Episode 1: Are You Listening?

When a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it. It makes a sound. Ladies and gentlemen. We have found the music. As so many things are lost. Missing, disappeared, misplaced, vanished. Every day, what falls into obscurity without anybody noticing? Without anybody paying attention. What is locked in the attic? I mean, let's talk about some things that have been found in an attic or spaces like attic.

Did you know that Van Gogh's Sunset at Montmanjur, that beautiful painting, was found in an attic? Or that the original handwritten manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was found in an attic. The Venus de Milo was well no was not not an attic, but buried in a farmer's field, unearthed by a peasant who came across some stubborn soil. Did you know that the only copy of the pilot of I Love Lucy lay under the bed of Peppino the Clown?

For thirty years, until it was swept out by his widow when she finally cleaned up around the place and thought to herself, this is pretty funny. All these masterpieces just a broom sweep away from history's dustbins. And today. Today recovered from a neglected attic of a suburban townhouse. One cassette tape destined to be sold in a garage sale. Containing what is likely to be the first recorded concert of Wim Faros. Who is listening? Hello.

I'm Deirdre Gardner, and I welcome you to my new show. It makes a sound. It's the first and only show in the nation dedicated to Wim Farrows, native son of our rosemary hills. We're together we'll be part of a musical legacy. We will prepare to receive the genius that is Wim Farrow. And to return him, like a prodigal son, to this deprived land. I will be the one to provide you up to the minute news and information about the artist as I discover it.

The name Wim Ferrows The Subject Genius and its location Where is extraordinariness? I asked myself, don't you don't you ask yourself that? Extraordinariness. Where is it today?

Where are the truly exceptional ones? Who, out of our sheer proximity to them, allow us to glimpse the intersection of our little lives with the profound. Who walks among us? Is there anyone? Who walks among us? All the little uses. Us is rolling lint off our pants. Us is squeezing avocados at the grocery store and never picking the ripe one. Us is um driving up and down the side streets to work because the highway frightens us.

Us is um drinking chamomile, attempting inverted yoga poses, popping melatonin, and crossing our fingers as we slink into bed for the night. Where can we look? Here. In this vast, wearied landscape of rosemary hills. Where our weathered old water tower reminds us in fading letters of past town mottos, such as golf capital. Or Rosemary Hills is alive with the whirr of commerce. Or let's tea in the hills. But where now, the best boast we can muster is easy access to the highway.

Well, here Amidst the now abandoned golf course and its neglected grass, amidst the shuttered strip malls, and these potholed streets The extraordinary has tread. And the footprints they linger. If you know how to look for them. And I think I do. My fellow people of Rosemary Hills, citizens of the world, what have you forgotten? What treasures have we hidden under cobwebs and dust? What beauty awaits us on the other side of that drywall, as we wrestle fitfully in our sleep?

What life lingers on these old fairways? What wonders just passed us by as we bowed our head towards A brighten three inch screen. Our necks hurt. Our brains are zapped from too much screen time, our souls ache, and suddenly decades have passed us by. Like poof. What are we missing? Do we remember what used to be held in the delicate folds of our heart? Don't we remember how things used to sound, smell, feel, taste? I want to. It's time to unpack the attic.

Today, we have a mind-boggling discovery. A confirmed to be authentic tape. Containing what is known to be Wim Ferros' debut public musical appearance here in Rosemary Hills in the year 1992. And so we're not going to rush this moment. Like we rush everything. We're gonna slow down. We're gonna savor. We are going to consider the tremendous significance of this relic. In order to fully appreciate it.

And thus, it is my privilege on this day of days to hold in my hands this freshly discovered tape. It's an ordinary looking cassette tape. It's possible some of you have never held a cassette tape. I will explain. Because though it contains the stuff of wonder, to the human eye it is just a Three and a half by two inch clear plastic rectangle. With two holes in the middle.

And these holes, they have six little black teeth, non-threatening teeth, so that you could feasibly uh insert a pencil or a pinky finger. Should something go awry? Like if the delicate tape needs your manual assistance? Now that tape is a very thin translucent gray strip, of course, containing some magnet um magnetic properties.

So and it's spooled around the left hole. And as the tape plays in the cassette tape player, the tape will run along the bottom edge of the rectangle, across a tiny magnetic strip. And the magnet Pull the music out with magnetic force until it is fully spooled around the right hole, which means the tape is finished and you have heard the music. And that's how a cassette tape works.

I'm Deirdre Gardner. This is It Makes a Sound. I am describing a cassette taste. perhaps the most important cassette tape that ever was. Now on this particular model, We have a yellow sticker that covers the smooth section of the cassette. And written on that cover in purple felt tip pen in bubble letters is Wim Fa. But a water spot has obscured the roast, leaving a purpley pink spot. Very pretty, like a watercolor. And underneath, with that same pen and font, nineteen ninety-two.

Crudely drawn stars in um multiple colours of pen speckle the entire sticker. I mean it's great. It's really incredible that one small object can capture so much about an entire era, even just aesthetically. We all seek the soundtrack of our lives, don't we? And we wish to be privy to the voices of our generation. Yet it is a profound rarity that an artist like Wim Ferros crosses into your limited sphere of existence.

It's like an alien prophet touching down on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in a chain store called The Last Tupper. Suddenly making the universe crack open to reveal infinite shards of meaning barely comprehensible to you, standing there in cargo shorts holding a casserole dish.

Yes, yes. It's hard to determine the full effect of Wim Ferros's music on the simple town of Rosemary Hills in the early to mid nineties. It's difficult to quantify the extent Of sacred devotion he inspired in his earliest fan base. How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? That was a time without social media and its um incessant public proclamations to hashtag trending desires of the moment. Yesterday's youth had to be more intuitively united in our common affections.

had to keep the faith that even in a friendless existence For instance, as an example. living in an inherited furnished townhouse on the edge of Rosemary Hill's gated golf course community, There were kindred souls somewhere underneath that same blue sky, wishing and waiting for a connection just like you. Though perhaps at times to love in solitude from afar, in the most generic of settings, was lonely and painful. That melancholy was trumped by a feeling of purpose.

The purpose that comes from knowing that if someone out there could so perfectly capture the nuanced secrets of your soul, There must be greatness and solace in this universe indeed. Isn't that why we listen to the music? Isn't that why we listen to the music?

We must ready ourselves to listen to the music. I will say, even without th the ease and the benefit, of cachet fan pages, or blogs serving as testimony to the early Wim Faro's effect. The artist did manage to be a catalyst of cultural awakening in the town Zeitgeist. If a town can have a Zeitgeist, can't it? Sure.

And there is archival evidence of the first reactions to Pharos' artistry. In fact I happen to be in possession of documents from a Rosemary Hills resident who encountered Wim Farrows in his earliest musical phase. Now, some of these pages are enclosed within a a purple velveteen diary that I now have in front of me. The writing Appears to be by the hand of a twelve year old, I would estimate, and the paper is wide rolled. And I seem to have come across a lengthy series of Haiku.

Perhaps I should share just a few of these with you for the sake of research. It's a segment. We'll call it the poetry of a little us. You have changed my life by allowing me to see, even though you don't see me. I am hard to see in a golf community with many sand traps. You have a blind spot for almost nothing, but one in the size of me. I am the catcher, you are a rare butterfly that I cannot grasp. Butterflies up close freak me out. But you fly free. Beautiful and free.

I catch butterflies yes but I am afraid, too. A contradiction. Come to the window of my dreams singing la la la. What is this music? Like, I never heard music before you played it. Now those are just a few haikus and there are lots more. Written here in Rosemary Hills, circa nineteen ninety-one, nineteen ninety-two, likely dedicated to one Wim Ferros. If you're just tuning in, hello. Welcome. I'm Deirdre Gardner, and this is the first episode of my show. It makes a sound.

A discovery has been made in the attic. It's Wim Farros's first live album. It's the real deal, it's not a hoax, and it's so rare that the only known copy exists. Recorded from some distance on a cassette tape. Thank you. There is nowhere else in the entire universe where you will be able to hear a 16-year-old Wim Pharos shaping what comes to be known as the sound. An ep E-P-O-C-H. Stay with me and you will hear it here first, folks, because I have the tape and you're gonna get exclusive access.

So, I'm not sure what I'm We're discussing Wim Ferros's formative teenage years as a musician right here in Rosemary Hill. We've just begun working towards a fuller understanding of the human behind the meat. Huh? I know. I know. Are you okay? I know you. 안녕! Sleep. What's that? Okay. Okay. Okay. Everything is good. And I'm excited to introduce

A new oral history segment of the show based on town legend and lore around Wim Farrows. It's called A portrait of the artist as a young man. A light in the window. Of the second floor the only window on the second floor. means Wim Ferrows is in his bedroom. And almost always, when he is in his bedroom, he is drawing on the wall. What was on that wall? Everything was on that wall. The winds of change blew on that wall. The unfettered scrawl of technicolor wonders. The rainbow.

A paltry container for the variety of colors applied to that water. New colour names would have to be invented. the ongoing, overlapping, shifting images and symbols, muraled, frescoed, applique on that wall. All these ideas spewing forth from the eclectic multitudes of a single creative mind. In a blue and tan flannel shirt, his right arm braced against the drywall in an L-shape above his head.

With the bottom of his sleeve ripped and hanging down, he looks like he's whispering secrets in a confessional. There's a a lava lamp? fire out of view of the window and it casts blobby spots that climb up and down the room, catching Wim's distorted shadow when he's out of view of the window frame. His left hand moves delicately or scribbles furiously. He is left handed, as statistics prove that most geniuses are. And if you'd been watching over the course of several months, you would have seen.

His fantastic mural take shape. In the center. A five foot tall octopus The uncannily rendered face of Diane Sawyer. Her arms spread open, Christ-like, with magnolia blossoms and spiders dripping from her fingers. A flock of owls flying over a forest of pine trees. Each phase of the moon paired with a pizza pie of differing toppings. Eight personalized pan pizzas for eight different moons. A ninja army battling a family of squirrels throwing sharp acorns.

Pages falling from a Gutenberg Bible into the gaping mouth of a Native American chief. Snoop Dog. Scully riding a Mulder Centaur as Ross Perot hoverboards over their heads. He was getting political. As the seasons pass, the wall incrementally becomes an intricate map of his fertile, fertile inner life.

Repetitions of hummingbirds, um starfish, cans of beans, numb chucks, later, peacocks, A dragon breathing fire, melting the iceberg, just before it sinks the Titanic, which passes into clear skies. Dracula playing video games in front of a television set, flickering with an image of outrage from the Rodney King riots. And toaster strudels flying out of toasters into the rings of Saturn. Kurt Cobain. offering an origami swan to a sobbing river phoenix.

and hundreds of other elegantly drawn details, too small to make out from a distance, that create a constellation of Enlightened connectivity across the peeling beige.

And almost every night. After all the lights in the windows of the bungalow go dark, if you cared enough to pay attention. You would see the single beam of a flashlight splice a path behind the house, pointed towards a lopsided shed, some forty yards away. And if you were standing Right up against the fence that separates Rosemary Hill's gated golf course community from the unincorporated land that's stretched out behind the scattered houses on Camellia Road.

You would hear a soulful strum of guitar. And a crescendo of drums. Because in that decaying shed, surrounded by the loneliest darkness that is suburban darkness, is where young whim pharaohs made the music. It was that music that pulsed through this town. permeated the air. Pumped through the water. Did everyone hearken to the call? No. If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

I'm here to tell you. Trees have fallen. Trees are falling, and you may listen. But do you hear? People of Rosemary Hills, it is time to hear. It is time to hearken. Hearken. I believe in your ears. Wim Pharaoh sang for you. You didn't know. But he will sing for you again. He has been lost in the attic. But now he is found and maybe I I don't know. Maybe... Maybe you've been lost in the attic, too. There was greatness in our midst, transcendence, eccentricity, nuance.

I'm Deirdre Gardener, and I believe that when a tree falls in a forest, it makes a sound. And I'm inviting you. Try to truly hear and to remember that. So stay tuned for my next episode when that music, lost but now found, will be born again straight into your ears. When you hear the first track from Wim Ferros' debut concert.

The first track, perhaps, of the rest of your life. This has been the inaugural episode of the first and only show in the nation dedicated to the music and legacy of Wim Farrow. Thank you for listening. If you have any information about Wim Ferrous that you think should be shared with our listeners, or if you own a working cassette tape player, do not hesitate to contact us. Um I I guess for now you should just c um email me at DDG at

No, let's not do that. Um, I'll create a I'll create a new yes, you can contact me at Wimferos at A-O-L-O-S. Actually, no. Please contact It Makes A Sound at Aol.com Thank you. I'm Deirdre Gardner. Till next time. It Makes a Sound is written by Jacqueline Langgraff, co-directed by Anya Safer and Jacqueline Langraaff. Sound designed and engineered by me, Vincent Cashion. Original music composed by Nate. Gymnopadie with Jacqueline Langrat.

Gardner and featuring Annie Golden as the voice from downstairs. It makes a sound was produced by Nick. Supor the show and be a part of all the backstage action on Patreon. In the spirit of collecting. And we hope you'll tell your friends. To listen to the show. to the trees and to remember Wim Pharos.

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All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents the chaotic's case. Listen now wherever you get your podcast. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter? Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of? True crime TV shows. And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jumpstarted all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true Comedy Podcast covering.

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