the he and the she of it

2012
Bernard Clarke
This piece is loosely based on Kenneth Patchen’s script for John Cage’s The City Wears A Slouch Hat, drawing out ideas and sonorities and updating them to Dublin in the 21st century. In the original a “Voice” wanders an American city observing and participating in various nocturnal events. Here the action happens in the daytime and excerpts from Cage’s diary: how to improve the world… act as the “Voice”. A little later, this Voice is spoken by a woman (American composer Susan Stenger). One of the illuminations there is the revelation that all mythologies and human history reveal man as “fallen”. Only through cohabitation can one become healed. Here the Voice has to travel from man to woman, through a dream radio/a radio Tiresias, to find a kind of peace, ending where all stories begin-in the sea; but also beginning again in this watery ending.
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