In 2006, Quentin Stoltzfus was forced to retire Mazarin, the dreamy, strummy Philadelphia-based project he debuted in 1999, due to threats from a litigious Long Island classic-rock band of the same name. If not for that, the new Light Heat album would be a Mazarin album, and could have come out years ago. The catalyst for Light Heat’s debut came from Stoltzfus’ friends and former tourmates the Walkmen. That band, minus singer Hamilton Leithauser, backs Stoltzfus on the LP, although Light Heat itself, like Mazarin, is essentially Stoltzfus and whomever he plays with. Stoltzfus will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on Light Heat.
Stoltzfus: Solaris was the first Andrei Tarkovsky film I saw. Though I enjoyed the film immensely, it wasn’t until I laid eyes on Nostalgia that I truly became obsessed with the man and his work. I had never seen such profound beauty and narrative conveyed mostly through imagery. Following that, Andrei Rublev, a clear homage to Ingmar Bergman yet entirely Tarkovskian. But the film that has stuck with me through the years is The Mirror. The film is mesmerizing in its raw beauty of childhood imagery juxtaposed with almost static space/time perception. And by that I mean the story is told as if all of time exists simultaneously, both internally and ethereal, and externally and concrete. With equal weight and power given to both worlds. How a kid from 1970s Texas could relate so strongly to the childhood imagery of 1930s pre-war Russia is hardly explainable. The movie is an embodiment of the hallucinatory experience. It is a stream of consciousness on film. Through The Mirror, I was introduced to the poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky, Andrei’s father. Not one to get down all that much with poetry, I find his to exist beyond the world of words. His poetry cuts to raw emotion much the way his son’s films cut through narrative with imagery. It’s all very serious stuff, but so undeniably real.
