Program #177, December 18 2003: Last program... for now.

It is with heavy heart that I complete this description of what, for now, must be the last installment of Prisms.

Even as late as last week's program, I had hoped I could keep the program going a while longer while still attempting to find some way out of the ravages of year-plus unemployment. But, in addition to some new challenges that arose in other quarters, I discovered that I (along with many others in Washington state) am being purged from the unemployment rolls somewhat earlier than expected. In addition to the wide array of other problems that development exacerbated, it also meant the month or so of leeway I thought I had to make a final decision about the program (or to find decent work and start to stabilize) is now gone. And, as much as I was tempted to fight to the last molecule of hope that something could be worked out in the 11th hour to save the program... as much as some close to me encouraged me to fight on... I felt I really need to gather in all of my focus just to survive, and to foster the survival of those who depend on me.

I wish there had been another way, and I wish I had been able to give more warning that things would go this way. If nothing else, I would have appreciated the opportunity to wind down the program over the course of a few weeks, rather than stopping it on a dime. But various factors related to the holiday schedule, as well as idiosyncratic factors in my life, convinced me it was best to cut the cord right away. So this was it: a brief coda, and then goodbye for now.

I won't forget what I've been privileged to enjoy in the making of Prisms. Incredible music; great feedback from the community and literally from around the world; the opportunity to feel like I played a small part in the amazing evolutionary current of music and sonic arts, by recapitulating and juxtaposing various portions of it in public space. I have enjoyed this more than you could possibly guess. And many people have helped out along the way -- I couldn't possibly name them all -- but "many" here includes not least the staff and community of KBCS, who have always allowed me incredible latitude to do the program my way, and they deserve your continued support, no matter what kind of show ends up in my timeslot. I could have never made Prisms be what it was without doing it at KBCS. Beyond that, I will just say: I thank you all for everything -- for helping me with the program, for listening, for being part of the KBCS community, for being part of the music/sound arts performance community (here in the Northwest or wherever), for being my friends and family, just for being there at all. Nothing in this entire Prisms experience has meant more than you.

I will say that I don't believe this is the end. One of the reasons I started doing Prisms was to re-foundationalize my musical aesthetics, by committing to present music in public space in ways that would force me to figure out what I wanted to compose... and why. I think I've started to get there, and I look forward to turning attention to such labors, as soon as the present crises are past. However, I also don't think the airwaves have seen the last of me. Whether at KBCS or elsewhere, whether next year or decades from now -- I will do this again. I just had too much fun with this just to walk away without having a plan, if only a nascent and dormant one, to walk back some day. For their part, folks at the station have been very understanding about all this, and while everything would depend on whether there are appropriate schedule openings when I attempt to return, the door is certainly open to revive the program if that becomes possible.

And besides, I'll be around. I still have some obligations at KBCS, some of them involving production for broadcast, and so my voice may occasionally be heard. Perhaps subbing for others will be a possibility too, once things settle down a bit. And if things break right, maybe Prisms Mark II -- or something even more interesting -- lies in the future? Of course, there are lots of other voices at KBCS, all very deserving of being heard, and they shall. But don't think I won't queue back up for another shot for myself, as soon as I'm able to do so.

On to the content of the last program. Although I'd originally planned to play Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy this week, I decided I couldn't go out without playing some of my most favorite pieces -- so Birtwistle will have to wait for another time, or another program. Of course, three hours isn't nearly enough time to play all my most favorite pieces, and I also realized I couldn't just play my very favorite pieces for three hours, because that wouldn't make a very coherent show. So I picked out a few favorites, the better to leave off with a fairly clear, final sense of my vision, and (in my own idiom) to make some gestures of hope for the future.

I love the film Blade Runner. Never mind that it's very different from Philip Dick's source novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and has been roundly criticized for this in some quarters), or that it's now such a darling of po-mo folk that, at this point, liking it now requires no more commitment than liking cute kittens. It moves me on so many levels: I suppose that has a lot to do with my hang-ups about death and impermanence, which means I'm probably lousy (or excellent) Buddhist material, but when Rutger Hauer does his "Tears in Rain" monologue at the end -- you could knock me over with a feather. I decided going there for this program would just be too much, but I did decide to go with another part of the soundtrack that's kind of overlooked... not very "futuristic" at all, in fact very retro... that expresses a more positive view of the same situation.

Everything else I played during this program has been played at least once before. I began with Xenakis' La Legende d'Eer from the 2002-in-review program, which recapitulates a story from Plato's Republic about a figure who, in a Hero With A Thousand Faces type of way, returns from the dead after ten days in the underworld. I suppose I was playing to the gallery here, expressing some hope that I will return to this forum after necessary exile in some metaphorically similar way; but the fact remains that this is an awesome piece of sound art, by a great composer who (in my opinion) just may have been at his best when sculpting with electronic materials, and I couldn't resist giving it one more go.

The Pärt is not only one of my favorite pieces of music ever, but it's also one of those pieces that's so completely non-avant-garde it's radical as hell. I originally presented it in a context that didn't really bring it out properly, and I've kept meaning to get back to it in a way that does it justice -- well, here we are. I used the cello-and-piano version (there are different versions) to anchor a three-piece set that also included Ligeti's beautiful Lux Aeterna, also used in programs #5 and #38 (and in excerpt form in #2), and a staggering early work by Autechre, Drane, that I featured in a program that probed the boundaries of "ambient".

The bulk of the last half of the program was taken up by Tod Machover's opera VALIS, based on the Philip Dick book of the same name. Like Blade Runner, there are big changes between the book and its adaptation, but I really enjoy the energy, compactness, and splendid artistic conception of Machover's opera -- and the strangely optimistic outcome, after brushes with suicide and suffering in the midst of questing for transcendence, suited my mindset for this evening and this show. Also, I originally played this work as part of my first series -- the Speculative fiction/experimental music series, which turned out to be a bit shorter than I anticipated due to my overestimation of my ability to put my hands on proper materials -- and I'm fond of that concept, as well as the learning curve it helped jumpstart. For all these reasons, VALIS made the final cut.

That left one last track, for which I reached all the back to the my very first program. What else could I say about this piece? I love circularity; I wanted the idea of Prisms itself to be the last thing on listeners' minds; and the piece deserved to be heard all on its own, at last.

Thus the end is the beginning. I hope to be with you all again as soon as I can, so that the new beginning can come to an end, and we may proceed together once more.