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Program Notes:

World-renowned jazz musician Wayne Shorter says about composing that one should “write what you wish for”. To him, all music can be viewed as “spells” that hope to transform a performer, listener, or both, in unexpected ways through the magical process of making sound with others. I was inspired by Shorter’s compelling call to action while first encountering the work of Black feminist poet and author Audre Lorde – particularly her essay, “Uses of the Erotic”. For Lorde, the “erotic” refers to what feels truly pleasurable in one’s own body.

In this essay, she writes about the power of pleasure to serve as a metric of freedom, particularly for women, and women of color such as herself, who are socially conditioned to silence their inner desires for freedom, joy, and fulfillment.  She writes: 

The erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. For once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling, that sense of satisfaction, that sense of fullness, that sense of completion, we can then observe which of our life endeavors bring us closer to that fullness.

The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible.

Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision, a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered. Of course, any woman so empowered is dangerous.

-Audre Lorde

These “dangerous” women who understand their own liberatory potential pose real threats to powerful systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism, which try to undermine them at every turn. Reading these words as a young Black woman seeking that journey towards radical self-knowledge herself, I felt compelled to write a piece that embodies what I “wish for” in the healing journey that many of us face, to discover and connect with our own inner sense of the erotic. 

The piece is imagined as an inner dialogue between a reader (the soloist) encountering Lorde’s words and it conjuring an ancestral memory of erotic knowledge, while the choir acts as a reflection of the erotic itself within her. Over the course of the piece, the two sets of voices progress from the reader addressing the choir and the choir responding and reflecting her thoughts passively, to the reader surrendering to the erotic forces the choir represents, by asking the simple yet vulnerable question “will you hold my hand in the ever-changing dark?” – to which the choir offers strong reassurance and support that turbulent yet meaningful inner search for freedom (“long after you’re gone and even still – I will”). Then, both the choir and the reader/soloist address the audience directly, with a call to explore the erotic themselves, to “listen deep from within, go forward, and be blessed”. 

Through this work I hope to “write what I wish for” (as Shorter said) by embodying the collective nature of our liberation struggles through the innately embodied medium of communal singing. My hope for this “spell” is that it encourages performers and audiences to explore their own erotic knowledge (as Lorde writes) and reminds us of the classic Black feminist tenant that we are not free until all of us are free.

• Parts: String Quartet Score
• Format: .PDF
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