Monday, June 14, 2010

Zeroboy's tribute to David Nolan


Ever since we began broadcasting Radio Bloomsday live from the WBAI studios on Wall Street, David Nolan was our technical director. When all of the other actors had gone home and I was deep into my Molly monologue, wondering if anyone in the world was listening, David's face was the only one I would see as he came in to check my mike and the sound levels. He was the physical representation of our invisible audience listening to the show at their computers or beside their radios across the country and the world.

David was a radio host, a sound archivist, an engineer and completely irreplaceable among many other things. He was a founding host of Morning Dew, a Grateful Dead tribute program. A long time East Village resident, David died suddenly of a heart attack this past February.

His friend for two decades, fellow artist and resident of the East Village, the vocal acrobat Zeroboy (below) has recorded a tribute to David that we will be broadcasting during Radio Bloomsday this Wednesday evening, June 16th.
In Ulysses, Bloom's day begins with attending Paddy Dignam's funeral, a friend who died suddenly of a heart attack. Zeroboy plays Bloom at the funeral wondering about the thin veil between life and death. Zeroboy's tribute to David is a soundscape of Joycecean word play created specifically for radio and include's Zeroboy's signature self created sound effects throughout the piece. Our audio engineer Bob Auld did fantastic work layering Zeroboy's sound effects behind his interpretation of Joyce's text. The result is a noir Zombie take on Ulysses, the first of its kind and a fitting tribute to a sound artist like David.

It will be played during the 8pm hour as part of our symphony of Blooms as actors such as Jerry Stiller, Paul Dooley, James Kennedy, Bob Odenkirk, T. Ryder Smith, Jim Fletcher and Aaron Beall perform the inner monologues of Leopold Bloom.

Bloom's thoughts on life and death from the Hades episode of Ulysses: "You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say gives you second wind. New lease of life. Poor Dignam!

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