The invention of the oud in the early Middle Ages is the subject of a provocative new documentary (currently unreleased & feeling a little rejected in its metal container) by former filmmaker & current electrical engineer Hermann Wrassler. Wrassler, whose lovely wife Maybelline is the leading Avon Brand Raspberry Rouge salesgirlie in the South-West Idaho District for three years running, can't play the instrument & is in fact completely tone deaf (also, color-blind & uppity-nosed), & so relied on expert testimony from friends of his who speculated on the past, future, current whereabouts & possible philosophic/political bent of the instrument which most scholars believe preceded the lute & which some betting men wager could hand the lute its ass in a basket.
Wrassler remains passionate about the project despite mistakenly returning one copy he had to Netflix instead of the recent Indiana Jones sequel. Netflix executives reportedly sent it on five more times until someone complained that they had gotten the wrong movie, & that person had mistaken Harrison Ford for Henry Ford, at whose auto plant the customer once lost the use of every long vowel after a mishap with a power window. But Wrassler was not cheered by the meager reception his magnum opus has thus far received:
"Did you see the last Indiana Jones movie?" he said, exasperated. "That fucking sucked!"
Scholars of the War On Sailing often find themselves enraptured by musical instruments, a common way to mis-transmit information in repressive or otherwise nonsensical cultures. Tweed Muppet's landmark seven volume History Of The Tambourine once reportedly sent Vladimir Putin into a rage because it revealed KGB techniques that he - Putin - thought were invented in his lifetime. As well, Young Sandy Arfster's Oboe, written & re-written at least two dozen times during her lifetime, & three times since her death, is widely read not only to discover what a "double reed" is but to understand how Hoover failed as the economy crashed around him.
Is the same true about Wrassler's "filmic history" of the Middle Eastern stringed instrument called the oud? The five Netflix customers who have seen it chose not to review it for the DVD rental agency, & the agency would not reveal the names for further research. What of Wrassler's friends? Have they seen it?
"I have no friends," said Wrassler.
Too many complete works are either unavailable (think of the last seventeen novels JD Salinger has written) or have been completely destroyed (think of the first seventeen novels JD Salinger wrote) for scholars to be sanguine about this short film (apparently only thirteen minutes long, minus previews) which was filmed on location in South-West Idaho, with some scenes secretly shot in a Home Depot ten minutes before closing. Repeated requests to Wrassler by this writer were denied, although when I offered to throw in a donut, he hesitated.
More research, as always, is needed.
