concerns about it, but it feels more familiar to me the idea that we might do that because it just feels like a natural impulse to save and organize. And we don't typically understand AI well enough to really understand what the sort of ingredients are in recreating voices.
But I think it's safe to say that we also don't really understand arts and writing well enough to always know kind of what the ingredients are that go into a fictional character or a non-fiction character on the page.
RAY KURZWEIL: Some of this stuff really goes to the very essence of what you're writing about. There's a whole different way of creating a personality that they will get what that original personality was like. That didn’t exist a year ago.
[The sound of typing joins the computer noises]
AMY KURZWEIL: Yeah, I think it's coming quickly. The way that people will interact with loved ones who are gone because we didn't have social networks for the previous generation. And, I am going to enter old age and my friends will pass away, and their entire adult lives will be on the internet. And that's a real paradigm shift for what it means to leave the world.
[Typing heard until fade out]
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ORR: I loved Amy’s idea of artists and algorithms being analogous, and how both seek to improve themselves and perfect their understandings of the world.
ORTIZ: Yeah, Art, like fiction and nonfiction, are kinds of simulation. Whether one is working to improve themselves or improve the work, or just simply replicating a narrative – whether it’s imagined or real.
In this next segment, we’re recreating a time, a place – specifically, Vegas. I met the poet, Vi Khi Nao, about two years ago now, when we were interviewing Shearing candidates for our residential fellowship. When we extended the official invitation to Vi to join us here in Vegas, I didn’t know she would be admitted into the hospital a week later. By the time that Vi arrived in Las Vegas a few months after that, she had already started her recovery process from an intensive heart surgery. Part of that healing process was walking, first, really early in the day and then, again, much later, in the evening.
Vegas gets hot [both laugh]. So, those are the only good times to walk and not be miserable [continue laughing]. But Vi, who is a wizard with language, calls this diurnal walking.
ORR: I feel like poetry is a really interesting site to think about simulation.
In this segment, produced by Rachel James with accompanying scoring from Geneva Skeen, poet Vi Khi Nao takes listeners on a meditative sound walk around Vegas. In Vi fashion, it’s poetic, it’s visceral, and it’s completely enmeshed in her lived experience.
ORTIZ: Here’s Vi.
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YOU CAN'T HIDE IN THE DESERT WIND
[Ominous, droning music rises in the background]
VI KHI NAO: I am beginning the walk at 11 am. The intense heat of the afternoon light has not become unbearable yet.
I must put on a hat, like a sombrero to protect my face and my gloves to protect my hands. I don’t even leave my ankle exposed.
[Sound of a person walking and cars passing joins the music]
Now, I’m out the door and I see cars whipping by.
I am passing the casino inside of the grocery store to my right. This casino is always so dark. I don’t know why anyone would want to lose their money or win any money here.
I walk because I want to forget my body.
The heat can change the garment of everything, including the garment of loneliness.
Even if the desert is full of desolation, do you think the heat makes it less lonely? Do you think a very hot day can be an antidote to loneliness? Or is it the opposite?
[Ominous music swells into the sound of coins being put into a slot machine]
~
I’m walking at night now, and the air feels quiet.
[The sound of wind and footsteps is heard in the background]
I walk away from the apartment in my flip flops.
The scorching heat of the day is no longer. I can feel the air between my toes, and they are free to indulge in the Vegas atmosphere.
I am waiting now. The light turns green. I make eye contact with the driver in the car in front of me.
[Vi counting in Vietnamese over ominous music in the background]
I see my shadow projected on the pavement by their headlights.
I hear the beating heartbeat of the walking street sign, like a machine becoming temporarily human.
[Droning, ethereal music swells]
I can see the glowing green sign of a Starbucks to the west, so I switch directions. The streets look emptier now, desolate. I am picking up my pace, though my flip flops are holding me back.
I sit on the Starbucks patio, even though it’s closed.
I can see Trader Joe’s. I can see the gas station. I can see Panda Express.
Then, I can feel a few of my tears have fallen onto my cheek. I just let them fall.
This is the desert after all.
My tears blur the view of the city. I see the microscopic lights flooding the landscape like a gathering of a million fireflies. And even with my blurred vision, I suddenly make out the Starbucks security camera.
I shift my body away from the camera, thinking, “you can’t hide in the desert wind.” This makes Vegas a terrible place to die. It is not like San Francisco where you can bury your body in water, where your soul is quietly tucked away. When you die in Sin City, your body will likely be found right away.
[Sounds of cars passing join music]
I’m on St. Rose now, away from Starbucks, worrying that if my consciousness and my body walk too closely, I might be compelled to let my body fall into traffic, ending my life.
Yet, despite this fear, this fear of the edge, I walk and I walk, away from the danger of that edge. I walk away from that edge which is a very short ledge.
[Sound of someone singing a slow, karaoke-like song in Vietnamese]
Nocturnal walking is a way for me to wake up to sin city.
[Nao’s voice echoes]
Nocturnal walking is a way for me to gamble away my energy.
[Echoes again over the sound of a slot machine and coins]
The ghost of my diurnal self meets the ghost of my nocturnal life - two bodies, one visible and one invisible, crossing and intersecting each other - conversing silently as I walk.
[The sound of footsteps is heard over the droning, ominous music]
I walk alongside the ghost of my former diurnal self.
I walk.
[Music plays to fadeout]
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ORTIZ: Our next segment features BMI Shearing Fellow alum Lisa Ko, who is the author of the The Leavers, which won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and was a National Book Award finalist.
Lisa was one of our first fellows to experience our fellowship in a pandemic-ridden world. I should say one of the first times that we did a Zoom hang, it was an attempt to recreate the karaoke experience.
ORR: My experience of Lisa and the pandemic and music was based around this essay she wrote for The Believer’s website. The essay she wrote was a part a series we were doing,, where writers explore the songs that got them through the lockdown. Lisa wrote this essay about her experience listening to Hall and Oates in her Vegas apartment. Lisa stages this beautiful scene in her essay, which sees her singing Hall and Oates’ “Say It Isn’t So” into a whisk in her kitchen. Just listening actually puts a voice to the scene described.
ORTIZ: One of the Zoom gatherings that Lisa co-organized was this election night Zoom dance party, which was co-created and co-organized with Toisha Tucker, a Bronx-based visual artist. The invitation was very clear. People were not to be poking in on the election results snooping, very much keeping a presence here in this Zoom universe. There would be dancing, and folks were also encouraged to bring their own club ambiance. And we did. We danced our sad, little hearts out [laughs].
ORR: Here are Lisa Ko and Toisha Tucker.
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RECREATING LIFE, BLEAK DAYS, AND COMFORT KARAOKE
TOISHA TUCKER: At the very beginning of the pandemic, one of the first things that you were told was the absolute worst thing you could do was to sing. Singing became this really dangerous thing. It’s hard to think of karaoke, the action of, like, sharing music, sharing songs with other people, with your friends, as being deadly.
[White noise from an unplugged amp is followed by a videogame startup sound and then Tom Petty’s “Free Falling”]
LISA KO: My name is Lisa Ko. I am an amateur, at home and away from home, karaoke enthusiast. I’ve been singing, lately, a lot of Men At Work, “Who Can It Be Now?”
A lot of “This Year” by The Mountain Goats, which has a line that says, “I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me,” which feels very appropriate.
TUCKER: I am Toisha Tucker. I go by Tucker. I wouldn’t even say I’m amateur. I’m just an enthusiast. And sometimes I’m amazing. And sometimes it’s pretty bad.
[Sound of Tucker singing “Free Falling]
So, normally the karaoke that I do is you can rent private rooms here in New York city. So, you’re not at a bar, you’re just with your friends in a dark stuffy room. In a pandemic, you wanted to recreate that cause it’s like, who doesn’t want to hang out in a space and sing with their friends, but it was also one of the things that you were told, and we were all warned against, was singing.
KO: On a platform like Zoom, the sound doesn’t really sync up with karaoke, which is what I found. I was thinking about how, in the very early days of the pandemic, when we all felt like it was going to be a matter of weeks maybe, but, also, I deeply felt like the world was about to end, and I was terrified. And I remember how, in those early weeks, there was a really big rush of ways to recreate normal life.
Cause we were still used to seeing friends and going out on a regular basis.
And I organized a few karaoke nights with one or two other people trying to figure out how to do the sound.
[Videogame sound is followed by a floor tom being beat into an upbeat karaoke backtrack]
TUCKER: So, Lisa is like a star and figured out how you can actually Zoom karaoke because you can’t just be like, “I’m going to Zoom with my friends.” It’s horrible.
KO: I found that what’s interesting about doing a lot of YouTube karaoke recently is because any song is available, because I don’t have to necessarily share a room, and we’re not renting by the hour, it’s pushed me to sing a lot of random stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily sing.
And so, I found myself doing a lot of comfort karaoke, a lot of heavy nostalgia songs from my childhood, to really very esoteric things that I would not normally think of singing.
TUCKER: When you’re left to your own devices to do karaoke, it’s weird because you’re not building that exquisite corpse, right? A list of songs where Lisa goes, and I’m like, “oh, that reminds me of that era!” And then I go, and then that reminds someone else of this other thing, and you—
KO: But then there’s this sense of sadness, which is why it’s great that we can do this, but also why are we doing this? We’re doing this because things are collapsing [laughs] outside our apartments, and that’s really terrible, right? So, this feeling of trying to sing through the tears or sing with the tears, which, to me, is the joy of karaoke in the first place.
[Karaoke backtrack for “This Year” by The Mountain Goats plays in the background]
TUCKER: I found that you can’t have everyone’s mic on because then you’re getting all this feedback and echoing, and part of what’s lovely for me about karaoke is that bad voices still harmonize.
If we can all sing it, it works out. And if I’m just singing, and you guys are all on mute, then I also don’t feel your energy. There’s nothing happening. And I’m like, “is this bad? Am I bombing?”
KO: I feel like there was a point in which it felt sad. Even though there were times that I really enjoyed doing things like virtual dance parties and virtual karaoke, but there was definitely a point, maybe in the early winter, when things felt pretty bleak, I think, all around. It felt like I was trying to pretend to keep my energy up in a certain way that I wasn’t actually feeling.
That gap between the performance and the reality felt like a lot. Even though you’re doing it on Zoom, you’re only hearing your own voice, and it’s in a crappy way because the reception is really bad.
TUCKER: There wasn’t even the, “oh, I’m gonna run outside with you and go down the street and get some fries,” or whatever from this place. You start talking to people around you. You can’t do that on Zoom. I can’t have a side convo with Lisa while somebody else is singing.
[In a comical voice] “Guys, we’re going to a break-out room, we’ll be back!”
[Ko laughs]
KO: You can DM me in a private chat. [Laughs]
TUCKER: One of my favorite parts of karaoke is when you have to, eventually, go to the bathroom, and you’re walking down the hall and you’re just hearing the sound coming out of all these other rooms. And you’re like, “is that what it sounds like from our room too?”
I think what I’ve learned is it’s not an experience you can replicate.
KO: Yeah, it just felt like a poor substitution.
It felt even lonelier than maybe doing it alone or with my partner in our apartment.
[Karaoke backtrack of “Hallway Moment” by Mountain Goats plays in the background]
I think also, because the weather is getting warmer, and people are getting vaccinated, I’ve been able to see friends in person. So, it feels less necessary. One of the things I’ve really missed is just having those accidental run-ins with people.
I do miss that casual nature of running into your friends’ friends who you sort of know, but you don’t know well enough to really hang out with one-on-one in a pandemic.
I imagine renting a big room and then just having people come in and out. Seeing some people that I haven’t seen for a long time.
That idea of a big, collective space where people can come in and then leave when they’re ready, and some people stay the whole time. To me, one of the most important things is that we get to go out to eat afterwards, it’s late at night, and we can get Korean food somewhere in K-Town and have a big, communal meal of barbecue and noodles.
[Laughs]
Yeah, so that’s my vision.
[KO singing “I’m Going to Make It Through This Year If It Kills Me”]
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ORTIZ: To close out this episode, we’ve invited Elena Passarello, an Oregon-based writer and performer, to share an audio essay with us. Niela, I believe you’ve worked with Elena, haven’t you?
ORR: Yes! I interviewed her a few years ago for The Organist, The Believer’s sister podcast at the time. I talked to Elena about her books, Let Me Clear My Throat, a series of essays about the human voice, and Animals Strike Curious Poses, which is a collection of sparkling, scintillating essays on animals. I have gained so much from Elena’s writing over the years.
She is just so good at everything. She’s a good actor. She’s a good writer. She’s really funny online.
ORTIZ: Yeah, she’s so bright.
If you know Elena, you might know that she thinks deeply about Elvis Presley – insomuch that she’s working on a book about him. This next essay, which is also somehow about puppets and Elvis tribute artists, really touches on how both people and puppets are vessels for our imaginations.
ORR: Yes, absolutely. This essay is also a bit about loneliness and facsimile, and what you do when your projects take on lives of their own.
ORTIZ: With musical covers from Arthur Moon and Tyler Tingey, up next is Elena Passarello in an essay we’ve titled “Wooden Heart.”
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WOODEN HEART
ELENA PASSARELLO: If you’re like me, when you feel sad or overwhelmed or isolated, there are a few categories of videos that you like to search for online and watch until you feel a little bit better. Here are three of mine: classic movie musical numbers, Andy Kaufman’s Elvis impersonations, and most of all, kids having intense conversations with puppets.
You can find entire Youtube playlists of the children of the 1970s and 80s—kids like I was—staring deep into the eyes of an old school Sesame Street character, as if the kid and the puppet were the only two living creatures in the whole TV studio.
[Archival audio of Herry asking John-John if they want to count]
One of my favorite videos is this Sesame Street clip from 1974 of a 3-year-old named John-John, who counts to twenty with Herry, the Blue Monster.
[John-John asserts that he wants to count first, and Herry encourages him]
And when the little boy loses track of his numbers, he searches his scene partner’s inanimate face and really, deliberately asks Herry “hey, do you know what comes after fifteen?”
[Herry: After fifteen comes….
John-John: uhhh
Herry: Sixteen!
Unintelligible noises of childish excitement]
It’s John-John’s total engagement that gets me. He seems to witness something in the puppet that resembles his own little heart, his own unadulterated magic. It’s his trust that makes the puppet all the more real to me.
Performance scholars and child psychologists alike have noted the ways puppets disarm children. One detail I’ve read time and again is that even crudely designed puppets—socks with googly eyes, for example—still inspire children to endow the puppets full humanity and to tell them all their secrets. Sometimes, experts say the less a puppet looks like an actual creature, the better.
[Counting between the two continues until Herry exclaims, “is that you all grown up John-John?!” John-John confirms.]
When I was growing up in the 80s in South Carolina, I had this terrifying first-grade teacher named Miz Rakestraw, and she showed her softer side via a troupe of puppets that she employed to various ends in her classroom. There was Word Bird, who taught us vocabulary; Inchworm, who had something to do with counting; and then there was Lamby, a sleepy baby sheep to whom we could talk about our feelings on bad days. And I have the clearest memory still staring into Lamby’s face and whispering my confessions. That’s got to be at least one reason why watching John-John count with Herry Monster soothes me so.
[Cover of “Love Me Tender” by Tyler Tingey plays. A slow song reminiscent of a scene on a tropical island, played on steel pedal]
I was certainly visiting my stash of feel-good YouTube puppet videos about this time last year when the pandemic had begun shutting down our world. While I’m so grateful to have been spared any severe hardships, my latest writing project was supposed to involve lots of time-sensitive travel, and so it absolutely tanked when things got locked down. The first among a dozen flights I had to cancel was a red-eye to the Georgia coast on the Ides of March, where I’d bought a non-refundable ticket to an Elvis Presley festival. This trip was supposed to be the next in a line of Elvis-related public events that I had planned to attend in 2020, because I was researching Presley’s legend in the exact year that the icon had been dead longer than he was alive.
Most people agree that the real Elvis hasn’t walked this Earth since that August night in 1977 when he played a few games of racquetball then changed into his gold pajamas and retired to his spacious Graceland bathroom “to read.”
But the opportunities to simulate Elvis as a living part of this planet are still, literally, countless, 42 years after his death.
I was never alive the same time as Elvis—he died six months before I was born—but thanks to these myriad opportunities to visit some relic or reconstruction of the King, he’s never felt quite dead to me.
Replications, emulations, and other forms of counterfeit are actually the only Elvis I’ve ever gotten to know in real time.
[Cover of “Wooden Heart” by Arthur Moon plays in the background, an upbeat, groovy song]
In the months before lockdown, I had spent the night in Elvis’s teenage bedroom. I’d philosophized about death with a Tupelo security guard in the shotgun house where Presley was born, and I even married my sweetheart in a Las Vegas ceremony that was conducted by the same wigged and jump-suited Elvis minister that officiated Jon Bon Jovi’s wedding.
But more than anything, for this project, I’d been travelling to festivals and competitions, to watch dozens—I mean at this point, it’s more like hundreds—of Elvis impersonators.
Although the first rule of the faux Elvis world is to never use that word— “impersonator”—their preferred moniker is “Elvis Tribute Artist,” or “ETA.”
Any ETA you meet will stress that they have no aims to actually become Presley, only to adopt his unmistakable baritone and strike his signature poses while wearing perfect replicas of his classic outfits, sideburns and all. They see themselves just as entertainers who slip into the iconic image and work the gears of the Elvis legend from inside.
In movies and TV shows, impersonating Elvis is often depicted as chintzy or slapdash, a backyard thing, but don’t knock the art form until you’ve seen one of the real pros strut his stuff. Vocally deft, limber, clad in thousands of dollars of costuming, professional ETAs perform internationally on cruise ships, in TV commercials, and at lavish venues from Vegas to Branson to Graceland itself.
Only the very best Elvi on the planet qualify for a contest called “The Ultimate ETA,” a contest which is held just across Elvis Presley Boulevard from the King’s famous mansion.
Every summer—well it was cancelled in 2020 of course—you can watch Ultimate Elvises from Brazil, Japan, the UK, and Australia out-gyrate one another for a 5-figure purse. Each of these men (they’re always men) chisels his repertoire from Elvis’s 600-plus song discography. They focus on just one of the many versions of Elvis known to his most loyal fans: Gospel Elvis, Vegas Elvis, Rockabilly Elvis.
Younger ETAs with higher vocal ranges might step inside the gold lame jacket and wet pompadour of 1950’s Elvis. They must teach their bodies to pinwheel kick around the stage, and to let their hips work the same scandalous circles that banned the original Elvis’s lower half from Ed Sullivan.
A bad-boy, thirty-something ETA in good shape might master the 1968 NBC Comeback special Elvis, which requires a lot of lunging around in black leather and mimicking the roster of moves Elvis performed in his famous TV concert.
But, by far, most ETAs choose to don spangly bellbottomed jumpsuits—oh my god, those jumpsuits—and pay tribute to the 1970s concert version of Elvis, with his karate kicks, mutton chops, and vigorous froog-ing. When a world-class Elvis in white gabardine and rhinestones takes the stage to the opening bassline of “Polk Salad Annie”—a staple song on latter-day Elvis setlists—today’s audience members still know the bucking windmill arm motions and the shoulder shimmies of that performance by heart, and they often bust the exact same moves out right alongside the performer onstage.
[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]
Usually when people talk about Elvis as a puppet, it’s in reference to his relationship with Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, who some saw as a Svengali that kept Elvis locked in oppressive movie contracts and short-sighted royalty deals. But I see another puppetry in this decades-long remembrance of Elvis.
One reason for his cultural longevity, I think, is that Elvis is easy to make a puppet out of. For one thing, his image is ripe for caricature—it can be painted by lots of bodies in broad strokes, with a structured dark wig, a figure-obscuring rhinestoned white onesie, and two triangular sideburns.
And even offstage, fans have puppeted Elvis’s sweeping story to reflect the contents of their own hearts. Just as ETAs choose an era of songs to depict, fans can select an Elvis persona to celebrate. Because both his music and his biography are so varied—they’ve got high notes and low ones, moments of mastery and buffoonery—a fan can stare deeply into the face of this legend and see only what they want to: the polite mama’s boy or the man of God. or the soldier. Or the diva, or the lonely maximalist whose appetites outpaced him.
[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]
Of all the eras depicted by ETAs, one is decidedly underrepresented, and that is Movie Elvis. Only a few of his 31 films—yes, you heard me right; Elvis made thirty-one films—seem to have stuck with fans, despite the fact that his acting work spanned the majority of his twenty-three year career. A few early flicks are pretty good, like King Creole or Jailhouse Rock, but, as the 1960s wore on, Elvis movie plots grew formulaic to the point of being interchangeable. As Girls! Girls! Girls! bled into Girl Happy, and Speedway became Spinout, Elvis phoned in his performances more and more, often with a faraway look in his eyes.
In scenes, he sometimes seemed to be orbiting his co-stars rather than interacting with them. By his eighteenth movie, Tickle Me (in which he plays an out-of-work rodeo rider moonlighting at a weight loss camp), Elvis was doing a sleepy onscreen impersonation of himself.
[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]
I clocked only a few movie tunes during these home shows: “A Little Less Conversation,” or “Bossanova Baby,” maybe “Clean Up Your Own Backyard,” but I was hoping for some of the forgotten Elvis movie stinkers, like “Do the Clam” or “There’s No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car.”
[Audio of Elvis’ song “There's No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car,” which sounds like a song that would be heard at an outdoor bar in Hawaii, plays]
Most ETA livestreams stuck to the hits, though. One noticeable development was how rarely the ETAs got into full Elvis drag. On the livestreams, we saw each guy’s real hairline and, sometimes, their kitchen décor. We even saw them in blue jeans, which was purportedly Elvis’s least favorite attire.
I can’t help but marvel at the fact that, for the first time in my life, the pandemic levelled the playing field between the real Elvis and his thousands of tributaries. My whole life, I only accessed the original Elvis Presley via a screen, in a book, or on a recording. But suddenly, the 21st century, simulated Elvises that I had seen all over the planet were faced with the same limitations. And the leveling doesn’t stop there, I suppose. We all became Elvis for a time: existing mostly on grainy Zoom videos, filmed just from the waist up.
And I’m sorry to say that limiting all my social interactions to these virtual spaces was much easier than I’d like to admit. The pandemic unwittingly turned my friends, family, and colleagues into somewhat simpler versions of the complex humans I know them to be. My community of three-dimensional figures flattened into eyes, noses and mouths traveling in pixels toward me. So, I guess, in that way, we all became puppets, too.
Around Labor Day last year, I was stuck inside even more than usual, thanks to terrible Oregon wildfires that spiked air quality ratings beyond “hazardous” and all but blotted out the sun. We were ordered to stay home and limit resource use, so, I decided to use the housebound time not to watch more ETA livestreams, but mainlining the real deal. Because I am both an extremist and an escapist, I watched all thirty-one Elvis films pretty much back-to-back over four bleary days, which is an activity I wholeheartedly do not recommend. But still, this became the longest elapsed time I’d ever spent with the moving image of Elvis, in all my years of researching his legacy.
And there were several moments in his movie catalogue I knew to watch out for, like his chemistry with Anne Margaret in Viva Las Vegas, or his tiny white shorts in Blue Hawaii. I was really excited to see his famously disturbing duet about yoga with Elsa Lancaster, the actress who played the original Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, which, by the way, was the same year that Elvis was born.
But around the twelve-hour mark of the first day, I discovered a musical number that I’d never heard about before, and it straight up knocked me out. Buried in a low-stakes moment of Presley’s fifth film, GI Blues, is one of the most breathtaking Elvis performances I have ever seen—it’s right up there with Ed Sullivan and the That’s the Way It Is.
[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart,” which has Elvis singing in a goofy, crooning voice over Italian-esque music, plays in the background.]
The song is called “Wooden Heart,” and it’s another anodyne Elvis movie ballad, but is unique because it’s the only one that Elvis sings while staring into the button eyes of a puppet.
In the movie, GI Elvis is strolling around Frankfurt, Germany with his human love interest, and for some reason, he crashes an outdoor Punch and Judy-esque puppet show. His stage partner is a Fraulein hand puppet in a dirndl skirt and winking eyes. As a kindergarten class watches them, the decidedly randy doll chases Elvis around the proscenium. In that confined space, Elvis masterfully executes a sequence of comic beats.
[A syncopated, electronic version of “Wooden Heart” plays in the background]
He beckons to the puppet like Patrick Swayze. He holds her wooden hand and bops from stage left to right. At one point, she whirls to advance on him, and he takes the energy that she throws into his own body and lets it propel his shoulders backward. Then the Fraulein’s puppet father enters with a long stick, ending the number by hitting Elvis in a series of smacks, which Elvis telegraphs with clownish accuracy—bonk, bonk, bonk—inching downward until his chin rests on the stage, his eyes crossed, and all die kinder in stitches.
This is great bit-work, and he’s selling it, man. He’s quick in his body; he’s very funny. Sinatra was never so sharp in any of his musical films. A lot of people hate GI Blues because it’s a film utterly devoid of Elvis’s Rock and Roll chops, and sure, this performance didn’t start a cultural movement like “Mystery Train” did, but it’s so alive.
It’s also a kind of steamy number, thanks to the intensity of Elvis’ gaze at the puppet, the soft approach of his lips when he kisses her hand. I can’t help but note that, to my eyes at least, Elvis is so much more fluid with her than with any human co-star from his other films.
Watching “Wooden Heart” again today, I still get the sense that Elvis totally believes in his co-star—no visible part of him acknowledges the hand up her skirt. They’re just two performers, both of them vessels for other people’s imaginations, working against what they originally represented, but still making a crowd of people smile.
Certain artists are just like that, I guess. Sometimes I think I’m better with puppets, too. After all, what is writing if not staying away from humans in order to interact with their facsimiles?
[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart” plays in the background]
If I were an ETA, this is the number that I’d select; this would be my tribute: not “Hound Dog,” or “Heartbreak Hotel,” or even “Hunka Hunka Burning Love.” I want to simulate the moment in which Elvis put all of his trust in a puppet. My costume would be a replica of this Army blouse and a high and tight wig, no sideburns. I’m sure ETA fans would raise their eyebrows when they watched me lug a puppet theater up onto the stage of the Ultimate ETA’s Final round. The crude puppet over my right hand wouldn’t be a blond Fraulein, but a puppet version of me in my Sesame Street days: a freckled Punky Brewster look-alike in pigtails, an only child more comfortable with dolls than other people.
The wooden little girl would follow my ETA body around the stage, watching me for cues as I sang, fascinated by the melody coming from my mouth. She would bop along as I crooned the lyrics in the closest thing to Elvis’s warbly baritone that I could muster, and I would make sure to gaze at that puppet reassuringly, to let it nestle onto my shoulder and hold her hand.
“Treat me nice,” we would sing. “Treat me good, ‘cause I am not made of wood, and I don’t have a wooden heart.”
[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart” plays to fade-out]
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ORTIZ: Niela! This episode wraps season one of Black Mountain Radio!
ORR: I’m so happy. I’m so happy for everyone who worked on the season. I have really enjoyed listening to the work of so many different collaborators and people, very smart, creative people. From our staff, to our contributors, it’s truly an achievement.
ORTIZ: Ah, thanks Niela. I was going to try and not to cry over here [laughs]. But it’s been a labor of love for sure. And, for listeners, I definitely want to mention that we will be back with a season 2 in September, so please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and share it with the people that you love. Another thing, please pitch us, or give us your thoughts. We're definitely open to many varieties of work: conversations, original reporting, voice-driven audio essays, interviews, criticism, collage and the stuff that's not easy to classify. Definitely don’t be shy. Connect with us by visiting blackmountainradio.org
Black Mountain Radio is broadcast from Southern Paiute land.
ORR: Black Mountain Radio is an audio project of the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute. Sara Ortiz is the architect and host.
ORTIZ: And today’s fantastic guest host is my dear friend and colleague, Niela Orr.
ORR: This fantastic steel pedal cover of “Love Me Tender” was performed by Tyler Tingey.
ORTIZ: Our senior producer is Nicole Kelly. Vera Blossom and Layla Muhammad are our fantastic associate producers. Scott Dickenshetts is our editor. Anthony Farris is our production assistant. Fil Corbitt is our sound mixer. Our theme song is by Jeremy Klewicki. Art by Jesse Zhang; graphic design by Lille Allen; copy editing by Summer Thomad and a special shoutout to our KUNV engineer Kevin Krall.
ORR: Special thanks to our contributors in this episode: Rachel James, Lisa Ko, Amy Kurzweil, Ray Kurzweil, Arthur Moon, Vi Khi Nao, Elena Passarello, Geneva Skeen, and Toisha Tucker.
ORTIZ: Thanks to the rest of the team at the Black Mountain Institute: Kellen Braddock, Daniel Gumbiner, Haley Patail, Kristen Radtke, Michael Ursell, and Haya Wang.
ORTIZ: Black Mountain Radio is supported by the Rogers Foundation and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Big thanks to our sponsors at Zappos who helped make this episode possible and who contribute to Las Vegas’s creative communities.
ORTIZ: Our deep gratitude goes to Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting Black Mountain Radio. Thank you so much for listening.
ORR: Thank you, Sara.
ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Niela!