Jason Kahn
"Infinity Suite"
(2020)
Editions 010
book+cd

15x14 cm
60 pages
CD duration 18.06
ISBN 978-3-033-07500-9

Excerpt from the accompanying CD:

Composed March-August, 2019 in Zürich.
Source recordings made February 19-24, 2019 in Varanasi.

Physical copies sold out.

Digital copies can be purchased through Bandcamp:
https://jasonkahn.bandcamp.com/album/infinity-suite-2

From the introduction:
In common parlance the term Infinity Suite refers to a luxury hotel apartment comprised of several adjoining rooms. But my usage of the term here invokes the notion of infinite realities as resonating through dream and memory. An interconnected suite of spaces populated with vivid sounds and images spanning across periods of one’s life. My experience here focuses on the Indian city of Varanasi, but this sense of reality drifting I found there could’ve taken place anywhere. I focused on Varanasi because I’d been there three times over the span of twenty-four years. And while the very nature of the city, with all its holy sites, pilgrims and seekers of all varieties, lends itself to this sense of different realities blending and distorting. For me a kind of sensorial time warp.

From the main text:
The most banal sounds of the backstreets often prove to be the most fascinating. Kids reciting lessons together in their classroom, soft voices raining down from hidden places above. Music everywhere. From the radio in a store, in a small temple, someone singing as they sweep their doorstep. And the birds, cows, dogs, cats, an occasional monkey and even a goat. The creak of an old wooden cart straining under its load of empty aluminum milk cans, rattling and shaking to wake the dead. A racket of chanting and drums trailing loudly behind as a corpse takes its last journey to the fires of the cremation ghats smoking away down by the river. Where all is quiet again, aside from the crackle and pop of wood burning and the occasional motorboat creeping slowly across the Ganges like a mechanical water bug.

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