January 28, 2006
the dawn of Saturday
Download: Until I'm Ready
I wrote this piece specifically for the public radio program Weekend America. In fact, it will be broadcast today along with some audio documentation of my process and of a Bring Your Own Voice event.
I've always thought that the whole notion of a weekend and the five days on, two days off schedule of our culture is interesting. Some people I know are no different from weekday to weekend day, but others act like entirely different people when they are free of the confines that their jobs or school put on them.
Weekend America, as the name suggests, focuses on weekends and how people use them etc, so this topic was clearly appropriate for this piece.
To answer some questions:
Where did all the voices come from?
All of the spoken voices were collected two weeks ago at a Bring Your Own Voice event at the Museum of Science in Boston. The MoS is a significant weekend destination in Boston, especially for kids and families, so I was able to collect a ton of voices ranging from 5 to 75 years old.
What's up with all the horns?
I thought saxes and trumpet would provide a nice upbeat sort of weekend feel. It is really fun to arrange horns as well.
It sounds like that kid is singing "It's Saturday, the..." throughout the piece. I thought you only ask people to speak, not sing?
This was one of those amazing moments that happens sometimes as I'm arranging and listening to the voice recordings. The thing is, that kid didn't sing those words at all, and if you listen to them in context, they could easily pass you by as not terribly interesting. But when I put them on their own and stuck them in with the music, all of a sudden it was as if I'd asked him to sing a set melody. He was in key and tempo to what I had already written. When things like that happen, I know I must be doing something right.
How do you feel about Sunday evenings?
I used to not be such a big fan of them when I had a 'real' job, I will admit. I wouldn't feel dread exactly, but there would be some sort ofrestricting feeling that would pass through me when thinking about the reality of Monday morning. Nowadays, I am working for myself which more than anything means that I work on the weekends, so there isn't much difference at all between my weeks and weekends. Of course, the work is fun, so it's ok. There was an elderly gentleman who stated in his recording that his weeks and weekends weren't all that different either. But this was because he was retired and relaxed all the time. That sounds nice.
Do you wear pajamas?
Not any more.
