ROUGH MAGIC

Program Note:

The Isle begins with a cloud of murmuring voices — a musical imagining of something hinted at in Shakespeare’s stage directions in The Tempest. The calls for “a burden, dispersedly” and “solemn music” suggest an off-stage refrain and/or perhaps something even more otherworldly. In Shakespearean Metaphysics, Michael Witmore writes: “Like the island itself, which seems to be the ultimate environment in which the play’s action takes place, music is a medium that flows from, within, and around that imaginary place into the ambient space of performance proper. If some of the courtiers from Naples and Milan are lulled to sleep by the island’s ‘solemn music’, the audience can hear this music in a way that it cannot feel the hardness of the boards that the sleeping players lie on.” In taking cues from this reading of the play, I’ve constructed my own musical reading of the island of The Tempest. Three monologues, by Ariel, Caliban, and Prospero, are set in three distinct ways. Ariel’s initial song of welcome appears, for the most part, homophonically, although its break from the quasi-robotic delivery (into the “burden, dispersedly”) points to the character’s vaporous & ethereal nature. Caliban’s famous description of the island as “full of noises” finds its home in a distraught and lonely monodic song, ornamented and driven by extraneous sounds. Prospero’s evocation of the various features and inhabitants of the island (from the final act) breaks apart into spoken voices that eventually dissolve into the wordless voices of the beginning, mirroring his pledge to throw his book of spells into the sea (and possibly to return to the island’s pre-lingual state). The harmonic material of the beginning and the end of the piece (the murmuring voices) is a 24-chord progression that includes all major and minor triads of the Western 12-note system (for fun). As Prospero says: “But this rough magic I here abjure, and when I have required some heavenly music, which even now I do, to work mine end upon their senses that this airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book. (Solemn music)”

Lyrics:

ARIEL:
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here, and there, and sweet sprites bear
the burden.
[Burden dispersedly, within]
Hark, hark, bow wow: the watchdogs bark, bow wow.
[Burden dispersedly, within]
Hark, hark, I hear, the strain of strutting Chanticleer
Cry cock-a-diddle-dow.
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange:
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.
[Burden: ding dong.]
Hark now I hear them, ding dong bell.

CALIBAN:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

PROSPERO:

You elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And you that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though you be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
(Solemn music)

Program Note and Lyrics:

My ideas for making a piece highlighting the very different vocal qualities of the Dessoff Choir and Roomful of Teeth were crystallized by a metaphor I happened to come across in Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death: “Necessity is like a sequence of consonants only, but in order to utter them there must in addition be possibility. When this is lacking, when a human existence is brought to the pass that it lacks possibility, it is in despair, and every instant it lacks possibility, it is in despair.”

I asked the members of Roomful of Teeth to try to utter the most famous text about words in Western culture, the opening of the Gospel of John, using only consonants. Of course, it is impossible to do this. In order to make sounds, we use air, and air has shape. But that’s what Roomful of Teeth spends the first half of None More Than You trying to do:

N th bgnng wz th wrd,
nd th wrd wz wth gd,
nd th wrd wz gd.
nwn hz vr sn gd.

In response, the Dessoff choir sings lines from Whitman’s A Song of the Rolling Earth, which talk about how the words we need to live are everywhere around us, and even inside us:

Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?

No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea,

They are in the air, they are in you.

The music the Dessoff choir sings is inspired by the really stunning incarnation moment in the Credo of Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua. It’s kind of ironic that pange lingua means “Tell, tongue” since Whitman says it’s better not to:

I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best,

I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

In the course of the piece, the Dessoff singers help the Teeth singers move from the place of stringent necessity to a place of endless possibility, and the last part of the piece is nothing but vowels.

Many thanks to the members of Roomful of Teeth: Estelí, Martha, Caroline, Virginia, Eric, Thann, Dashon, and Cameron, and Brad Wells, the director; to Jeff Cook, who tracked and helped mix the pre-recorded track for this version of the piece; to Malcolm J. Merriweather and the Dessoff Choirs, who initiated the commission of this piece in honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday and to the New Music On The Point Festival, who co-commissioned the piece.

None More Than You is dedicated with deepest love to Meredith Ward, my chavruta and family member.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are she or he for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Program Note:
Psychedelics is, in part, an effort to integrate the many vocal techniques and effects mastered by Roomful of Teeth into one (semi-)coherent whole. The term psychedelic here is meant to evoke a plethora of bright and vivid (almost surreal) colors blended and twisted in strange, otherworldly ways. My aim was to create a piece that aggressively challenged the notion of what a long-form vocal piece can be - both in terms of its delivery and subject matter. I think the human voice is a magically flexible tool - so much more so than an instrument you hold or blow into. The possibilities are in a sense limitless, especially when working with performers like Roomful of Teeth with a sense of adventure and an exceedingly high level of technique.

In terms of actual subject matter, the piece is an attempt, albeit an abstract one, to reckon with a psychological breakdown that I experienced as a young adult, and to parallel that with the seemingly apocalyptic strains of our current collective state - my objective being to humanize and somehow come to terms with the inevitability and, ultimately, healing nature of destruction. In this sense, the term "psychedelic" refers more to the ability to observe startling and strange occurrences with a fluid, dreamlike sense of attachment. I have begun to believe the human apocalypse will happen slowly, incrementally, both in our shared physical world and our individual spiritual worlds, and that apocalypses, similarly to wildfires in the west, are part of a natural process, a shedding of skin, and house within them beauty in the guise of elegy. By fully taking notice of our fate as our culture sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss and we continue to pollute and destroy our world, I think we can take possession of the resulting sadness and heartbreak, we can own the process, and come to accept and embrace our role in it. As I've heard said, "Things only reveal themselves in passing."

Lyrically, my aim was collage rather than traditional narrative - a fabric of text that reflects the growing chaos of stimuli in our society interrupted by moments of clarity and longing. There are a number of cultural reference points, but they are meant to form a swarm of images, not a literal, linear narrative.

Lyrics:

I. Deep Blue (You Beat Me)

Beneath the pandemonium twilight
lay pink poison thoughts with the hashtag #odeath.

Carried in on a white horse, shown on the zoom cam, rain on the dome.
And in the corridor: bastions of light.

Deep Blue, you beat me.
All the things I've gathered are stuck outside the door.

Nothing is a dream in this world, nothing is a dream.

There's a crack in the dome where the light comes in.

We don’t stand a chance…

II. I am the Watchtower

I am the watchtower I watch for dogs…

I am the Yeti speaking in tones.
Xochitl just ate 13 blue popsicles. She is just a runaway.
Oh Labyrinth, she's the pride of the Aztecs!

The Yeti is a poltergeist.

I am the watchtower I watch for dogs…

III. My Apothecary Light

I drive into the blackness like in Philip K Dick
and dream the dreams of Mark Sandman
and wear the jeans of Jean Valjean…

Death is a strange bird and I am a Pontiac.
I’ve been branded by seagulls and now you’ve been warned.

There was snow on the beach but it wasn’t love.
Endless desire is the only cure for pain.

Crush Reebok!

In my apothecary light…

A single star casts blame on the earth, its light begs karmic reprimand.
The final Fear is psychedelic like a bird in a plane stray from the flock

Sugarbits, transmogrify me!

So everything is quiet, everything is clean.

The carnage has clear intentions

To all who have been blinded in one eye,
I present to you: the Desert!

Program Notes:

Bits torn from words examines the mental health condition of generalized anxiety disorder – how the dread of even the most inconsequential circumstances feels gargantuanly out of proportion to its relative impact. In expanded song form, voices traverse through wavering pitches, surrendered exclamations, and quivering breaths, all conveying the vivid manifestations of anxiety in the body and psyche. The title comes from the opening pages of Dictee (1982) by the pioneering Korean American conceptual artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-82). Through intricate diagrams and vivid prose, Cha illustrates the visceral phenomenology of vocalization, and the yearning to say and be heard.

In the first movement, Reach across oceans (intro), a soloist desperately wails into the expanse in an attempt to reach another. Evoking p’ansori, this Korean vocal tradition nearly requires damage to the vocal cords in such a way to produce a uniquely raw and soul-wrenching intensity. In the second movement, I’m terrible at making decisions (refrain), the mental fatigue of facing infinite options is expressed through a repetitive torrent of utterances. The third movement, Notice how your body spreads like water (post-refrain), comes from Yoga nidra, a guided meditation practice for the purposes of sleep and relieving stress which often helps me to find a place allowing the ability to rest. The fourth movement, GaNaDaRaMaBaSa AJaChaKaTaPaHa (bridge), concentrates on the 14 consonants of the Korean alphabet, the very roots and building blocks of the language through aspirated articulations layered in chained suspensions. From here, the beginning of the piece returns in this fifth movement, embracing our coexistence with the natural ebb and flow of anxiety in our consciousness.

Finally, the last movement poses the question: “If __________ did happen, how bad would it be?” Taken from a worksheet from my therapist on disputing irrational anxieties, the question serves as a space for introspection and mindfulness, to be more compassionate with ourselves, to comfort and to nourish. If it doesn’t go perfectly, if it doesn’t pan out, and so on and so forth… how bad would it be?

Text:

Reach across oceans (intro)

i’m happy
i’m happy
i’m happy
i’m happy to go with the—
I’m terrible at making decisions (refrain)
flow
the flow
i’m happy to go with the flow
i’m happy to go with
the flow
is that okay with (x4)
You?
flow
flow
is that okay with You?
is that oh u oh u okay okay is that oh
oh is that oh oh
oh is that oh oh
oh is that oh u oh u u u
flow
with You? (x14)

Notice how your body spreads like water (post-refrain)

오우
어음
오우아이
오우아이예
오우아이예아오우
오우아이예
이야
이야아이
아애아오아애아오
이야아
이야오아이야
이야아이
이야아애이야
어음음
어음
음
음

GaNaDaRaMaBaSa AJaChaKaTaPaHa (bridge)

가
나
다
라
마
바
사
아
자
차
카
타
파
하
가나다라마바사아자차카타파하

Reach across oceans (reprise)

i’m happy
i’m happy
i’m happy
i’m happy to go with the—
flow
the flow
i’m happy to go with the flow
i’m happy to go with
the flow
is that okay with (x4)
You?
with You?
with You?
with You?
is that okay with You?

If __________ did happen, how bad would it be? (outro)

…how bad would it be?
…how bad would it be? (...would it be?)
…how bad…?