my own whirring bones (2023)

for woodwind trio and fixed media / written for Sugar Hill Salon at Connecticut Summerfest 2023

In “my own whirring bones,” the instrumentalists are singers, and the choir is a single voice. The text for the fixed media track comes from a poem I wrote at age sixteen, around the same time that I first began to understand my own queerness. Throughout the poem, my younger self explores music as a physiological function akin to breathing, moving, or speaking. Looking back on the text as an out agender person, this embodiment strikes me as queer in its own way; it frames my body as a vessel for music rather than gender, my chosen expression as musical rather than male or female. In this piece, the woodwind trio acts as an extension of my voice, finally actualizing this long-held fantasy.

Original text

———————

What else / would fill my ears / but the ancient / luminescent air / you exhale? / With whose eyes / should I see / beauty of life / color of sound /brightness of thought / but yours? / I open / my lips / and speak / with your voice / for it is louder / than my own.

When you drift / I move with you. / When you spin / I am thrown aside. / When you lurch / to the floor / in splintered ruins / you do so / upon my own / whirring bones / which I have scattered / in anticipation / of your fall.

I was born / when the chord sounded / just as the universe / inflated its lungs / at the call / of the oboe / to the orchestra, / and I will die / when the B flat buzz / at the back / of my skull / falls silent. / Have mercy / on the weak / when we become / yours — / we have become / you.