Journal (2019)

Journal is the end result of my monthlong residency at Rhizome DC’s Off the Beaten Path series, lead by composer Lewis Krauthamer. This residency was a truly magical introduction to sixth-tone instruments, the life and works of Cornelius Cardew, and a question that follows me to this day: how does one write honest music? I treated the writing of this piece as a journal of my summer—a particularly chaotic summer at that, full of messy palimpsests and winding, interleaving iconographies. In addition, it refers to a journal I had been working on, filling with love letters for my partner at the time. I had come close to filling it, from cover to cover—by that summer, it had become quite clear that the relationship had reached its end. The journal had become a living artifact, its original purpose having expired, its new significance modified by history and backwards perspective.