A still from an online clip of Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild (1991) incorporated into Masha Tupitsyn's Love Dog (2013), a transmedia publishing project

Rebekah Weikel founded Penny-Ante Editions, a Los Angeles-based publisher of literary works by artists, writers, and musicians. This post is part of Wavelength, a series of guest curated sound art and music mixes. 

Masha Tupitsyn's Love Dog, which we commissioned at Penny-Ante Editions, was originally published as a series of posts on Tumblr from November 2011 to December 2012. In its online form, Love Dog married diaristic and critical writing while incorporating wide-ranging samples (music, recorded interviews, photographs, films, and texts) as expressions of authorial intent. The project explores "love" and (the) "loss" (of): grief as it unfolds, narrated diaristically.

As Masha told make/shift in 2013:

I met someone, it rattled me to the core, and I felt called upon to write about it in some roundabout, uncategorizable way that would still examine all the other social, political, and philosophical issues that I have always been concerned with. Tumblr allowed me to write the kind of interactive, associative, experimental, and discursive criticism that I have always wanted to write and that directly responds to the digital structure that now informs and organizes our lives.

Though written linearly, the result veers backward and forward through time, realizing its present and future through careful association, memory, and nostalgia.

In 2013, Love Dog was published as a book. Our aim for a print adaptation of the work was to experiment with digital time and form(s); to see if a printed object could encapsulate and extend the immersive qualities of a multi-sensory, multi-media online work. We did this in part by releasing the book in conjunction with other accompaniments, including playlists.

This audio piece was mixed in September 2013 between a Fostex Multitracker X-12 four-track and Wavepad. The music, dialogue, and film used in it have a direct relationship to the ideas and themes of the book. Seventeen of the tracks featured are taken directly from the book's playlist and are noted with an asterisk. Below, I've included a few liner notes: reflections, citations, and links.

INTRODUCTION

References:
-Masha Tupitsyn: "What is coming sounds like this." (Love Dog, p146)
-Masha Tupitsyn: "In real life, people can see something happen between two people and say, 'It's nothing.' In a movie that 'nothing becomes an entire movie." (p152)

Tracks:
0:00 Masha Tupitsyn reads "Love Dog" from Love Dog (Nov 22, 2013)
2:04 Peter Downsbrough "Taken Down" (1979)
3:06 Director John Cassavetes on filmmaking*
4:48 The Chromatics "Tick of The Clock" (2007)*
5:05 Tangerine Dream "Love on a Real Train" (Music from the motion picture Risky Business, 1983)*
5:42 Masha Tupitsyn reads "Saudade" from Love Dog

SOUL, START TO FINISH

References:
-Masha Tupitsyn: "I met someone, it rattled me to the core." (make/shift)
-The Music of Chance: "We had everything in harmony... everything was turning into music for us and you go upstairs and smash all the instruments." (p220)

Tracks:
7:13 Excerpts from Pretty in Pink (1986), director: Howard Deutch*
7:26 The Persians "Gee, What A Girl" (1968)
9:37 The Chiffons "He's So Fine" (1963)*
10:32 Excerpt from Stardust Memories (1980), director: Woody Allen*
11:32 Bobby Peterson "Irresistible You" (1960)
14:14 Excerpt from Sleepless in Seattle (1993), director: Nora Ephron*
14:47 Jean Wells "Have a Little Mercy" (1968)
17:17 George Jackson "How Can I Get Next To You" (1974)
20:36 Eddy Gilles "Losin' Boy" (1966)
23:36 Mixed excerpt from JAWS (1975), director: Steven Spielberg
24:46 John Williams "End Theme" (Music from the motion picture JAWS, 1975)*
24:46 Masha Tupitsyn reads "End Theme" from Love Dog

START: LOSS/START: TIME

References:
-Culture Club: "Time won’t give me time." (p79)
-Masha Tupitsyn: "The Hanged Man is about suspension. Time is suspended, left hanging. When you are in The Hanged Man space, you stay still rather than move – act. You do nothing." (p50)

Tracks:
27:09 Kate Bush "Oh to Be in Love" (1978)*
30:20 Polyrock "Romantic Me" (1980)
33:25 The Clash "Long Time Jerk" (1982)*
36:15 Bill Nelson "Eros Arriving" (1982)
39:47 The Times "Blue Fire" (1984)

IN SILENCE

References:
-This clip from Godard's Scénario du film Passion is not in the book. Masha sent me this in an email (and followed with an entry on Tumblr) sometime after the book was completed. We were emailing, discussing our mothers. I lost mine in 2010. Masha emailed, "When you write about your mom and losing her, it makes my heart ache. I can't imagine." For once, I couldn't agree. Masha could imagine, which is what made her heart ache. Godard: "You can invent the sea for your white beach. Like a mother, she waits. You are her child. You can return to her arms. You can tell her everything."
-In Part II of Love Dog, we hear from Masha while in Greece. She had posted a photo of a blue blow-up raft floating in the ocean that belonged to her. Though this image didn’t make its way into the book, it’s one that's sat with me. There was something serene about it, but also sad. Lonely. "Speak To Me" is a track with a certain fluidity to it, a backward and forward sway. A floating, felt.
-Masha Tupitsyn: "My ears have been hearing things, things which aren’t even words, or messages, while my eyes, along with everyone else's, are forever telling me that nothing is there. That nothing is happening. It is the difference between inward and outward. Between me and everyone else." (p66)

Tracks:
42:57 Music from the motion picture La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928), director: Carl Theodor Dreyer*
43:55 Masha Tupitsyn reads "Mourning After" from Love Dog
45:26 Moose "Speak To Me" (1991)
48:04 Mickeranno "D.D." (1985)
50:46 Self-recording
51:06 Excerpt from Scénario du film Passion (1982), director: Jean-Luc Godard
52:33 Laurie Anderson "O Superman" (1981)*
1:01 Excerpt from Faces (1968), director: John Cassavetes*

WAKE-UP!

References:
-Sink or swim
-The Smiths: "What a terrible mess I've made of my life." (p178)
-James Baldwin: "If you don’t do your work, you really are useless." (p148)

Tracks:
1:01:21 Umberto "Night Fantasy" (2013)
1:06:14 Makis Prekkas "That's the Way Out" (1985)

AWAKE

References:
-Hit 'Restart'
-Masha Tupitsyn: "Blue, water blue, is one way to get your energy back. To survive being alone." (p173)
-Derek Jarman: "In the pandemonium of image, I present you with the universal Blue." (p178)
-This section includes "Reunion" read by Masha, an essay which appears toward the beginning of the book. I chose to place it toward the end of this mix given its prophetic nature: "Work is destiny; destinal."
-I think about the death of my parent(s) and if I would have been drawn to this project in the way I was if they were still alive.
-The song "Crossing" echoes the period of five months it took to produce the book after Masha completed her last entry: Endless email threads, many late nights/early mornings. Love Dog was put to page collaboratively, obsessively, entirely through email exchanges.

Tracks:
1:09:42 From the film Blue (1993), director: Derek Jarman*
1:14:55 Jean-Paul Sartre Experience "Transatlantic Love Song" (1986)
1:18:06 Conrad Schnitzler "Ballet Static" (1978)
1:18:20 Masha Tupitsyn reads "Reunion" from Love Dog
1:20:47 Midori Takada "Crossing" (1983)

IN THE END IS THE BEGINNING

References:
-Love Dog is wrapped, completed May 8, 2013
-A book trailer is made on June 24, 2013
-Roll credits. "Make Love" (cyclical).
-Masha Tupitsyn: "'Make Love' has a mezzo beginning, which means it comes from the middle, from something that is already there." (p182)
- Avital Ronell: "A call comes from within you and beyond you. A call is ontological and rooted in being. Your being is being called." (p260)

Tracks:
1:25:05 From the motion picture One From the Heart (Trailer, 1982), director: Francis Ford Coppola*
1:27:50 Gullivers People "Splendour in the Grass" (from Dream Babes, Vol. 2: Reflections CD comp, 2011)
1:30:06 Daft Punk "Make Love" (2005)*
1:33:43 Excerpt from the documentary James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (American Masters, 1989)*