Assertions
Dedication and Program Note (Rough Draft)
My fascination with administrative law and my intent to create art through it is born of my own family history. My grandfather, Garvey Laurent, started his career in Haitian government before expatriating to the U.S. during the rise of the Duvalier regime. He went on to become a diplomat for the United Nations (https://dam.media.un.org/archive/-2AM9LO3LG9_V.html), working as an agricultural economist on missions to Congo, Chad and Ghana. He returned to Haiti after the collapse of Duvalier’s family rule and participated in a conference of officials tasked with drafting a new Haitian constitution. To his frustration and perpetual heartbreak, these efforts failed. Growing up, I developed a sense for the fragility of social contract, as well as the miraculous amount of coordination and suspension of disbelief it requires to flourish. Indeed my grandfather experienced its shortcomings and the cruelties of its collapse in ways I wish felt more remote. At the same time, I know how aspirationally my grandfather worked to see something stable, functional, and indeed beautiful emerge from the promise of government for the people. These tensions, as well as a fascination with the uncanny procedural aesthetics of the administrative process, drive my curiosity in creating Assertions.
Assertions is an exploration of Experience as a relational counterpart to the solipsism of consciousness- which seems to have obsessed the popular imagination of late. In this, Assertions aims to break a spell. It is my attempt to center the miraculous in the universal, and to address matters of spiritual and societal import with both seriousness and levity.
Writing and Music Sample:
Adhering to a convention in which Language is its own character places special constraints and allowances on the use of dialog in “Assertions”. In order to truly establish a sense of Language’s identity, I am excited to decouple it from being the central vehicle for meaning, allowing instead for Language to develop its own motivations and conflicts in relation to Experience and the other Hegemonies. This becomes especially inspiring when applied to the other hegemonies in a musical context (language being subverted by tone, time, body, and interdependence through modulation of syllables, rhythm and overlapping formants). Language is a public servant turned arbitrary and capricious: power mad and tragically insufficient. Below is an example of how the convention of presenting Language as a character might operate in relation to its power struggle with Experience:
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Voice 1:
Language wraps experience in a semi permeable membrane, allowing for transfer and storage. The permeability of the membrane determines how the experience may be applied across time. The membrane insulates the experience from the airflow of imagination, reducing reactivity between the packaged experience and that of its observer. Stripped of myth potential, experience may serve as a rule- its linguistic packaging having prepared it for future instrumentalization. Such storage of experience is necessary for its codification into determinant systems. Impermeability of the linguistic membrane renders its contents unrecognizable as “experience” at all, leaving it transmissible only as information.
(synthesizer sounds descending notes per syllable of the word “question”)
Chorus 1: Question
Voice 2: How has the language above interacted with the content of its assertions?
( 8 beats before saxophone sounds descending notes per syllable of the word “question”)
Chorus 2: Question
Voice 2: If the statement above is to be accepted, what is experience?
(8 beats)
Chorus (simultaneously- 1 spoken, 2 whispered at a slight delay): The appellant has opted to respond to the second question first. The appellant can do no wrong. A kaleidoscope of free association opens before the appellant’s lips. The appellant refuses the bait. The appellant is suspended above a feedback loop of will and compulsion. A low pressure system is established. A whistle sounds in the distance. The train of thought is leaving the station.
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