composition postcards

email from today to a man writing a book

I classify HATE SPEECH (2013) as mixed media or tape/piano work, even though it involves my voice with the live acoustic instrument. As I remember it, I grouped by minute different sentences, phrases and words, using as the text the Facebook post of a Montana politician who flippantly joked about the murder of Matthew Shepard. I whispered all of the text, some fast and some slow. I remember organizing the text in bubbles or circles to keep track of which material to speak in which minute. But essentially I made a tape part and uploaded it online. Then I encouraged audience members to engage the tape part by streaming it on their smartphones in the hall, beginning it at the beginning of the piece, within seconds of the first notes. I have a notated, handwritten piano score that doesn’t acknowledge or correspond to the text, but theoretically ends about when the ‘tape’ playing does. The execution of all the elements in performance results in a focal point of a piano surrounded by soft but maybe menacing antiphonal whispers, which in a way sums up my childhood as a bullied gay kid.

I do have a speaking-pianist piece called Autumn Lines (2001-08) which I never wrote down, but performed a handful of times and even recorded (it’s on Spotify, iTunes, etc). Even though the performances resemble each other down to the note, I have always felt a little weirdness about the piece as a piece, since my conservatory conditioning has me still thinking, despite myself, that pieces only become pieces when someone scribbles something on a page, which I may have even attempted with this piece a few times. But why? I last performed it in San Francisco several years ago, but then decided pretty firmly not to do it in public anymore. It’s a very personal piece, using David Young’s translation of Li Po’s poetry as its text, and something about performing it has always left me feeling super exposed and vulnerable afterward. So I’ve stopped. At least for now.

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journal from 8/12/11, san francisco

beautiful concert. not well attended, but completely affirming. met at least two incredible people, and had another group from Barre who I couldn’t for the life of me remember – but who remembered ME. Interesting.

Everything went well except, in my opinion, the last movement of Autumn Lines, which was a mess. Driven back to SF from Berkeley by a man in a rickety van – still don’t know his name.

Bonnie, the director of the festival and patroness of Berkeley, shared the afternoon with me. “I had such a FUN afternoon,” she said, and I did too.

Diarrhea all day. Hope this improves.

Tomorrow, round two. Hopefully fun.