Mark Twain's childhood is brought back to life with the sounds of… A limpid brook which sang along over its gravelly bed and yonder in the deep shade of overhanging foliage and vines... Mark Twain. Light Out for the Territory is a companion portrait.

(Continued from album notes to Light Out for the Territory.)

My experiences in 1990 encouraged me to study the life of Mark Twain more closely, eventually spending two years traveling to the original locations of his childhood and recorded as many sounds as possible before the growing epidemic of noise pollution made this task impossible.

I traveled up and down the Mississippi Valley from Lake Itasca to the Gulf reading and recording, trying to piece together the soundscape of the mid-1800's.

I was surprised to learn that much of Twain's childhood experience was someplace other than the Mississippi River. When Mark Twain was a young boy he spent his summer months on his uncle's farm outside the town of Florida, Missouri, away from the River. He describes this place affectionately in his autobiography.

Down a piece, abreast the house, stood a little log cabin against the rail fence; and there the woody hill fell sharply away, past the barns, the corn-crib, the stables and the tobacco-curing house, to a limpid brook which sang along over its gravelly bed and curved and frisked in and out and here an there and yonder in the deep shade of overhanging foliage and vines-a divine place for wading, and it had swimming pools, too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit. (Chapter 2, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Edited by Charles Neider, first published in 1917)

It was here, in one of the swimming pools fed by the limpid brook, that young Twain drowned and was then fortunately rescued and brought back to life by Uncle Dan'l, one of his Uncle's farm slaves. This near-death experience contributed towards Twain's lifelong belief in the supernatural, something that he writes about in his autobiography. Because of Twain's mutual interest in sound and the supernatural, I choose the setting of his near death experience as a place of high importance--I simply had to record the Limpid Brook.

This proved a hugely naïve and ambitious project for several reasons. First, the location of John A. Quarles farm was unknown, not identified on any map or in any Marion County records that I could locate.

After doing the research, it finally all came down to going door-to-door, knocking on stranger's homes in the general vicinity of Florida, Missouri. One by one I was turned away with curious stares until I met [name withheld for privacy], who pointed out from his front porch to the opposite hillside, "It's all but gone. The foundation is still there though, and you can see where all the rooms were." He knew the history of the place well. We walked across a barren and rocky dip that was all that remained of the swimming pools and the limpid brook. The deep shade of overhanging foliage and vines had long since vanished. The land was bare, even eerie, occupied now only by hogs that took advantage of whatever moisture remained. This was Uncle Quarles farm today.

I traced the foundation with my feet, through the doorways, into the rooms, out windows. I imagined the sound of children playing inside and out. And I heard the sounds of a rural farming area before the noise of motorized implements with wind blown birdsong coming through the windows, the rustling of oak leaves, and the chopping of wood.

In my mind's eye I could also see where the limpid brook had snaked along the lowest point of land, following the path of least resistance. No doubt it flowed over these rocks, and these rocks gave it its voice--a soft murmur.

So with that information and with permission of the land owner, I gathered a few rocks and wrapped them in my sweatshirt, noting the lay of the land, and set out to find a flowing stream bed that would match the original description, and there, I would place the rocks back into the stream and hear the Limpid Brook once again.

The search that I thought would be just a few hours turned into several days and stretched over hundreds of miles. All the other streams in that vicinity had met the same fate--dry and barren of any vegetation.

Making wider and wider circles, my path eventually found a stream match. The landform, flow rate, and vegetation fit the description.

But my work had just begun streams are musical instruments that tune themselves with every new surge of rain water, becoming forever more smooth and silent.* The original Limpid Brook was old and well-tuned. I could not simply toss the stones down, that would produce a loud mess as the flowing water hit the rock faces, forcing them aside. After just a few heavy rains, you will hear an entirely different song. The path of least resistance produces the sound of greatest harmony. The Limpid Brook is like an old tree, taking many years to mature. But I needed to speed up the process and get my recording.

I placed the rocks from John A. Quarles farm into the foster stream; and then with patience and carefully studied interest, twisted and nudged them to minimize the ripples hoping that this would simulate the tuning action of water over time. As I did, I heard the music of, "…a limpid brook which sang along over its gravelly bed and curved and frisked in and out and here an there and yonder in the deep shade of overhanging foliage and vines," return.

Stay tuned for an upcoming release Huckleberry Hollow, the natural soundscape of Mark Twain's childhood.

*Tuning a stream is a challenging exercise and I invite you to approach a stream that is quietly flowing, listen carefully to memorize the sound, then remove just one rock and try to restore the stream to its original sound.