I had put off reading Sean Michaels' Us Conductors because when I heard it was about Lev Sergeyevich Termen and his invention of the theremin, the eerie electronic instrument, I couldn't generate any enthusiasm for the topic (and not least of all because I found the proto-synth sounds the theremin produced -- in my memory anyway -- annoying and unmusical). I thought the book would be dull and I was completely wrong. In Michaels' imagination, Termen was a genius with electricity -- both pioneer and high priest -- whose relationship with his inventions bordered on the sublime.
Here is the way you play a theremin:As written here, Termin's life was anything but dull: after impressing Lenin himself with his manipulation of electronic fields, the young scientist and his theremin were sent on a world concert tour (causing women to faint, men to gasp, and composers to weep as they imagined the death of the orchestra; the splintering of cellos), and when he landed in America, Termin was pressed into service as a Soviet spy. (In a way, this was the reverse journey of Harry Houdini as imagined by Steven Galloway in The Confabulist, and I enjoyed the image of Houdini being sent to Europe as a spy disguised as a magician as Termin was being sent to America as a spy disguised as a musician; they must have crossed paths at some point.) He spent the late 1920s and 30s in NYC, rubbing elbows with celebrities, giving theremin lessons, mastering kung fu, using corporate interest in his inventions as wedges for industrial espionage, and falling in (unrequited) love with Clara (Reisenberg) Rockmore: "finest theremin player the world will ever know". Termin returned to the USSR in 1938 at the urging of his spymasters, was immediately declared an enemy of the state, and was sent to a gulag; first to work in the gold mines of Kolyma, and then to a sharashka (a special prison camp for top scientists). Much of this can be confirmed with a bit of googling, but as interesting as the material is, Michaels writes often in an urgent and propulsive style that transcends the bare biography. On Termin's early dalliance with bolshevism:
You turn it on. Then you wait.
You wait for several reasons. You wait to give the tubes a chance to warm, like creatures taking their first breaths. You wait in order to heighten the audience's suspense. And, finally, you wait to magnify your own anticipation. It is a thrill and a terror. You stand before a cabinet and two antennas and immediately the space itself is activated, the room is charged, the atmosphere is alive. What was potential is potent. You imagine sparks, embers, tiny lightning flecks balanced in the vacant air.
You raise your hands…
(A)lways you are standing with your hands in the air, like a conductor. That is the secret of the theremin after all: your body is a conductor.
We bolted. Men and women were breaking in all directions, some toward but most of them away from the Imperial soldiers. Bodies pushing into us like shoving hands. Snow was still falling. Cold light. More pops, thin trails of smoke, dark coats, and now glimpses of green uniforms, gold buttons, then rising up, the terrifying silhouettes of horses, cavalry, and we ran and ran and ran, over torn earth, over ice, filled with raw, fierce terror.What I didn't know going in is that Us Conductors is a love story: this book is written from the point of view of Termin as he recalls his life -- and in particular, his NYC days with Clara -- composing both a memoir and unmailable letters addressed to his long lost love, written in the various cells he occupies after leaving the States (from a locked cabin in the bowels of a ship to the bare office overlooking the Kremlin) . Termin's enthusiasm on meeting Clara (and especially their dancing together in Harlem jazz clubs), his heartbreak, and his longing are all touched on, without ever being the main focus of the narrative, so there's a bit of a disconnect between what the character of Termin most often writes about (the theremin and his other inventions) and what he periodically insists on as being the most important thing (Clara). Even so, I was touched by this scene between Termin and the woman he eventually does marry (perhaps just to solve his visa issues?):
We went home and I removed her clothes and she traced me in the darkness; I kissed her ribs, pressed my thumb into the crease beneath her lips, against the rise of her cheekbone. We were travellers, unlit. I wanted everything. We lay, after, in a cold Y, and we felt like branches. I stared at gardenias, in a vase. I circled her wrist with my hand. Every time I moved my lips I was telling a lie.The writing in Us Conductors is consistently interesting, the life story of Lev Termin is undeniably fascinating, and the reading experience is certainly not dull. And yet, this wasn't a perfect book: the parts didn't add up to more than their sum and I found the ending to be a bit weak. And yet, I would definitely recommend this book and some related links:
Sean Michaels is the founder of, and a regular contributor to, the mp3blog Said the Gramophone. I enjoyed reading more of his quirky writing style there.
I was happy to be proved wrong about the theremin being annoying/unmusical when I saw a video of Clara Rockmore performing The Swan (a song often mentioned in Us Conductors) here.
And not to be outdone, Lev Termin (or the Americanised "Leon Theremin") can be seen demonstrating his instrument here.
The longlist for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize (with my personal ranking):
I wouldn't be a bit disappointed if Us Conductors won the Giller this year -- but I would be surprised; it's probably too reader friendly.
And win it did -- congrats to Sean Michaels!
And win it did -- congrats to Sean Michaels!
