La Fragmentación, Integración, Alusión, y Olvido

Program Notes

This piece invites the reader/listener to reflect on their own memories and experiences. How far back can you remember? What was your earliest memory? In how much detail can you recall those memories? Personally, I find it difficult to recall distant past memories in great detail. This being said, I'm able to remember places, persons, fragrances, or sounds. By using them as starting points, I can begin to recreate memories as I think they happened. As the reader/listener may quickly realize, this can create slightly different or, in extreme cases, completely different versions of what actually happened in the past. Extrapolating this to other people, let's take a second to reconsider how much of what we think we have lived we actually remember to the smallest detail. Gifted people among us won't have this problem; however, most people's memories tend to decay in accuracy as time passes. This can be a disturbing thought. A big part of who we are as individuals is shaped by experiences we have lived. If we tend to distort, merge, integrate, or forget memories or details of our past, does that mean that we are slowly erasing the basic building blocks of our personality? A psychologist might have a better answer to that; the reality is that I do not have one, I just like to think about these things. What I do have is music. Music that forces the reader/listener to reflect on who they are, what percentage of their memories are truly accurate, what other percentage may be fabricated, and to remind them that it is okay not to have an answer to these questions. After all, it is just music. I want to thank John McDonald for commissioning this piece, our thought-provoking conversations, and for believing in my music.

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