aeblog

more feeling than structure

Download: HOME audio

You will be glad to hear that I was able to finish my piece for the 'Unlearned Response' show which is currently on exhibit at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. It was a bit touch and go there for a while - just ask the other artists in the show - but in the end, we were all able to finish what we needed to finish and the response overall was positive. It seemed like between the fire marshall and an uncooperative Windows server, we were being conspired against, but persistence, compromise and flexibility prevailed.

For me, the notion of HOME is very powerful. It is something that conjures up feelings all across the board from comfort to longing to peacefulness to sadness. This complexity is exactly why I wanted to write something about it.
The spoken content in this song is all taken from interviews with the four artists who participated in the show. I asked them about their personal feelings and experiences regarding HOME as well as how they had chosen to represent HOME in their creations for the show. I am very grateful to them for indulging me and sharing their honest and heartfelt feelings on tape. Their willingness to open up was what made this song possible.
The music in this piece is essentially one steady motive that repeats for the entire 8 minutes. Yes, that does sound boring, but hopefully it is not as there are layers of instrumentation and voices that pile on top throughout that time. This is how I view the concept of HOME. Something that is primarily an ongoing baseline of support and reassurance, but which is constantly built upon by outside influences and internal shifts.

In the end I feel that I was able to create an amalgamation of what HOME means to five individuals. We all have our own feelings - some of which overlap and some of which contradict - but one thing that became clear to me throughout this process was that we all have strong emotions about HOME. And this is good.

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If you would like to contribute some of your own thoughts about HOME to this evolving piece, go to the HOME audio page and answer some questions for me.