Music Composition

In nature, the body is not just the self, but can also be understood as food, or fuel, for a larger motor of the living in an ecological relation. How can we know what it means, to be posthuman, or posthumanist, on this ontological level? This song is a conversation between bacteria, mold, fungus, and a recently dead human. These voices guide the listener through the after-death as their body decomposes and intimately enters the cycle of life.

Performance Score for vocalist + instruments + tape

In Bloom was initially commissioned by Productions Totem Contemporain for the instrument bol, which could be considered as a kind of percussion instrument with a membrane and compressed air, and live spoken voice.  This work was premiered with performer Francis Leduc.

The score for percussion and voice was later adapted as a score for wind ensemble for New Music Chamber Collective Alkali and featured Megan Johnson as a vocalist.

VOCAL SOLOIST

Your voice is a portal to materialisms beyond our human senses, guiding the listener through the simultaneous care and brutal indifference of nature. You are a pink-collar worker of death, and you take great pride in your work. The vocalist can take some liberties with the text by repeating consonants or words for embellishment, inserting mouth sounds or unintelligible whispering, or switching between whispered and soft-spoken vocal styles. The rhythms of the text should more or less correspond to what is in the tape part: for this reason, I recommend memorizing the piece by rehearsing it on headphones while taking long walks in nature. The hands of the performer should gesticulate in imitation of ASMR performers online that trace shapes, manipulate objects, create finger flutters, touch an imaginary face in front of them, or touch their own face. You shouldn’t gesture constantly: try assigning different gestures to different sections of music to keep focus, sometimes stillness speaks for itself. Tracing shapes in different sizes and speeds, moving forward and backward, in spirals or from side to side, are all interesting options when performed with intention. Sections referencing the brushing of a face might benefit from a real brush prop, or you can simply brush with your fingers. These gestures reinforce the idea that there are real/microscopic hands breaking down the listener’s sensory organs, offering abstract simulations of impossible touch.

INSTRUMENTALISTS

You are a host of forest creatures, mushrooms, bacteria, slime mold, and life itself.  You are not directly engaged with the listener but are more like a choir that comments on the action, listening and responding to the vocalist.  Sometimes your presence is an imminent threat, but often a sensitive, delicate one.  The sounds you make can range from swells of chords to subtle and delicate bursts of noise, to loud harsh interjections.  Close micing the instruments to pick up on subtle sounds of key clicks, air in the instrument, singing into the instrument, or even tapping or touching the instrument offers more creative options that are in tune with the sonic inspiration of the work.  Be careful to not sonically overwhelm the soloist when they are speaking.

Audio installation

The work was adapted into an intimate listening installation for headphones, custom printed bedsheet, linen wrap, and earth installation as part of the Kamias Triennial 2024 at Gallery TPW, Toronto, curated by Patrick Cruz, Su-Ying Lee, and Karie Liao.

The work has also been adapted into Dolby surround sound for Centre Phi’s Habitat Sonore space as part of the programming of Project Immersed 2024.

I wrote it in October 2020, during a deep state of mourning for the intangible social connections that were absent not only in my life, but in the lives of others that needed support. The pandemic had me in a state of emergency, and craving repair. Queer studies scholar Eve Sedgewick once said that the reparative is a reconstruction of shattered objects so that they can bring us pleasure, and that the affect of the reparative is love. I symbolically shattered music not into notes, gestures, or textures, but into an alphabet of affect and intent, hoping to inspire myself and others to create moments of intimacy, care and repair through microphones and camera. The shattered pieces are assembled in the score, and are reassembled through performance.

”Each performance of Intimacy Alphabet is organized through psychosomatic “triggers” in the spirit of internet phenomena Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). Each trigger is its own universe, but there can be some overlaps. Some listeners might recoil in horror from these sounds, but others draw in closer. Under musical aesthetics of affect, the invitation is for one to open to the performer’s intent to transfer touch and reparative intimacy through sound. Imagination closes the circle.”