title: Everything is named after something lost
instrumentation: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electronics
duration: 15′
written in: 2021–23
text Alex Temple
Everything is named after something lost is a multimedia work consisting of music, text and electronic sounds by me, movement and sculpture by Katie C. Doyle, and a concept by both of us. The piece is about the Superstition Mountains, a range located in southeastern Arizona near the town of Apache Junction. The words are how we imagine the mountain’s point of view — a perspective alien to human concerns, taking place over geological time. The music features a recurring melody that I created by tracing a photo of the mountain onto staff paper, along with distorted quotations from “Let the Rest of the World Go By,” a 1919 ballad beloved of Lucy and Julian King, two settlers who built a guest ranch below the mountain in the 1940s. Meanwhile, Katie’s performance finds her observing the audience through gold binoculars, opening her mouth wide to channel the voice of the mountain (which is actually my voice, heavily processed), dragging a burlap sack full of dirt gathered at a construction site in Apache Junction, and dancing a disoriented waltz with the sack obscuring her head.
Everything is named after something lost was commissioned by Chatter.
1. Prelude: The Mountain Speaks
2. Crags and Outcroppings
3. Interlude 1: The Desert
4. New Shapes
5. Interlude 2: The Pleasures of Volcanic Activity
6. Let the Rest of the World Go By
7. Interlude 3: The Mountain Watches Us
8. The End of Everything
Listen
Chatter:
Jesse Tatum, flute
Megan Snow, clarinet
David Felberg, violin
James Holland, cello
Luke Gullickson, piano
Live at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa FE, NM, 8.26.23