They Are For You
I. Coming
II. Meditation: How To Eat An Apple
III. Burlesque
I. Coming
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II. Meditation: How To Eat An Apple
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III. Burlesque
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In November of 2022, I went to see my friend Rebecca Frazier-Smith perform with Austin Cantorum at St. Martin's Lutheran Church. It was a lovely concert, and I thought to myself, "maybe I should compose something for voices some day." The next month, my friend E. D. Watson announced her first chapbook, Anorexorcism. It is incredible; here is where you can buy it.
The ending of the back cover reads:
The poems in Anorexorcism are a reclamation of appetites and a battle-hymn of self-love. They call our predators by name. These poems shed shame and run naked with scars and cellulite on display. They masturbate. They bleed and shit and meditate. They won't sit still in church. They are a little bit gay. They are not for your mom. They are for you.
Seven days later, "Burlesque" was drafted.
I knew I wanted the set to include three poems, and I put together "Coming" a couple months later, just in time to share with friends at Rebecca Frazier-Smith's March Friday Fête. That didn't exactly go over very well, so maybe I got discouraged, I don't know. I chose my third poem, "Meditation: How To Eat An Apple," and dropped the project for a year.
Fast forward to this week - my piano student had to cancel her lesson on Tuesday, and I didn't do my usual Wednesday morning book repair at Valley View Elementary because Milli was on a field trip. With two whole mornings wide open, as well as an ever present jealousy admiration for my composer friend Phara, I finally took on the middle movement.
Burlesque
Jan 06, 2023
Burlesque
The woman is fat, there is no
other way to say it, though
I want to find a nicer word:
Rubenesque or curvy, maybe—
but that feels dishonest, tame.
She is fat
and she is gorgeous
blonde hair tumbling to her waist
she wears a skirt of shimmy-fringe
over an ass like a full moon rising
from the stage, swaying side to side
her arms tremble like cups of cream,
the rolls on her sides gleam like
pearl handles on a tureen of gravy—
and the things she can do with a hula hoop
defy every law of physics I’ve ever seen, as do those
monumental thighs, breasts that slosh in her hands: riches spilling.
The audience roars in delight, they hoot and stamp,
they slap the tables, she is fat, and
she is beautiful and they can look
but they can’t have her, she belongs
to herself, naked and not ashamed,
she is triumphant and beautiful
beautiful
beautiful
goddess rising
from the stage.
I knew Anorexorcism would be my literary source the moment I cracked the book open, for I was on the lookout for a perspective that was distinctly fresh. I'm a wild composer - not a trained one - and I wanted bold, brilliant writing. How lucky for me that one of my friends happens to be exactly all of that and more. Every poem in Anorexorcism speaks to me on some level, but easily, immediately, this was the selection I identified with most strongly. Yes, I sometimes wish my body were different, but no, I have never actually had an eating disorder. Yes, I am wary of men, but Jeff wasn't my story to tell. Yes, I have some androgynous traits; I don't consider myself overtly "girly," but no, I have never been mistaken for a boy. But lusting after a fat woman on stage? I think we can all agree that that's just plain fun.
In this, my first choral composition, I took advantage of writing for eight voices and penned lush harmonies full of clusters and suspensions, half directed by voice leading and half directed by functional harmonic ideas. The harmonies are purposely rich - a most instinctive way to write about fatness. I only break this harmonic language when our attention is turned to "the audience roars in delight," for here, the author is making observations about the audience rather than the woman on stage. Compared to our subject, the people are jarring, ugly. As well deserved, they get plastered with a sforzando on an augmented chord, which chromatically descends to settle down into a dominant 7th, leading us back into the lush harmonic world of admiring the goddess on stage.
There's a lot of word painting, but all of that's obvious so I won't bore you with those details. I might point out that I like composing for words that were never conceived for the purpose of music, but this definitely derails conventions of form. It's exciting to write for voices, and as a pianist, I don't love being constrained by range. You can tell; I push both the highs and the lows because these extremes are fitting to the text - powerful and gorgeous.
Coming
Mar 03, 2023
Coming
I am twenty-seven
the first time it happens:
a gift I give myself
no one ever
taught me how or
touched me well.
I just thought I
didn’t like it
but no—
this, this
is a river
of life
I have plunged
into, I drink
I swim, I loll
upon its banks
in the sunlight
drowsing.
I am safe here
there is no pain
no hands around
my throat, no
cruel fingers
digging in—
I slip free
a silver fish
flashing like a coin
disappearing
into the waterfall,
into the white roar.
If I'm going to spend my time composing, it might as well be about masturbation. There are already too many songs about everything else. Orgasms (radiating pleasure, rhythmic contractions), together with waterfalls (bodies of water falling under the power of gravity), made their way into my score as lots of rhythmic layering. The waterfall motive at the opening, six notes that outline a descending minor 7th, is used as a building block for most of this piece. While "Burlesque" is more about harmonies, this one is more about rhythms, textures, and effects.
Twenty-seven years of age for a first orgasm is a tale of female pleasure not being prioritized. I emphasized the message by giving the words "I am twenty-seven" 27 eighth-note beats. The selection is written in 3/4, but that specific line is actually felt in 4/4. The math nerd in me sees the number 27 as 33, so "I am twenty-seven" is repeated three times at the end of the piece.
The motive is easily split into two parts: the descending stepwise motion in the top line, and the bottom line's descending second followed by a third. The top two sopranos at "I just thought I didn't like it" sequence the stepwise motion while the bottom two altos sequence the second and third. At the same time, the middle four voices create layers of the minor 7th outline backwards (ascending) on the word "no." This ascending minor seventh will come back into play at the end of the piece.
"Plunged into" has a new, foreign sound based on the whole tone scale with distant sirens to evoke a magical and colorful place or state of being in this "river of life." "In the sunlight drowsing I am safe here" - how could this not be in C major? And so it is. Not too surprising that I set up the transition with a tritone, which makes landing in C major even more of a relief.
At the return of the A section, the top six voices reverse the opening entirely: it's retrograde, like a reflection. As this happens, they really do turn into a waterfall (perhaps the other side of the waterfall), and as they fade to whispers, a white roar. In fact, the word "roar" is lost and barely audible as a word; it's more of a sound, and the ending breathy iterations of the motive in retrograde at "hhhhh" may very well lose their pitches.
Meditation: How To Eat An Apple
Apr 12, 2024
Meditation: How to Eat an Apple
after Thích Nhất Hạnh
while everyone is napping / go out into the garden / hold out your hand /
from Eve to Snow White / the stories you’ve been told / are full of
poisoned apples / now you’ve got your own piece of fruit / feel its heft /
its tight skin / against your palm / the green freckles / on its curved cheek /
you could kiss them / sniff its sunken center / where the stem comes out /
smell the sweet bittergreen clean scent of sap / set the edge of your teeth
against it / bite down / close your eyes / when the juice fills your mouth /
taste the sun and rain inside it / feel it drip down your chin / chew twenty
thirty forty times / make it last / there’s no poison here / don’t think about
anything else / worship it with your tongue / then swallow / behold what
you are / feel the glory on your skin
One of the initial problems was that I didn't know what meditations should sound like. Another problem was that I thought I ought to look up Buddhist chants for inspiration, but I didn't actually want to. I wrote the other two from my instincts alone and wanted to do the same here, so that internal struggle might have helped me shelf the project.
About a month ago, I started taking a meditation class for the first time, which means that if I don't know what meditations should sound like by now, it's probably not going to happen. With one of the two problems solved, all I had to do was drop the idea of looking up Buddhist chants, and I was ready to go. My instincts tell me that meditations are "old," and "old" means perfect fifths. I was just telling Phara that I think everybody has their own personal library of music inside their own minds, and for me, the most real fifth - the truest fifth I know - isn't "Twinkle, Twinkle" at all. It's "March of the Winkies," which is the scary part from The Wizard of Oz. Those guards outline a perfect fifth starting on an A with acciaccaturas on an F natural. And so the beginning was composed. Open fifths. On an A. With acciaccaturas on an F natural.
There's a symmetry to odd numbers (which I tend to avoid in real life), that seem fitting to meditation, so they're everywhere. It's scored for seven voices. There's also something distinctly unmusical about meditation sounds - they're not in tune, they do not hold pitch, and everything is unmeasured. They're distinctly and very purposely unperfectionistic. I know that "ommmms" don't have to be consonant. But would it be better if they were? NO, IT WOULD BE WORSE, LAN. The standing bell is too loud. Nobody, including the instructor, cares to find the magic in listening through to the very end of the sound. To me, the moment you can't tell whether or not the sound has entirely evaporated is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How rich these meditators must be, to give up all these pots of gold! So rich, so awkward, so unmusical. I placed the text awkwardly onto my musical phrasing with the idea of trying "not to fix," and "not to strive," and aiming exactly for and no higher than, "this is fine."
At the end of section C, "fills your mouth" is set to the music of "riches spilling" from Burlesque, which means that I have composed the idea of breasts spilling into and filling your mouth. You're welcome. And right after that, "taste the sun and rain inside it" is set to the music of "in the sunlight drowsing" from Coming. In this way, the middle movement has latched onto its sexier outer movements.
The ending of the piece includes an actual meditation for the audience. The audience should be very much in the present moment, listening intently for 7 beats of pure silence, anticipating the final chord like a standing bell that lasts for 9 half notes. And as in real meditation, we do not end where we began: we have been lifted from the A's of "March of the Winkies" into the radiance of Bb major.
