Piece Comment

Review of Here There is No Moon (European version 32:28)


Here There Is No Moon follows more the structure of a piece of music than a documentary. Listeners do learn facts along the way, but they are brought along a not-necessarily-linear path through the different aspects of suicide: hearing from the ones who attempted it, the people who study it, the counselors who help prevent it, the police, the writers who try to put it into words And it works. Mostly. There are some intense moments: the juxtaposition of a calm reading (fiction?) about suicide with a loud, desperate 911 call; a layering of readings of suicide notes that all sound eerily similar. But the problem with a non-narrated, layered type of production like this one is that it needs memorable voices for a listener to latch onto. I felt as though there were too many characters/voices in this piece for me to keep track of, and I ended up not caring as much about some of them as I could have. Also, I was craving a bit of silence behind some of the interviews. The emotional content of what they were saying was not as strong with a musical background. But overall, this piece conveys the important message that suicide, though strange and scary, is something that is studied, written about and treated, and can be a transformative event in someone’s life. And many suicidal experiences are similar, even though the person feels like the last person on earth.