signed, sealed, delivered

the MAP proposal is in! i uploaded it and posted the works with several hours to spare! i'm done, baby!

thanks to corey, wura and ana l. for looking through my rough drafts. especially ana for sitting down and looking at my penultimate draft and helping me streamline the language. thank you, wonderful partner for reading it in the 11th hour and getting really excited about it. i really think the proposal is quite good. and thanks to yvan and eve for tolerating my last-minute request as collaborators on the piece. as a celebratory gesture, i am including parts of the project description here:

“Una Corda” is a five-part solo performance with live musicians and video meditating on the multiple facets of cancer.

The una corda pedal on the piano causes the instrument to strike only one string. The effect is a dampened sound that makes the piano whisper. People I know who have lived with cancer have talked about not quite feeling “one hundred percent”—still the same person, but muted, quieter, fuzzier. “Una corda” is also Italian for “one rope/thread.” Cancer often serves as the unwelcome but unifying thread amongst people of many different races, classes and sexualities—people who have never met but are somehow kin. My mother died of cancer six years ago. Only within the last year have I been able to examine that life-changing experience within my creative life. This project explores my own vulnerabilities as someone who has been touched profoundly by cancer. At the same time, it treats cancer as a social and aesthetic signifier invoking discourse about grief as a spiritual process, health care as a machine, and the different symbolisms of cancer within our collective societal memories.

...

My training as a singer is limited to sight-singing classes and membership in my conservatory chorus. However, as a conservatory-taught composer, I know the operatic canon and its stylistic traditions. This specialized knowledge but imperfect training underlies the main aesthetic of the project—one based on the tension between mastery, and failure. The imperfection, the awkwardness, and the visible struggle between my limitations and the medium fully engage the idea of cancer. Cancer is disruptive. It is unpredictable. It is “wonky.” Overarching ruptures in craft and skill interspersed with moments of virtuosity determine the profile of the piece.

The general structure is a setting of Latin Mass (i.e. Kyrie, Gloria, etc.). An original libretto is interspersed between and layered onto the Mass. Although the liturgical Mass genre comes with its own set of histories and conventions, I am interested in how the language of this genre changes and interacts with the genre of opera. As a set text, it intervenes in preventing any treatment of cancer from becoming too literal, clichéd or hackneyed. I am also deeply invested in the spirituality of Mass. It has been the vehicle for Catholic piety and corruption for centuries, rich with themes of transformation, epiphany, and redemption. While I set parts of the Latin Text in “traditional” chorales, other parts are set in radically new ways: sometimes throat-sung, sometimes whispered, sometimes piped through a computer voice. While this characteristically Catholic text is the organizing principle of the opera, I complicate and diffuse it by interjecting and layering the Buddhist ceremonies, chants and imagery I so closely associate with death and cancer.

...

On Process:
I will employ different techniques for the writing and composition processes. Some sections will begin with a libretto and then set to music. Other sections will consist of music and words created simultaneously, including structured improvisation and indeterminacy, as led by creative director, Yvan Greenberg. As the main performer of the piece, I will train with a vocal coach in multiple vocal techniques.

on procrastination

okay,
i had budgeted this time to writing the MAP grant. i did work on it yesterday. but now i find myself blogging instead. writing this grant is terrifying. but i can't fail this year. i've enlisted the help of three collaborators whose work i admire greatly. part of me enlisted their help because i just need it. this opera will kick my ass even if i manage to have a whole broadway crew behind me. i'm beginning to accept that i just cannot do certain things alone.

but part of me enlisted their help just so that i would not flake out on the fund raising. it's still amazing that i need to have someone else help me finish things. or maybe it's just the tedium of the grant. since, well, i AM actually MAKING things. which is the revolution of the decade for me.

two of the collaborators are loved friends from college. corey dargel is a musician/composer/performer who is dead serious about humor and playfully brazen about serious music. even in college, we knew he was one of the most talented composers in the program. we were right. he's now making his way as a singer/songwriter as well as a concert singer/performer and a member of laboratory theater. i love corey very much. it seems a bit trite to write that here. i get the distinct feeling that he doesn't read this blog, so at least i don't have to feel embarrassed. his success as an artist has been slowly increasing. and while i might have felt jealous of him once, no longer. i just smile and think, it's good the world sees how stunningly talented he is. and now he's agreed to be a part of my project. it is intensely meaningful.

yvan greenberg is my other collaborator friend from college. i lived in the same house with him for a semester. we were in the same program, but somehow our paths crossed in multiple other ways. he is deceptively quiet. one of those people who might sit in a corner and most folks won't notice until he says something that makes all movement stop. or until he begins performing a tick or mannerism to the point of virtuosity. yvan taught me a lot about listening and seeing. he was never didactic or pedagogical, he just had stuff--in his room, in his head. he also has this thing for the absurd, and in college he was never shy about bringing the absurd to reality. i have so many memories about yvan that are wordless, but involve meaningful glances or a hug so vulnerable you might just melt into the ground. now yvan is the director and founder of laboratory theater. and i've asked him to direct my opera. i know that his eye and ear will somehow show me something about myself and my piece that i would never see on my own.

yvan, corey and i were part of an experimental music ensemble called "les moutons" with jim altieri and bill stevens (for a full score pdf of the music that inspired our name, go here). les moutons kept me alive for a semester. it was my life force. we would stage impromptu performances in lounges, in wilder bowl, almost anywhere. we performed a week-long piece. we took pieces from the "experimental music canon" and actually performed them. our work was playful, political, awkward, charismatic. and in hindsight, my relationship with "les moutons" managed to keep me from completely hating (white) men and becoming some type of lesbian separatist.

and now i listen to robert ashley's "dust," a piece i wouldn't even consider listening to if i didn't spend that time as part of les moutons. my opera will include a section much like ashley's "spoken" opera. i suppose it's a more modern version of sprechtstimme. jeez, i think i managed not to totally misspell that. (see pierrot lunaire.)

and i've managed to write through this morning's grant writing time. i have to go to rehearsal in an hour. so that gives me either time to shower, or i can poke at the grant for about 15 minutes. dear readers. please kick my ass about this. the grant is due feb 1. and when i think about it, it sends me back to memories and future memories. but now i must be pragmatic.

as an accountability measure, i will blog about the grant again within two days. if you don't hear from me. holler.

on sleeping and insomnia

okay, so i'm just gonna go out on a blogging cliche limb and indulge my megalomaniacal everyday minutiae middle-class self-important drabble and say it: i'm depressed.

there. much better.

well, not really. jeez people, i'm depressed. and when i look at my life, i really got nothin' for it. that is (for those of you who do not speak samwise gamgee), i have no reason to be depressed. i have a lovely partner, a house that is beautiful, and a couple of loving dogs to help warm it. i am in the most creative period of my life since i graduated from college. and i'm actually seeing small projects finish and come into fruition. i refuse to do any job that doesn't seem fulfilling to me. and i see friends on a fairly regular basis (regular basis for me, that is).

so what, pray tell, the FUCK is wrong with me?

i spent the entire day yesterday in bed. yes, in bed! and not in the good way. no, it was in that undeniably bad way. that, i-don't-want-to-face-the-world-so-i'm-just-not-gonna! way.

and my mind shoots all sorts of reasons at me. is it grief? is it some type of re-organizing of my life? is it my crazy neuroses around the play i am in? is it my saturn return? and fuck-it-all, i don't know! any reason seems just as good as the next.

and now, because of yesterday's all-day-in-bed debacle, where i actually think i slept for at least 16 hours, i'm having trouble sleeping. so i blog. and so, dearest readers, if you have made it thus far, please forgive me my indulgence. i needed to think that you would read this. and i needed to feel that i would be read. otherwise, i think i would have imploded from loneliness.

i HATE being DEPRESSED!

fuck depression. tomorrow, i shall buy a symbolic firearm, seek out depression and shoot it. (just in case there are some people out there who do not know me, i am generally opposed to firearms, thus the "symbolic" disclaimer.) i will kill it dead. it will plead and protest, and bargain with me, but i will look it in the eyes with my coldest stare and shoot it point blank in the forehead. and as its limp body hits the pavement, its fingers will twitch and i will be a little sad and dismayed. no one likes to put down a living being, even if it is depression itself.

but that's the plan. because i'm sick of depression. and if it's not going to leave me alone, well. it should know better.

be gone, depression. you're not needed here!

on music crushes

okay, synchronicity is my word.

so, i've been getting back into music (see previous posts) to a religious degree, even. well, last week, lovely partner (a baltimore native) sent me an article marin alsop, the new director of the baltimore symphony orchestra. she is currently being touted as the "first woman conductor of a major american orchestra."

since about the age of 11, or so, my dream was to become a conductor. i worked through high school pursuing this dream. i applied to oberlin because it had a masters program in conducting. i ended up in composition because it was the only thing i thought i could possibly be accepted into a conservatory doing. unfortunately, i only began taking conducting classes just as my ardor for classical music started to wane. i wanted out so bad, that i did not complete the conducting sequence and was therefore not able to apply for the MA in conducting. conducting seemed so elitist, so hegemonic, a symbol of the evils in the world i was working against. besides, i was supremely insecure about my musical talents and smarts, and i couldn't bare the thought of standing in front of hordes of musicians who i thought were better than me. so i let go of the dream. i don't regret it, but to this day, i have small fantasies of waving a baton for a local high school orchestra or community string ensemble. we'll see.

this all came flooding back to me as i read about alsop. i found one of her recordings of brahms in a used cd store. neither i nor lovely partner have ever liked brahms. but we somehow liked this recording. then, lovely partner and i spent last night watching the videos on her website. she's so enthusiastic and articulate about the music she directs and her vision. she loves new music and is committed to programming living composers at almost every concert.

every video clip we watched, we kept saying, "oh my god, she's amazing. and she's such a dyke!" and thus began our crush on marin alsop. because of my past as a conductor and conductor wannabe, my crush is much more evident than lovely partner's. so much so that she kept teasing me and saying, "i'd lend you out to marin alsop." it turns out that alsop is out and has a french hornist partner and a son.

regardless, we are converts now. we even planned a trip back to lovely partner's baltimore family around an alsop-directed bso concert. yes. we bought the concert and plane tickets in that order.

i know this crush is all part of my return to music. it seems that i'm meant to return to it with a new intensity and fervor. and that is exactly what is happening.

dear jesus,
i pray to you not as one of your followers.

in fact, i pray to you as someone who holds many of your followers in contempt. i pray to you as an ancestor, a predecessor, as far-fetched and unlikely as that might be.

because today, you showed yourself to me. as i sat, writing music of praise as part of a piece about profanity and pain, you arrived. you saw that i was using words meant for you, and you helped me birth a piece. a finished piece.

bars and bars, not left languished and forgotten. but bars cohesive and devout, and most importantly, punctuated with double bars.

double bars! how long has it been since i've drawn double bars!

yes, it is only dots on a page. yes, it will need to be reworked, edited, rescored and polished. it is not perfect. and it is so simple, it might have even been written by someone else before. but it is done. and it came from me with the ease of a sigh. and i was in it. i listened to every note, i felt the timbres of my creaky piano. i actually let each tone wash over my body and into me and listened for the praise. listened for the pathos. listened for you.

perhaps the reason why your followers are so devout is not because you are the only begotten son. perhaps it is because you are the muse, the mentor, the spirit of creativity and making. perhaps it is because you have sat with many before me, writing, drawing, scribbling notes and just at the right moment, you have whispered, inaudibly, "yes, that's the one."

because that is what you were to me, today, just over an hour ago. setting old text written by old men, men who would probably never even deign to sit next to me, you knew that it needed your guidance.

and so.

alleluia.
laudate eum in sono tubae.
hossanna in excelsis.

have mercy

kyrie eleison
christe eleison
kyrie eleison

on composing

and so i've been composing. if you've been reading my blog lately, you might have noticed or guessed that i'm in a very intense emotional place. many things have converged over the past week or so, and i have found myself reticent and melancholy.

and playing music.

which is rare for me. you see, when i was at the illustrious oberlin college conservatory of music, i was immersed in music roughly sixteen hours a day. i loved it, then i hated it, and then it all began to feel so futile. the love i had for music when i arrived in ohio had somehow faltered. even though i have written music since i graduated, it has always been an uphill battle.

but these past few days have found me singing along loudly to songs on my ipod. i've been obsessed with the song "falling slowly" to the point that i've written down the lyrics and chords and i play it on my piano every chance i get. i even recorded myself singing it. and then, just an hour ago, i did something rash.

i started to compose music. yes, it consisted of three notes total. they are three notes that will be in my opera. oh, have i not mentioned the opera? it's the one about cancer, the one that i tried to write a grant for last year but failed to submit. now i'm preparing another proposal anew, with more specific ideas and some material. i've enlisted my lovely friend corey dargel to write at least one "aria/song" for me. but...

i'm gonna have to compose the rest.

which is what my soul wants to do. really, it does. but just now, as i was sitting over my three notes (they are g, e, and b, incidentally, an e minor triad) i found myself at once deeply connected to my piano, like a plug in a socket, and then also fundamentally repulsed by it. i recall composing assignments in college and how i would sit in the library, write about ten bars and then go to the bathroom. i'd come back, write ten more and then go find a friend. it was very rare for me to compose very much music in one sitting. i just thought i was lazy, a perennial procrastinator.

now, for the first time, i realize this is not true. as much as i've tried to distance myself from music, it is that abstraction, that inability to describe music, that totally uncerebral part of it that has always hooked me. when i am in music the way that i came to it, music is pure and uncomprimised emotion. even the stuff by the serialists. it hits a core of me that feels so close, i can actually experience ecstasy.

and it makes me feel vulnerable. like i have no skin. like anything and everything can and will harm me.

this is why i learned to love music when i was an angsty teen. this is why i learned to hate music as an angry twenty-something.

singing other people's music still has a distance. i didn't write it, so there is that tiny space in the performance of it that i can explore affect. but my own music, fuck.

i've never written a piece of music (never finished one, that is) that i could play. i thought it was just because i'd never gotten around to it. but now i know. it's because there you are, playing out the notes that are so dear to you, presenting not only your body, but your naked, naked soul. with no "instrumentalist" or "singer" to blame. how the hell can i do that?

the thing is, i will. this cancer opera (called "una corda," did i mention that?) will get done. i'm supremely uncomfortable about it. i have so much anxiety, i've actually been having trouble eating. but somewhere inside me, i know it is time. it is time to become that vulnerability, to embrace it. and, fuck, it is the most frightening thing in the world right now.

i think that's why it's the best, too.

dirge

today marks the sixth year since my mother passed away. here is what i wrote:

and when you died, the dirge began with a phone bell, and the barefoot carpet steps of three adult children newly orphaned. it continued with four stifled sighs, the squishy sound of sitting on the floor, a short inhale of breath through the nose.

i began the slow chorale. when we knew what the bell meant, so early, so dark in the morning. that was the only hello that meant really anything. it was the only hello i was frightened to utter.

after the click and dull thud of plastic on metal, the rude beep of the modern off switch, sleepy, luke-warm clothes played out into the light brightness, suddenly cold by the winter chill.

doors opened and closed only after two nods and a grimace. lights flicked on and the wind slashed branches across the window pane.

the next movement commenced with liquid poured into cups, stopped throats barely swallowing. with eight feet shuffling to step in shoes on the stair, each foot pausing to nod at your shoes. it crescendoed to that crack of the door, that muffled squeak, a pause and a thud.

then four doors open and four doors slam and metal upon metal creak as the garage opens wide to spit us out into the country air. the largo beat of the tired engine, guiding us on a journey etched too well in our brains. short staccattos of falsely cheered voices. sniffled tremelos and booming snorts. a hand, warm and calm, whispering softly against another cold and frightened one.

the third movement screamed with the early morning chatter of the city waking up. with the clatter, clatter, click-click of the garage ticket dispenser. and errant cuss of the oldest, not able to take an overcrowded space, glasses a bit foggy and moist.

yet the middle section was filled with silence. pregnant, stagnant, changed. no longer tense with dreaded anticipation, but raw and swollen with an abrasion that still has yet to heal.

dull, syncopated footsteps. dings and clacks of elevator bells. a swift push, the sucking lift. more dull, syncopated footsteps again.

gliding, sliding doors. beeps of your neighbors' vitals. long, slow breathy wheezes from balding patients' ventilators.

upon the arrival of the march, your room is still.

the machines that were only yesterday fused to your body have been removed and you are finally free.

the chorale resumes, but says nothing at all. the libretto reads, "blah, blah," but underneath, in parentheses, it reads, is this what it means to feel loss? to feel nothingness? to feel the novocain spill and wash the mind?

and when the dirge began to wane, we realize it's a ruse. the music follows us to unexpected places. it clings to our bodies, it sounds in the ring of our ears, it becomes the score to our first dreamt dreams without you.

it is orchestrated in new ways. some instruments are standard--long distance phone calls, repeated refrains of "she's gone," knuckles rubbing violently against wet eyelids that refuse to listen. familar strangers speaking in multiple tongues, hearse motors, airports, monk chants and farewells.
but other instruments seem new. like the high-pitched nervous laugh that barrels from my chest at inappropriate times. like the click-clack of a dog's feet who loved you well and wonders when you will return. like the dry lick of the page, endless and barren, futile in the hopes of distraction.

a seemingly endless dirge. marching slowly, bleeding across changes in season, month, and year.

but then the dirge shifted. the voice of birds joined in, faint at first, but delicious and sweet. the wheezy sobs turned to tears, turned to vapor, turned to rain, turned to rivers, turned to the roaring sound of babbling brook and foaming tide.

the dirge, reluctant, but steadfast paced itself and moved forward. shedding black for red, ash for perfume, stone for sun-baked clay. the dirge, still present in dream, still fragrant with your hair, still clement and insistent followed new variations, evolved new themes.

until one day, i listened and the dirge sounded like a waltz, sounded like a reel, sounded like Giant Steps or Maple Leaf or Appalachian Spring.

all the sounds flowed together and watched as i walked on. gently coaxing, whispered caresses, wrapped around me when i thought i was alone.

and when you died, i lost my voice and had to travel to find it again.

but now, though sometimes frail or hoarse or scared, the voice can't help but sing, stronger, more robust than before. sing with the dirge that left your lungs, now years ago, but still so close. the dirge i thought mourned of you. the dirge i hated and muffled and screamed at. the dirge that marked your void, that lifted you on a pyre away from me forever.

i sing, sometimes soft, sometimes loud, always along with the melodies, the harmonies, the complex rhythms of that dirge.

because now i know--

the dirge is you.