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Excerpt from Chapter 10
Great Themes in Fantasy Art from the Frank Collection, Paper Tiger 2003:
"I was sculpting one very rainy Tuesday afternnoon in our huge old echo-y
house in Southern Georgia. I was working on what was intended to be a music box, complete
with dancer on top. Prokofiev's Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 44 was playing. I'd turned the
volume up, intrigued by the play of the lightning and thunderclaps outside with the music. The
rain was becoming one of those ear-splitting, window-rattling stoms so prevalent in spring, so rich
for the imagination.
The symphony represents 'the terrible whirlwind fanning the flames' as
16-year-old Renate, obsessed with her visions of angels, is executed by burning at the stake.
About ten minutes into the first movement the music beings a single slow, halting, clattering,
almost painful climb up the steep hill to a long agonizing pause that suddenly plunges down,
headlong, wind-roaring, wheels clattering into rich, sensual, gypsy-like syncopation. It is the
first hill of the rollercoaster, the relief of submitting to gravity not quite soothing the terror of
falling. It is perfect.
Once I made that leap from symphony to rollercoaster, the whole carnival
was just there, as though it had been there forever. I was a bumpkin kid peeking through the
fence seeing things most humans weren't meant to. I sat quietly for the rest of the symphony,
then for the rest of the storm. I started the recording again, made a pot of coffee and the
music box became Don't Ask Jack. "
---Lisa
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