YOU MY RESUME BREATHING
opera theater scene from Patience, for mezzo-soprano, electronics, modular synthesizer, and ensemble
This is an abstract opera scene, from a larger upcoming project with Scandinavian soprano Christina Herresthal, in which an unnamed female patient waiting in an MRI machine experiences dehumanization, depersonalization, and self-hatred to the extent that she starts to resonate with the most distant object in the galaxy, a black hole, in mutual futility.
For my entire time at Curtis, I have been thinking and writing about the concept of the cyborg and the uncanny valley; something possessing the appearance of the human being but lacking what makes a person, a lack filled by machinery and automation, something which came to the foreground of my mind viscerally when I had a piece of medical equipment sewn into my body to keep me alive.
Here are some things that the Patient might be trying to say in her wordless black hole/MRI machine duet:
“Every time we think we know pain, life decides to remind us of our ignorance.”
“My scars tell my story but they are mute and you are blind.”
“Forgetting is a very different type of suffering than not wanting to remember.” “Life is only worth living if you still recognize yourself when you have nothing left.”
“A problem becomes an obstacle when it is insurmountable by means within the human grasp.”
“One is only a survivor if one has the guilt to prove it.”
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dylan Thomas”