ANDY ROSS The Fear Engine
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Is this an English musician’s idea of antipodean bliss?
Andy Ross is sitting in his apartment overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean at Bondi Beach. He is surrounded by his own studio, masses of equipment and instruments, and everything to allow him to create, and develop his own projects. How close to musical paradise is that?
“My favourite question,” he says of the ten questions which have driven his latest, unique multimedia project, “of all is the very last one – ‘If you knew you couldn’t fail … what would you do?’ It is a very powerful question … I heard it on a TED talk and I thought ‘Wow! That’s a good question.’”
His project – The Fear Engine – is centred around ten questions which are designed to explore the central theme of the project which Ross describes as “a metaphor for unconscious fears, fears that we all live by”. A hugely ambitious project as he has produced, more or less single handedly an album and an hour long documentary film with this theme in mind. The album includes a collection of ten songs deeply rooted in British rock of the 1970/80s with nods towards the subtle mix of sonic washes and accessible rock sensibility which characterise the work of Pink Floyd, 10cc, Yes, Godley & Creme and Howard Jones – the latter of whom features in the movie and who has worked extensively with Ross. The documentary interleaves interviews with a wide range of thoughtful people with the story of a man who leaves his work and goes searching for meaning in his life.
And why The Fear Engine? Ross explains that “It seems that people default to distrusting others”. You have to prove that you are trustworthy. That veneer of fear is a shroud over everything. And the news that goes out is so terrible that we end up saying ‘I don’t trust anybody’ Then that is coupled with darker unconscious fears that drive our behaviours. What Carl Jung would have called the shadow self, all the parts of yourself that you don't want to admit to having. That is the Fear Engine. That is where you are trying to hide.”
The album and film are the culmination of years of thinking about the nature of human beings and a lot of rigorous, positive thinking about “the meaning of life” in the twenty-first century.
Ross comes from an impeccable musical pedigree. His father, renowned jazz saxophonist, Ronnie Ross, worked with the likes of Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra; taught David Bowie to play sax; and played the famous sax solo on Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’.
His own credits include working with Paul McCartney, Robert Palmer, Basia and Tom Robinson and writing and producing for the likes of Howard Jones and Martin Grech.
He came to Australia looking for new challenges but initially had trouble finding work.
“When we came to Australia I was looking for work as a producer and composer … I was offered a job, which was highly irregular for me, to see if I could write a piece of music that would articulate the issues of drought.
“Because I was new to Australia, and had this open-eyed view and wanted to take on everything, I thought “Well I’ll give it a go” but I didn’t want to patronise the farmers by pretending I was Woodie Guthrie or Bob Dylan.
“I didn’t know anything about Australia let alone farming in Australia. So I said: ‘Can I visit the farmers and at least talk to them?’ and I had this fantastic experience of going out into New South Wales for a few weeks and meeting lots of farmers. There was one in particular who I stayed and worked with on a sheep farm.
My mother suggested I should write a journal because it was so unusual going and spending time on a sheep farm. I didn’t write a journal but I took a video camera and I got carried away with filming. This amazing story unfolded while I was there.
“I went with a very patronising view that it was all about water. I was told that the farmers were really suffering and that the story really needed to be told. I was met with short shrift by the farmers who told me ‘Don’t patronise us. We’re doing our best. In fact we’ve got some great ideas.’
“In the case of one farmer I was wondering why his sheep were all happy and healthy and he said: ‘Come with me’ and took me down the road. Five kilometres down the road were emaciated sheep, overgrazing. He said: ‘It’s the same rainfall.’ I thought it was an interesting point and wondered what was going on.
“So, the film became much more than just about water. It was about an inability to adapt, the difficulties of dealing with change and all sorts of interesting things. That’s what I learnt when I went out there.
“I produced all this interesting footage and I thought ‘What am to do with all this? It’s not the brief I’ve been given. I’m supposed to write a piece of music, I’m not a film maker” I felt I had to honour the farmer in a way. This man who had been struggling to do something positive about it. “So, I made a film – Well Beyond Water -. It went on to win an international film award. [New Zealand’s Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival - it took the prize for best short]. I was so shocked, but I realised that here was another way of communicating ideas. I had only ever worked in music but here was a story. It is all about composition and good pacing. It doesn’t matter what the medium is.”
Ross was eager to continue with his film career but did not want to rush into a project that he wasn’t totally committed to. It was nearly a decade later “I had this thought, that was inspired by the farmer actually because he’s such a positive man … he was determined not to whinge and he was determined to look for solutions …” I thought ‘I wonder if I can scale that up and ask people how to make the world a better place.’”
The idea was to craft a series of questions, find a cross section of people (from the ordinary to the extraordinary ), interview them (“talk to people who are not experts but are everyday people who have good intuition and good insights”) and to set the questions and the music against a man (he used himself to play the Everyman in the film) who “is the classic example of someone who has been trying to climb the corporate ladder all his life and has done so and has done pretty well. He is average. He is nothing special. He gets to 50 and his life has no meaning. He is secure. He’s got that security of knowing that he is not insignificant, and he’s got a nice house but he’s not happy. He’s trying to figure out where life’s meaning lies. That is symbolised by the story of him going to work and saying ‘I can’t do this anymore’. This is soulless. This is meaningless. It is all corporate. It is all dog eat dog. Why? Why is that important? He suddenly feels empty and he doesn’t know why. It is his search for meaning and that is symbolised by his refusal to go into the office … and he just walks away from civilisation. And he goes aimlessly, but doggedly through the streets. He is being pulled by something … by a desire for something. And he ends up getting on a train … ends up on a park … and then goes into farmland and then into the wilderness. He ends up by the sea.”
The result is a remarkably coherent multimedia statement which combines, songs, questions, thoughtful observations and a quest for life’s meaning. It is an inspired attempt to find meaning in the world and to be positive about the essential goodness and decency of humanity.
At a time when the world seems to be collapsing in so many ways (climate change, plague, poverty, authoritarian governments, economic chaos) it is a brave, deeply felt message of hope about the future of humanity.
As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1933 “The only thing we have to fear … is fear itself” and The Fear Engine has turned that stark truth into a powerful and positive, artistic multimedia experience.