Ivan Doig Archive - Soundscapes of Ivan Doig
Recording: Carol Doig types on Ivan's typewriter.
Sounds of the Ivan Doig Archive is a collaborate project with the MSU Library's Acoustic Atlas, a growing collection of sounds of Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This project aims to gather recordings from geographic locations that are relevant to Ivan Doig, including sounds from Dupuyer and White Sulphur Springs, rural Montana towns where Doig spent his childhood.
Sounds will be paired with passages from Doig's works and matched with images from the Ivan Doig Archive to create an interactive exhibition of sounds, images, and words that will greatly enrich the digital presentation of this archive. The list below is a sampling of sounds being recorded.
Featured Sounds
Recording: English Creek (Dupuyer Creek)
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: Dupuyer Creek runs through the tiny town of Dupuyer, Montana. It was fictionalized as "English Creek" in Ivan Doig's novel of the same name. The recording was made in the heat of the afternoon on July 3rd, 2016. Jeff Rice, Recordist, was told by town residents to watch out for the grizzly bears that like to nap in the nearby creek bottoms.
"To say the truth, it was the water winding its way through that still valley - its heartstream, so to speak - that captured me then and there. This supple little creek...this quiet creek...Here at last was water in its proper dose for me."
Text: Dancing at the Rascal Fair
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Old Faithful geyser, Yellowstone National Park
Recorded by: Jerrett, Jennifer
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Unstrung as I was anyway by Herman behaving this way, now I was hearing what sounded like low thunder and heavy rain mixed together, although the night sky remained cloudless. I thought I felt the earth tremble, but it might have been only me. We turned together toward the source of the sound, a boiling hiss from the whitish mound, and, as we watched, in its center what looked like a giant fountain started up, the cascades of steaming water billowing and falling, but steadily and incredibly shooting higher and higher, until the ghostly white column stood taller than the tallest trees, almost touching the single bright star, it looked like."
Text: Last Bus to Wisdom
Audio Rights: Public Domain
Recording: Birds at dawn near Ear Mountain
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Picturing that moment in the mind, it would seem a scene of thoroughest silence. But no. Warbles and trills and solo after solo of sweet sweet and wheeep wheeep and dee dee dee: the air was magically busy. None of us spoke while the songs of the birds poured undiluted. I supposed we were afraid the spate of loveliest sound would vanish if we broke it with so much as a whisper. But after a bit came the realization that the music of birds formed a natural part of this place, constant as the glorious grass that made feathered life thrive."
Text: Ride with Me, Mariah Montana
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Waves at Hobuck Beach
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "The Pacific's sounds climb into the forest to meet us...The rhythmic pound of tidal surge underscored the reputation that, all the fifteen miles down from Cape Flattery to here, and south from Alava for thirty miles more, this coast constantly dodges and tumbles. Boulder formations and landforms sprawl random and ajut as vast weapon heads. Drift logs lodge high on the beach like colossal ax-hafts tossed on a forgotten armory shelf. Each cape and bluff seems braced, banked for the turns of winter storm that flow in from the southwest."
Text: Winter Brothers
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Maple Fire, Yellowstone National Park, 12PM
Recorded by: Jerrett, Jennifer
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Except for the smoke boiling in ugly fashion into the sky, the scene was not as awful as you might expect. Orange flames were a dancing tribe amid the trees, and the firefighters were a rippling line of shovelers and axmen and sawyers as they tried to clear anything combustible from in front of the fire. But then when you got over being transfixed by the motions of flame and men, the sense of char hit you. A smell like charcoal, the black smudge of the burned forest behind the flames. And amid the commotion of the fireline work, the sounds of char, too - flames crackling, and continual snap of branches breaking as they burned, and every so often a big roar of flame as a tree crowned out."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Public Domain
Recording: Birds along Bellview Road near Choteau, Montana
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "The skyline of the Two. Even here at the outset the hover of it all always caused my father to turn and appreciatively call over his shoulder to Alec and me something like 'Nothing the matter with that.' And always Alec and I would chorus 'Not one thing' both because we were expected to and because we too savored those waiting mountains."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Western meadowlark near Ringling, Montana
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "And, yes, of Mariah's photo along with. That one she'd shot, sudden as a fingersnap, out the window of the motorhome in our slam-on stop while Riley was trying to pursuade me to Toussaintize. A high thick fencepost of the buffalo range enclosure, a meadowlark atop. The beautiful black V dickey against his yellow chest, his beak open to the maximum, singing for all he was worth. Singing out of the page to the onlooker."
Text: Ride with Me, Mariah Montana
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: A flock of sheep passing through a gate
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Sheep and their owners were the chorus in our lives...the theme of every season and most conversation."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Thunder in Broadwater County, Montana
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Meanwhile the weather was growing steadily more rambunctious. Along those mountainsides thunder can roll and roll, and constant claps were arriving to us now like beer barrels tumbling down stairs. But the next time I reconnoitered, rain was pushed off my mental agenda. the cloud was bigger, blacker and closer. A whole hell of a lot closer. It also was rumbling now like it was the engine of the entire sky."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Walking on the beach at Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: A place where Ivan and Carol Doig spent countless hours hiking and the place where Ivan's ashes were scattered, Dungeness Spit in Washington state is a long beach break that extends down the length of the spit.
"April 16, 1995 - At the Jaun de Fuca cottages, in venerable No. 7, with the Olympic Mtns white and green and gray and blue out this window, and, just outside, daisies unbuttoning to the morning sun. 7:30 now, we'll wait 1/2 hour or so before hiking Dungeness Spit yet again - we can still hear, from here, the high tide's waves crashing out there - in this 30th anniversary celebration. 30 years ago last night, we figured, we'd have been at our wedding rehearsal dinner in Winnetka with my folks, Carol's, Doug and Hazel Smith, the Baldwins far away in a lot of ways, as we sat in the Bushwhacker in Port Angeles, millionaires in old blue jeans, sawing happily into fillet and prime rib."
Text: Diaries, Box 03, Folder 06, Page 12
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Wind at an abandoned train depot in Ringling, Montana
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "In the Two country, any wind that doesn't lift you off your horse is only a breeze."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Wind in the cottonwoood trees in Dupuyer, Montana
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "Gros Ventre's neighborhoods were planted double with cottonwoods...This cottonwood canopy was particularly wonderful just before a rain, when the leaves began to shiver, rattle in their papery way. The whole town seemed to tingle then, and the sound picked up when a gust of wind from the west ushered in the rain, and next the air was filled with the seethe of water onto all that foliage. In Gros Ventre even a dust-settler sounded like a real weather event."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Bull ride at the Choteau Rodeo
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "'WELCOME!' crackled a thuderblast of voice over our heads. 'To the Gros Ventre rodeo!'"
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Recording: Rain at Freezeout Lake Headquarters (excerpt)
Recorded by: Rice, Jeff
Inspiration from Ivan Doig: "That month of June swam into the Two Medicine country. In my life until then I had never seen sidehills come so green, the coulees stay so spongy with runoff..The cool wet mood of June continued and about the middle of the month our part of Montana had had its solidist rain in years, a toad drowner that settled in around noon and poured on and on into the night."
Text: English Creek
Audio Rights: Audio file copyright Jeff Rice and Montana State University. Use of this audio file is allowed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
