Program Notes: she's buoyant

Throughout my life, I have sought to explore how and where I can craft and facilitate settings for individual sensory investigation and to explore connections between people that build banks of shared sense memories. In both cases, this was informed by a desire to be enveloped in these experiences and sensory stimuli both individually and as a group. she’s buoyant is a work that embodies this practice, and is informed by my own past experiences that deeply impacted me.

A few years ago I started treatment to address an imbalance in my endocrine system. I noticed subtle changes in my senses as the medication started working: everything glowed brighter, smelled sweeter, and felt more vibrant. Nearly seven weeks after I started treatment, and two days after my birthday, I got a concussion. I became overwhelmed by the literal pain caused by the intensity of any sensory input.

At first, I suffered through photosensitivity and hyperacusis, and shortly thereafter, I developed phantosmia — olfactory hallucinations — and mild synesthesia related to sound, touch, and light. All of these symptoms would envelop me to the point of overwhelm as they fluctuated. To soothe myself, I would sit on the couch, staring out the window, feeling the heat of my own skin vibrate beneath me. Full silence felt impossible to achieve, but my past tendency to overanalyze faded away as my sense of self merged with everything around me.

During my concussion recovery, I visited a sensory deprivation tank to try approaching silence. As I went through the ritual of preparing to float and entering the tank, I noticed how the process engaged my senses: the smell of ozone, a hazy light in the room, warmth of the water while it stung open cuts on my body, a bitter taste of the epsom salt as it dripped into my mouth and nose, and the sound of pumps from tanks in adjacent rooms. While the water and tank cushioned my hearing, the background noise outside the tank would creep its way in. It became difficult for me to discern which of the sounds were within or outside the tank, or if they were actually real.

Healing and transition can both be slow, frustrating, unpredictable processes. There is never a single finish line. Instead, you attune to resonances within yourself that let you know where you are in the journey. she’s buoyant blurs together the previously described experiences, as well as other sensate experiences that I have shared with others. Some of these experiences have led to developing deep vulnerability between myself and others.

Accordingly, this is where she’s buoyant begins in terms of both ensemble development and performance: a process of building bonds and vulnerability, and willingness to step into the shared experience while paying attention to your own. Both rehearsal and performance begin with a recitation of a seven-stanza poem to prepare and situate ourselves for this vulnerability and receptivity. It asks us to try to let all of our feeling(s) go as a form of self-emptying.

However, depending what happens to be going on in our lives, there will be some sort of feeling left over. I call this an “affective vacuum,” informed by the concept of the quantum vacuum state. Like quantum vacua, they are not simple empty emotional fields. It is impossible to reduce them to an affective “absolute zero” emptying out always leaves something behind. This remaining emotional energy impacts how performers and audience respond to the work.

The structure of the piece follows the recitation, with each movement corresponding to one of the stanzas. It begins with an attempt to reach that near-zero state to achieve stillness, moving through an emptying process that expands to envelop us. From there, we materialize our sense memories about someone. We examine our memories and how we felt, and what we sensed, about that person. This can be unsettling enough to be a source of tension. As we are overtaken by these memories, we explore how they envelop us, and let them dissipate.

As you listen to she’s buoyant and watch its video projections, I invite you to participate by emptying yourself and tracing the arc of the work. Locate your ability to feel and notice what is left behind as its own form of sensate experience. Discover how your feelings shift once you think you have found silence, and whether you perceive amidst it. Avoid considering what, when, and why you’re feeling and sensing, and focus on how and where instead.