A pleasant ride through troubled minds. Lots of voices saying powerful things. Well scored, perfect music to guide our emotional journey. Can hear the great energy that went into editing this piece; touched on many of the themes/topics that circle around the topic. A shorter version might get a national airing.
I didn’t connect with anyone however, seemed more of a reporter’s microphone that keeps a slight distance—we are only Hearing these stories, just an inch from feeling them. Liked the exploration of literature and performance readings, but feels, to me, a little jarring: a then/now? actor/ tape? shock. Liked the 911 tape sounds in the background, a reminder of the chaos. Beautifully edited layering of sounds and voices. Don’t need the PSA at the end, that can be done by someone inside the piece.

Here There Is No Moon follows more the structure of a piece of music than a documentary. Listeners do learn facts along the way, but they are brought along a not-necessarily-linear path through the different aspects of suicide: hearing from the ones who attempted it, the people who study it, the counselors who help prevent it, the police, the writers who try to put it into words And it works. Mostly. There are some intense moments: the juxtaposition of a calm reading (fiction?) about suicide with a loud, desperate 911 call; a layering of readings of suicide notes that all sound eerily similar. But the problem with a non-narrated, layered type of production like this one is that it needs memorable voices for a listener to latch onto. I felt as though there were too many characters/voices in this piece for me to keep track of, and I ended up not caring as much about some of them as I could have. Also, I was craving a bit of silence behind some of the interviews. The emotional content of what they were saying was not as strong with a musical background. But overall, this piece conveys the important message that suicide, though strange and scary, is something that is studied, written about and treated, and can be a transformative event in someone’s life. And many suicidal experiences are similar, even though the person feels like the last person on earth.