The Invisible Lighthouse

I saw an early version performed at the American Film Institute in March of 2013. Specifically, it's an impressive celebration of Thomas Dolby's lifelong relationship with the Orfordness Lighthouse (which was shut down in June 2013). Broadly, it's an exploration of how our memories are formed, and how those memories form us. A little bit of the audio is embedded in the film although most is provided by Dolby himself, playing and narrating live to picture. Blake Leyh joined the fall 2013 tours to provide additional live Foley and guitar as well.

Considering that this project started as notes and footage shot on an iPhone, then finished up with GoPros and Final Cut Pro, it's worth noting that there's not a "home movie" vibe about it at all. It's well made, with no jarring notes to spoil the experience. Live music and narration further elevates the film far beyond "just a movie". A topic that would have been interesting enough as one guy's nostalgia becomes intimate and thought provoking with the filmmaker himself taking us through it.

The film simultaneously feels like taking a walk around Suffolk with a friend who lives there, while causing one to wonder whether if our memories really represent what we think they do. It also inspires appreciation of whatever one takes for granted in life. I've been looking for my "lighthouses" ever since. It's surprising to realize what I assumed would always be there; this movie made me realize that nothing in life is guaranteed.

Being a Dolby fan is definitely not required to enjoy The Invisible Lighthouse, although you might be rethinking that by the time the it's over. Well worth making the effort to see it, if it's screening anywhere in your area.

Fans of Dolby's music might not be quite prepared for the leap that this piece of work represents. Many will be aware of his connection with the coast of Suffolk in Great Britain through tracks like "Cloudburst at Shingle Street" but this is a profound and fascinating study of the effect of this wild landscape on Dolby – from childhood to the present. In fact Dolby uses the central story of the switching off of the Orfordness lighthouse as a pivot around which he hangs a whole mechanism of storytelling devices. As the film rolls Dolby performs alongside – cutting in live narration, music and sound and light effects in real time giving the whole great freshness and spontaneity. The window into Dolby's thoughts, loves, fears and creative processes is very intimate and circles around the lighthouse beam that once illuminated his bedroom wall as a child. Viewing this work at the historic Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich provided a truly memorable experience. Dolby expertly and warmly shares his fascination with the world around him, a beam of light that scans the globe whilst his feet remain firmly planted in the Suffolk shingle. Not to be missed.

Being at least in part a biopic, this film is a work of memory. Dolby starts from his early days growing up in East Anglia through the height of his popularity in the mid-80s before settling in to his more recent, somewhat more niche interests, reflective solo film projects and conducting interviews with film and recording legends. At our show in Vancouver he interviewed Walter Murch, film editor and sound engineer whose credits include Apocalypse Now, the Godfather films, and notably The Conversation. All of this at a pop music show. Dolby commented afterward that if this were the sort of thing he did all the time, it would be more normal and easier to market. He compared himself unfavourably to David Byrne, suggesting that if Byrne had tried a tour like this one (part film, part interview, followed by short concert and then a Q and A), folks would be more ready for it.

The presentation of the film was unique: Dolby stayed on stage during the show, adding narrative commentary to supplement his recorded voice in the video, and occasionally playing bits of music to accompany the scenes. The through-line for the film is that there is a lighthouse near Dolby's childhood home of Orford Ness. Dolby recounts some tales of memory, including the personal family tragedy that inspired "One of our Submarines." That song is itself about a memory, and one that was wrong: Dolby had always thought the submarine that his uncle had died in had sunk during maneuvers off Plymouth; he would learn much later in life that it had indeed been sunk in combat during WWII. So the song has it wrong, in a way. As a narrative of fact, it is incorrect; as a story of memory, it is personal and autobiographical.

A story that Dolby tells of his childhood involves a memory of a fire that took place when he was not in town. Having heard the story so often, he had for years remembered being there to see it. The idea of false memory is carried forward to a local legend of a UFO visit to Orford Ness, one of those shared experiences that grow in the telling, like Loch Ness or Roswell. The stories, told so often, become real to the minds of the storytellers. So too the Orfordness Lighthouse itself; Dolby says he recalls seeing the light from his home, and then questions whether he ever really did.

The lighthouse was set to be decommissioned during the time that Dolby was making his documentary, so he decided it would add something to be able to witness the ceremony of turning it off. He imagined there was a big switch inside the lighthouse and that maybe he could film the person who turned the switch to shut off the light. He ultimately is unable to get access to the lighthouse, though he does learn that there is no "big switch." We don't learn what the mechanism is, but for me a part of the magic of this film is that in the absence of a real answer, the fiction became real. In my memory of the film, even knowing what I know, I can see the submarine sinking in standard maneuvers off Plymouth; I can see that barn on fire, and I can see a man in an overcoat pulling a large switch to shut off a lighthouse forever.

I saw this film on my birthday years ago and have thought of it often since. I think it's personally amusing that I didn't write about it when it was fresher in my mind. It is a film about memory, and maybe I remember it wrong. If I do, then it is even more interesting to me for that.

Heroes sometimes begat new heroes, and in the process remind you why you chose them. Musical influences are recursion at its best.

I went to see "The Invisible Lighthouse" last week, a self-produced/self-directed film by Thomas Dolby, with live musical and narrative accompaniment. I expected to see a short film, with an interesting question and answer session afterwards.

I should have known better. I pick my heroes well, and TMDR has never appeared to have been a person that rests on his laurels. The music after the film and Q&A session consisted of Blake Leyh on guitar, Don Was on bass, Zoe Keating on cello, Dan Hicks on guitar and vocals, Narada Michael Walden on drums, Thomas Dolby on piano and vocals, performing "I Scare Myself", a tune written by Dan Hicks and covered on TMDR's 1984 album "The Flat Earth". It turns out that Dan Hicks is one of Thomas' heroes, and this was the first chance Thomas had had to perform with him. Magic, I still have not processed all I heard in that moment. Dan Hicks' vocal control, hearing for the first time the guitar work that drives the haunting piano in TMDR's version. I learned a bit about music and language watching them play, and I learned a lot more about what I owe my heroes. Even famous, accomplished people take direction without question when the situation calls for it, and this is the secret sauce to what we call "more than the sum of the parts." They performed a second Dan Hicks tune, one that terrifies me, but more about that later. Dan Hicks walked them through it, unrehearsed, by talking the musicians through their parts. This was the analog equivalent of watching TMDR sequence a song live back in 2007, and was just as amazing. I had not heard of Narada Michael Walden before, but I now need to study his creations. When they performed "Blinded by Science", he nailed the opening beats as if he was attached to a midi cable. Watching musicians perform that are that in tune to each other gives me chills.

The film is part autobiography, part statement, and part exploration of memory. Thomas narrates most of it live, and accompanied that night by Blake Leyh on sounds, it was a trip to where Thomas grew up, and where he lives now. During one section where he describes an event from his childhood, he delves into the malleability of our memories, describing his own experience with a self-implanted memory, one that he acknowledges as clearly impossible for him to have formed at the event he remembers, as he was miles away. Moving on from there, he discusses a 1980 UFO sighting near the area, and the determined memories of the servicemen who reported it in the absence of all evidence of the event. Another scene, shot from high, shows what looks like someone had painted a giant white 'X', as you would see in the countryside for aerial surveys. Or perhaps it was for targeting, as the island was also a MOD bombing range, if I read the signs correctly. Only as the camera descends do you see that the white 'X' is resolving to be just him, lying down in his coat.

I went to see Thomas Dolby's Invisible Lighthouse at the Tyneside Cinema in September 2013 and I have to say it was absolutely amazing. I was fully immersed in the film and the experience, which was unlike any other film/gig experience I've ever seen or been to.

The production is truly inspiring, to see that Thomas caught some very beautiful shots with a hand-held camera and an iPhone. The music that accompanied the movie was very skillfully pulled off and chosen as each number complimented the storyline perfectly. I really hope Thomas' record company decide to fund it again so everyone who didn't get a chance to see if last time, can see it. I know if that does happen, I will be one of the first to buy tickets again and indeed the VIP package which sadly I didn't see before. It was THAT good!

As a musician myself, I left finding myself compelled to write a film myself using the same tools.

All in all, definitely without a doubt; a strong 10/10!