Slow Stories: A Collaboration of Storytelling, Music, and Art
Combining narrative, music, and painting, Slow Stories is a collaboration between Bette A. and Brian Eno, based on Bette A.’s short story collection of the same name. For the vinyl, Brian Eno’s ambient compositions accompany Bette A.’s voice as she tells two stories from the book—"The Endless House” and “The Other Village.” Together, the artists paint individual canvases to accompany each book and record in the bundle, extending the narrative landscape into an ethereal visual realm.
Each bundle includes:
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Slow Stories by Bette A. (Jacketed Hardcover, 176 pages)
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2 Slow Stories vinyl record (12-inch, white vinyl, with gatefold jacket featuring original music from Brian Eno and narration by Bette A.)
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Original painting on canvas board, by Bette A. and Brian Eno, numbered and signed by both artists (20 cm x 20 cm)
This is a strictly limited edition of 444 bundles (not available digitally).
Released by Unnamed Press
The artists' proceeds of the sale of the bundle will go to their charities: The Heroines! Movement, a global storytelling movement around women role models, co-founded by Bette; and Earth Percent, a charity that channels funds from the music industry to organizations that do the most impactful work around the climate emergency, co-founded by Brian.
More about Slow Stories
In villages and small cities, mysterious phenomena occur. A box appears at the edge of town and silently demands to be filled with meaning. A skinny little man trudges in from the desert refusing to put down the massive rock he carries on his back. And when a girl is born inside a poor one-bedroom house, a new door appears, leading to a new room, leading to another. –The additions to the house are impossible to enter and made of an unbreakable mirrored glass, reflecting the growing rage and confusion of the villagers. Naturally, people must respond.
In other locales, a memorial is raised for twenty-four fallen soldiers, but the story is distracted by one man, who refused to arm himself and fight; and inside a community of disembodied voices, we listen as the creatures try to solve an existential riddle. Meanwhile, there are fantastic discoveries that young people keep secret until they are no longer young, enthralling monsters made of smoke and desire, and a short biography for the last inventor, who, “like the first inventor,” was a woman.
Slow Stories conjure a tension that demands quiet attention, while the narrator’s voice insists that we take our time, and contemplate our own place in the universe. Reminiscent of Calvino’s fabular world building, though tinged perhaps more radically with concerns over safety and sharing, sovereignty and community, Bette’s A.’s voice transports us to other worlds while resonating powerfully inside our own.