The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode 62: Laura Poitras, David Bowie’s Last Band, and the Poet Brenda Shaughnessy
Date: December 23, 2016
Host: David Remnick

Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour features three rich segments: an in-depth conversation with filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras about her Whitney Museum exhibition "Astro Noise" and her unique approach to documenting the post-9/11 era; a behind-the-scenes look at David Bowie's final album "Blackstar" through interviews with his last band, the Donny McCaslin Group; and an intimate discussion with poet Brenda Shaughnessy about her new collection So Much Synth, her life as a poet and mother, and the complexities of raising a disabled child. The episode moves fluidly from incisive discussions of art and politics to memories of musical collaboration, and finally, the ways poetry confronts the realities of time, identity, and family.

Segment 1: Laura Poitras and "Astro Noise"

(02:39–18:01, approx.)

Key Discussion Points and Insights

• Context & Background
  David Remnick introduces Laura Poitras as a pivotal figure documenting and critiquing the war on terror. She is most known for her Pulitzer-winning journalism on NSA surveillance with Edward Snowden and her Oscar-winning documentary, "Citizenfour."

  • [02:39] “Filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras is arguably the fiercest and most vivid chronicler and critic of the war on terror.” – David Remnick

• Transition from Cinema to Museum
  Poitras discusses moving from journalistic documentaries to her museum installation, "Astro Noise," at the Whitney. She describes using images, classified documents, and sound in a multi-sensory, abstract manner.

  • [03:51] “As an artist, just to express like a writer expresses through words, I express through images.” – Laura Poitras

• Describing the Exhibition
  The exhibition is built from Poitras’s own footage, including faces of New Yorkers reacting to 9/11, military interrogations, and immersive drone footage from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and the U.S.

  • [05:40] “The images are not actually of the World Trade Center site. They’re actually people looking at it. So it’s an extended reaction shot. It’s just showing faces. And that was a way to kind of capture something that's impossible to capture through looking at the faces.” – Poitras
  • [07:22] “The idea being to imagine living in places in the world where there are drones flying overhead and drones that potentially could kill you.” – Poitras

• Sound and Surveillance
  Poitras describes the collaboration on a constantly evolving soundscape that accompanies her visuals:

  • [08:08] “You’re in a room that’s in a cube and it’s a 3D soundscape. … The fades are randomized, and then the movement of the drones is being randomized.” – Poitras

• Use of Classified Documents as Art
  She explains her approach to using classified documents not just as ‘scoops’ but as aesthetic material, bridging the worlds of journalism and visual art. For example, in the ‘Anarchist’ segment, viewers witness decrypted signals from hacked Israeli drone feeds.

  • [09:11] “Here you’re working with classified documents as your path, your paints, as your video, as your artistic material.” – Remnick

• Art and Political Effectiveness
  On the risk of aestheticizing trauma:

  • [11:59] “What I’m trying to do is make people not numb to information. So to reach people in a different type of way, to actually move them more and not to gloss over or to aestheticize.” – Poitras

• The Direct Impact of Surveillance
  Poitras recounts being subject to a classified FBI national security investigation—her detainment and border searches after returning from filming in Iraq, her lawsuit to obtain her FBI files, and how these documents become part of her art.

  • [14:08] “After returning to the United States, I was placed on a government watch list and detained and searched every time I crossed the US border. It took me 10 years to find out why.” – Poitras

• Interactivity and Awareness
  The exhibition ends with a display showing what visitors’ phones are broadcasting, making viewers viscerally aware of their digital footprints.

  • [16:38] “It’s showing you what your phone is broadcasting, what your phone is looking for, what network.” – Poitras

• Hope and the Political Landscape

  • [17:41] “We create the political landscape in which we live and we can change that landscape.” – Poitras

Notable Quotes

• [05:40] Laura Poitras: “The images are not of the World Trade Center site. They're actually people looking at it. … You learn a lot from these faces. I'm really interested in the faces trying to comprehend something that seemed incomprehensible.”
• [10:00] Laura Poitras: “It is an unusual set of circumstances that I work both journalism and visual art. … I really consider myself a visual storyteller, visual filmmaker, and a visual journalist.”
• [17:41] Laura Poitras: “We create the political landscape in which we live and we can change that landscape.”

Segment 2: David Bowie’s Last Band—Donny McCaslin Group

(20:17–37:39, approx.)

Key Discussion Points and Insights

• Discovery and Collaboration
  Bowie first encountered the Donny McCaslin Group at the 55 Bar, a small jazz club in New York. Maria Schneider, his collaborator, recommended McCaslin to Bowie, leading to one of the band’s most transformative professional experiences.

  • [21:00] “And what happened was, at that time, he was writing with an incredible composer and arranger, Maria Schneider. They were writing ‘Sue’ together.” – Donny McCaslin

• Bowie’s Quiet Presence
  The musicians reflect on Bowie’s ability to blend in and remain unnoticed in jazz clubs, despite his stardom.

  • [25:39] “The waitress was like, there’s this guy at the table 31 that looks like an old David Bowie.” – Laura Poitras (Band’s retelling)

• Creative Process
  Bowie would send demos to McCaslin, blending focused solo writing with highly collaborative studio sessions.

  • [29:17] “It was so exciting... the track he sent was ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.’” – McCaslin
  • [30:31] “By the time we got to the first recording session … I had maybe seven songs, demos that he’d sent.” – McCaslin

• Jazz and Bowie’s Sound
  They discuss Bowie’s penchant for harmonic complexity, ‘crunchy chords,’ and the jazz influences that surfaced more overtly on "Blackstar."

  • [32:34] “Tony felt that harmonic jazz influence was a little more hidden [in Bowie’s earlier work]. But then on this, it’s out there in the open more.” – McCaslin

• Band Chemistry & Bowie’s Vision
  The group credits the album’s coherence to their years of collaboration and improvisation, noting how Bowie prized their interplay.

  • [33:31] “He steps in and the frame are these wonderful songs that he's written, but he's also interacting with us while we’re tracking.” – McCaslin

• After Bowie’s Death
  The emotional impact of Bowie’s passing left the band with complicated feelings about listening to the record.

  • [34:27] “I listened to ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’ ... I haven’t really been able to listen.” – McCaslin

• Bowie’s Final Year
  The band is struck by Bowie’s creative drive in his final months—shuttling between recording "Blackstar" and working on Lazarus the same days.

  • [36:39] “That’s an amazing amount of output. I mean, and that’s really inspiring.” – McCaslin

Notable Quotes

• [21:00] Donny McCaslin: “When Maria was working with him, I guess she played him a track off one of our records called ‘Casting for Gravity’... she suggested to him that he record with us.”
• [29:17] Donny McCaslin: “It was so exciting… the track he sent was ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.’”
• [33:31] Donny McCaslin: “It’s beautiful that his vision was us playing and interacting with each other… That’s what you hear when you hear the record.”
• [34:27] Donny McCaslin: “I just didn’t… I can’t. I haven’t really been able to listen (since Bowie died).”

Segment 3: Poetry and Life with Brenda Shaughnessy

(38:18–51:10, approx.)

Key Discussion Points and Insights

• Home and Family Context
  Hilton Als visits Shaughnessy at her new home in New Jersey, which she moved to help care for her disabled son, Cal.

  • [39:17] “We had to have a ground floor apartment... because this wheelchair you can’t get up, you know?” – Shaughnessy

• Memory and Poetry
  Shaughnessy’s new collection, So Much Synth, navigates memory, time, and her coming of age—often through the metaphor of swimming laps and reliving each year.

  • [39:57] "Each lap as I’m swimming it, I relive that year of my life." – Shaughnessy
  • [41:19] Reads "I have a time machine..."—a meditation on the nature of memory and moving through life.

• Artistic Process and Motherhood
  Singing lessons allowed Shaughnessy to unlock a new creative energy, both for her poetry and for comforting her son.

  • [44:01] “He [Cal] wants the guts. He wants me to do, like, the full-on Broadway Annie kind of thing.”
  • [44:20] “It unclogged my voice. I felt like I could say anything. I was no longer afraid of what I sounded like.” – Shaughnessy

• 80s Nostalgia and LGBTQ Memoir
  The book captures shades of adolescence in the 1980s, the power of synth-pop music, and the intensity and drama of young gay life in New York.

  • [44:22] Book title: So Much Synth—"when I was 12, 13, 14ish, it was the 80's... it was supposed to sound cold and robotic and futuristic.”

• Community and Friendship
  Vivid stories of communal living in a ‘dyke loft’ in Tribeca, the complexities of relationships, friendships, and breakups.

  • [46:44] “But I’m the only one who’d walk across a fire for you, growled Melissa [Etheridge]... That summer in the dyke loft, just when it all started to change.”

• Parenthood, Disability, and Time
  Discusses the challenges of accepting a child’s limitations, the universality of struggle, and the deep time-consciousness that comes with motherhood.

  • [48:56] “It’s hard for anybody to reconcile the fact that your child is disabled... you want your kid to be able to do all these things and have their options. And when your child can’t walk or can’t talk, it’s sort of... accepting those limitations on his behalf is very difficult.”
  • [49:18] “We all have disability's everywhere, and none of us really have all the options open to us.”
  • [50:58] “You know, when you say ‘I don’t have time to do that,’ it’s like, well, you have the same amount of time as I do.”

Notable Quotes

• [41:19] Brenda Shaughnessy (reads poem): “I have a time machine, but unfortunately, it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second...”
• [44:20] Brenda Shaughnessy: “It unclogged my voice. I felt like I could say anything.”
• [48:56] Brenda Shaughnessy: “It’s hard for anybody to reconcile the fact that your child is disabled... accepting those limitations on his behalf is very difficult.”
• [50:58] Brenda Shaughnessy: “It’s always been a huge mystery to me that we all have the same amount of time.”

Bonus: Editor's Picks with Emma Allen

(51:38–54:19)

• Board Games and Culture: Allen describes quirky board games like "Cowgirls Ride the Trail of Truth," comedy recommendations (Aparna Nancherla), and oddities like Marina Abramović’s aphrodisiac recipe from a cookbook by artists.
• On the Joy of Eggs: Shares the humor of a minimalist egg recipe and the half-serious idea of tattooing poaching times as a life hack.
• Light, witty close to the episode:
  • [54:19] David Remnick: “You want to get a poached egg tattoo? … I’m recommending against it.”

Conclusion

This episode weaves together investigative journalism, artistic exploration, musical history, and poetic memoir. Each guest reveals the intense personal stakes behind their creative work—Poitras’s conviction in art’s power to awaken us to hidden realities; the bittersweet camaraderie and creative magic behind Bowie’s swan song; and Shaughnessy’s lyrical navigation of love, loss, memory, and the stubborn beauty of time.

[Selected Timestamps]

• Laura Poitras Interview Start: 02:39
• On Ground Zero Faces: 05:40 (Poitras)
• On Drone Soundscapes: 08:08
• On Her FBI Files: 14:08
• On Creative Hope: 17:41
• David Bowie Band Interview Start: 20:17
• On Bowie’s Demo Email: 29:17
• On Creative Process: 30:31
• On Emotional Impact: 34:27
• Brenda Shaughnessy Interview Start: 38:18
• Reads "Time Machine" Poem: 41:19
• On Singing Lessons and Creativity: 44:20
• On Parenting and Disability: 48:56

Listeners leave with a distinct sense that art—in every form—is a vehicle for understanding, questioning, and sometimes transcending the complex realities of our time.