Archive for March, 2006

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Indivisible

Friday, March 31st, 2006

George and I got into quite a discussion yesterday about his concept for a Theatre Minima. A kind of revisioning of Grotowski’s ideas for a contemporary American setting. Reducing theatrical spectacle down to the minimal components necessary such that we can return to a clear and precise New Humanism. The quote of the week is from George who says:

This argues, for theater, a design that centers the experience of the body, that a production should wrap itself around the presentation of the human form, rather than dictating the human form’s placement. This is also a suggestion for the text: to attempt the body’s centrality as source of the language that defines the rooms and the landscapes around it.

This is a call back from the esoteric theatre of the mind that can often lose sight of core essence of the human experience. Two beings relating to each other in time and space. Dorothy continues this exploration from an actor’s perspective through the Mash-Up and Viewpoints.

The minimalism this calls for is an essentializing of the theatrical form. It is a matter of stripping away all that is extraneous in order to reach a purity of style. A process of discovering what is the minimum gesture necessary to create the maximal impact. Where shadow and light coverge to illuminate the essence of being. A theatre of elegance. Theatre of truth.

As a designer one inevitably works in a variety of styles. From the spare to the Baroque. High drama to low comedy. And each demands a different perspective and a different sort of rigor. I have worked with a Ballet Company that produces a lot of works for children. These pieces require a fullness in the light. There can be no dark places on stage. Darkness is blue. Even the house lights must be kept at a glow so as not to scare the little ones. The designer must be able to go from that to this without batting an eyelash.

Each piece demands its own sort of rigor, but so too does the life of a designer as well. It is a strict discipline one must impose on oneself to see the piece for what it is, not what you want it to be. It must, by its very nature, be egoless work. Just as the medium of light is Invisible, so too must the ego of the designer be invisible. I believe this is true for all theatre artists to an extent. It is after all a collaborative form and the focus must be on the work. It is an act of faith, that everyone involved shares a common vision and wishes to manifest that vision with the best of intentions.

At the same time the work is a collaboration towards a shared vision. And while everyone should act without ego they should not act without vision or perspective. It is that uniqueness of vision that creates the uniqueness of experience. You can see in the costumes or the decor or the lighting if the designer reached some truth about the piece or if they just did something ‘designey.’ Does the scenery evoke the essence of the text or does it look like scenery? Is the lighting decorative or illuminative?

A rigorous focus on the individuality of the text forces you, by necessity, to achieve some degree of truth about the story. This truth occurs when you bring your own rigorous individuality to the table. Individuality not in the myopic narcissistic sense it has taken in American discourse but as Grotowski said:

The etymological meaning of “individuality” is “indivisibility” which means complete existence in something: individuality is the very opposite of half-heartedness.

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Lyrical empathy and Optimistic Humanism

Thursday, March 30th, 2006

Ideas are brewing over at MattJ‘s blog. We got to talking in comments and started to put forth ideas of moving beyond the deconstructive. This reconstructive art, built with the fragments of culture left after deconstructionism has gone home to rest, is part of the New Optimism. It is seeing a wasteland and building a Utopia.

Dorothy’s Mash-up Theatre is one vector upon which this Re-Visioning can and very likely will occur. MattJ calls for a new empathy and echoes Zay’s New Lyricism.

Form and content have both been called into question. A radical Re-Visioning is being asked for. We find ourselves, after the decentering of post-modernism, searching for a recentering. A new core. In a time of such turmoil where political discourse has turned farcical and no one knows which way is up, we need a new vision of art to save us. The soul of our culture has become corrupted, or the corruption that has always lurked has taken over. We must resist.

Perhaps this entails a new Humanism. A return to the basic Human form as yardstick for all analysis. Not in the sense of seeing our superiority over all other things on this planet and destroying them for our consumption. But rather appreciating the beauty of the Human precisely because we are part of a highly developed and complex network of plants and animals and earth and air and water.

A small show I am working on attempts a bit of what George talks about. Since the main characters are Gods or near to, we decided to try a lighting design that reconfigures based on who is on stage. Aphrodite brings her own light, Apollo his and so on. It will be interesting to see how it practically plays out. Of course we have very limited resources, but then at some level that is always the case.

Lighting is practically about illumination. But the design becomes a question of how, not what. How do we illuminate this scene or character. How do we see them. How do they see themselves. It is the light, but also the air they breathe, every inhale and every exhale. It is the sun or the moon or a lamp post, but it is also the energy emanating from the characters, made tangible to our eyes. The collective soul of Human transformation.

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Style / Choice

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Language is a very powerful medium. It is a technology that contains within it the ability to take an idea from inside one mind and transfer it to another. No USB or Firewire cables required. I am often amazed at language for this very reason. But the flip side to this amazing potential is an obfuscation of ideas. A loss of clarity due to a mis-match of signs relating to a single word or idea.

I remember a discussion one day in graduate school. One of my classmates was working on a show and talking through his ideas for the lighting. The play followed an arc through a single day. Scene one morning, scene two afternoon, scene three dusk and so on. In his description of the second scene he said he wanted to go for a cloudy day where halfway through the sun breaks through the clouds.

He is sitting there describing how he wants that dull grey shadowless quality that you get on those overcast days. I love that quality of light. I begin to imagine the day as I hear talk of tons of little spotlights to cover all the shadows and try to eliminate them. I keep coming back in my head to the description of the light. Dull, grey and shadowless. Sounds like daylight color fluorescents to me. So I chime in with the suggestion that he might consider using dimmable fluorescent lighting for the scene to create that effect.

The response from several other people in the room is that this is ‘not the kind of play where alternative lighting is appropriate.’ That sort of set me back. “Not the kind of play” for the use of “alternative lighting.” Alternative to what. Alternative to a knee jerk reaction in a theatrical setting, sure. But what about a dull grey shadowless day translates into hundreds of tiny shadows flickering over the stage.

Because the acceptable theatrical vocabulary is limited to a very few types of lighting instruments, anything outside that is considered ‘alternative.’ The kind of thing to be used in a ‘stylistic’ or ‘expressionistic’ production. The language surrounding lighting has confined much of it to an incredibly limited visual vocabulary. We have infinite combinations of nouns and adjectives to describe the quality of light yet only a handful of acceptable words to express it. This dearth of expression often leads to sadly cliched responses.

Working for two years as the resident lighting designer for the NYU dance department was a major help in overcoming cliched responses to dance lighting. As a medium of performance, dance is expressed visually in light through the dominant use of low side lighting. Lights at floor level and head height and in between. Its great for a while, but 80 dances later in one year, you start to get bored. You have used every color in every conceivable combination. All that is left is to question the use of side lighting.

Sometimes these experiment prove why there are standard responses to a given situation. But they can more often than not show you whole new ways of looking at things. My friend Mark and I spent a year playing a kind of game with the lighting. Since we spit all the lighting between us and saw every one of the pieces we would give little challenges to each other. If the typical response was blue we would tell the other, “no blue in that piece.”

Working in this manner forced us to overcome the weight and inertia of the accepted vocabulary. Sometimes it worked brilliantly and sometimes we failed equally brilliantly. But every time was an expansion of our visual vocabulary. Ideas like “this is how you light dance” fell away quickly and that energy carried on to work in other genres.

What is “theatrical lighting?” What makes it work? How do you get to the emotional core of not just this particular play, but this particular instance of this particular play? Language can be and is a powerful medium for the exchange of ideas. But it is necessary to keep an eye out that it is not overly confining at the same time.

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Breaking the Fifth Wall

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

The production of The Crucible that I am currently working on is a Directing Thesis at Columbia University. Last night at the Dress rehearsal Anne Bogart came by to observe the work. She made some interesting comments about the show that really got me thinking.

Talking about the play she mentioned how it is filled with these very strong emotional scenes and interactions set within a framework of formal intellectualism. The drama is very real. The emotions are palpable and alive. The power, and the potential weakness, of the script, she said, was to weigh emotion over thought, or vice versa. That the power of the play really comes out in the intersection of these two dynamic forces. Heart and mind. “You are all filled with emotion, so let the thought lead and see where it takes you.”

Let the thought lead.

There is an interesting discussion going on, in comments, about the role of the so called ‘Fourth Wall’ in theatre. For those of you not familiar with this piece of theatre terminology, the ‘Fourth Wall’ is a reference to convention of assuming that the audience is looking in on a slice of life where the fourth wall of the living room or whatever has been removed and the audience gets to voyeuristically peek in on the goings on.

That discussion as well as the rehearsal last night got me to thinking about this idea of the ‘fourth wall’ and what is means. George Hunka and Alison Croggon both make interesting points about the use of direct address in film and theatre respectively. The point they make essentially comes down to the idea that ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is so ubiquitous that it is not a radical or revolutionary thought to try and break it.

I would take this line of thinking one step further and argue that the very concept of the fourth wall does not contain any useful discursive weight. That the very existence of the term only clouds and confuses the issue and lead us down pathways that can do no more than hinder free thought.

A few days ago I said:

The Crucible is very much a play that benefits from the proverbial fourth wall. The message is so clear and Miller’s use of language and construction of relationships so complex that the message is clearer if the illusion is maintained. When we let ourselves be observers of this slice of 17th century colonial American life the play’s real power comes about. John Proctor could makes his speech, on the sanctity of his good name, to the audience. Reverend Hale could let us all in on the secrets of the witches. But when he simply addresses the judge and his fellow citizens we hear his words more strongly.

Yet framing this in the language of the ‘Fourth Wall’ only confuses the matter. The emotions and relationships are real. But the ideas are self consciously constructed. The thought containing the emotion leads us away from voyeurism and towards an exploration of our own role as audience. We sit back and watch these events. Are there any parallels between these actions and events going on today? How would we feel as real participants in that courtroom today? And then the emotion hits us again.

Direct address in this case might not be a tactic that would lead us to draw useful conclusions about the piece. But that does not mean the play does not make us aware of our role as observers in this drama and consequently that it breaks the traditionally conceived ‘Fourth Wall.’ In a conventional way of thinking The Crucible is a good example of a ‘Fourth Wall’ play. But when we step away and look anew, when we set aside those old discursive tools, we see a radical reinvention of theatrical form.

The shifting emotions and ideas of character and audience creates a dynamic matrix or Network of experience. It is this shifting relational event that makes live performance so engaging. The performers do not need to look at you or ever acknowledge your presence, but by virtue of being in the same space you share energy and experience and feed off one another. The breaking of the fourth wall that Theatre does best is not the academic cliche of the space surrounded by the proscenium arch, it is the wall between self and other. And it is the dissolving of this barrier through shared experience that makes live performance necessary and vital.

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Continuing towards a Manifesto – The New Optimism

Monday, March 27th, 2006

Yesterday I started off on a positive note with The purpose of art is to reaffirm a life that is always slipping away from us. Burning the fuel of experience on the pyre of creation to build anew the world neglected. But then quickly turned negative. I wrote ‘not’ too many times. I placed the situation in an unmoving present. The present is great. It is where we are. But I think we need a new vision of the future. A new optimism.

Before I continue I must note the following. I can only speak as a US American, since, well I am one, so this may appear to have a rather myopic focus, but bear with me.

American history has been from its inception marked by a tendency towards optimism. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The preamble to the US Constitution reads We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Westward expansion, manifest destiny, the Monroe Doctrine and so forth. An ideolgy of expansion, creation of wealth and prosperity and a striving towards a better way of life. However, this high purpose has always been tinged by gross and abusive hypocracies to its very core. Slavery, the three-fifths clause, genocide of Native Americans, American colonialism, and various expansionist wars including our current situation in Iraq.

In a sense this American Optimism reached its peak in the 1950′s. We were the symbol of western power, influence and affluence. We had big houses and big cars. The capitalistic propaganda machine was churning out, full force, proof of our material and cultural superiority. We had won WWII and were going to win against the communists.

Then things began to change.

The hypocricy of American ‘democratic’ principals were seen first in the free speech movement and the resistance to McCarthyism. My grandfather had to leave the country because he would not sign a loyalty oath and thus could not keep his teaching job at UC Berkeley. The FSM led into the Hippy cultural revolution. In many ways a Nietzschean revaluation of values. A total and severe shock to the previously ordered and controlled society.

This provided a new optimism. A potential to move away from the consumerist society upheld by the old guard. But this too fell apart. And drugs then AIDS then capitalism eventually brought us limping into the 1980′s. Here we would once again find a kind of economic Strength and superiority. The good worker, not the cultural rebel, would claim the role of icon of the decade. And things calmed down. And apathy set in. And the 1990′s came and went.

Then 2001 came. And it brought some explosions followed by evil. And the government started using the old images of freedom and liberty but they ment something else. They ment power and control. They ment domination. They ment evil. And it gained momentum. Then the true lovers of freedom began to see themselves in a reactionary position. As the antagonist in this twisted drama.

But that is just a perspective. A way of seeing. Shift the scene. The evil doers are running the country, but they are running scared. They are scared of true freedom. Of the implications of liberty. They fear possibility. And that fear is their weakness.

They can not last against Optimism. And not an optimism like the past, which clouds over inequalities. No. A New Optimism. An Optimism that sees potential in everything. Where every moment is a definitive time of change. Where every creative act, or healing act creates the world anew and heals all its wounds. Where the magic of action creates change from infinity to infinity.

The New Optimism accepts its faults. Rather than hiding, it seeks to constantly correct. It knows where its power lies, in the true will of Human existence to live free. The New Optimism is a return to the core values of this country but more essentially to the will to freedom. To Life. To Liberty. To the Persuit of Happiness.

This must be Art. To release us from the forces of darkness and control that would smooth our rough edges and make us weak in the face of fear. To live is to create change. Live free.

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Towards a Manifesto

Sunday, March 26th, 2006

The purpose of art is to reaffirm a life that is always slipping away from us. Burning the fuel of experience on the pyre of creation to build anew the world neglected.

I write this for me, I do not write this for you.

Destroyed every night we wake new dawn possible. Don’t throw death at me, trying to freeze the soul in ice. I will shatter your dreams of yesterday. I reject the horror of nostalgia.

You do not listen.

Now you fall.

Alone.

You did not deny life, you accepted death. Passive and waiting for what you see to be inevitable.

The fate of human solitude is always and finally to be released from need. Temporary respites are only temptations in another guise.

Can you fight?

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Today was a good day

Friday, March 24th, 2006

Busy and unpredictable. I like it like that.

This morning I had a meeting with the director for Cupid and Psyche. It was quite productive. We are in a rather limited situation and of course have ideas about the show stretching well beyond the dollar sign. But a lot was figured out.

Its a good thing I can read a piece of drafting since I am always dealing with matters of scale. Huge budget one week, nothing the next. Tall spaces, small spaces. Lots of light ques or very few. Every show is so different. And if you can figure out the key to the situation then you can have a very successful product. Throw money at a bad script and it doesn’t get any better. Yet very limited resources can be an asset with a strong script, cast, director and design team. Innovative ideas are often borne of limitations.

After the meeting I ran into my friend Zay in the East Village and we wandered around a bit before I had to go to lunch. He is in town for an interview at the New School’s dramatic writing MFA program. The interview is Saturday afternoon. Let’s all go wish him luck.

Lunch was with my good friend, the wonderful and talented costume designer, Oana Botez-Ban. We had a very nice time catching up. This business is so strange. You make very strong friendships with people in a very short amount of time working on a show and while those friendships continue to evolve over the years you often go months or more without seeing them due to all the hectic scheduling. But the reconnections are always so great.

After lunch I had an hour and a half before I needed to be up at the Riverside Church for The Crucible rehearsal. I decided to walk. 8th Street to as far as I could make it. Uptown along 5th avenue, then Broadway. I love watching the architecture and the people change with the weather, clouds and faces transforming as I walk uptown. I ran into my friend Mark near Lincoln Center. We worked together for a year at NYU in the dance department, he is quite a talent in the lighting field. We run into each other a few times a year. Staying in touch with other lighting designers is a truly difficult task since you never work together. But occasionally you meet around 68th street, each taking a long walk through Manhattan. At 72nd I ducked into the subway so as to make it to rehearsal on time.

Tech was only four hours today. We got through lighting the first scene. I was quite pleased. Its always a mystery until you start turning things on or off. A dull void. Empty and waiting. Shape and shading ready to be applied. This play is so much about subtlety. It is fascinating. Miller is so clever in who he makes sure is on stage when so you can see their reaction. Who hears what and who sees what.

The Crucible is very much a play that benefits from the proverbial fourth wall. The message is so clear and Miller’s use of language and construction of relationships so complex that the message is clearer if the illusion is maintained. When we let ourselves be observers of this slice of 17th century colonial American life the play’s real power comes about. John Proctor could makes his speech, on the sanctity of his good name, to the audience. Reverend Hale could let us all in on the secrets of the witches. But when he simply addresses the judge and his fellow citizens we hear his words more strongly.

Some people might mistakenly argue that ‘fourth wall realism’ is contributing to the marginalization of theatre in our culture. But the shocking news is that theatre has always been marginalized. It has always been dying. So too has it always been essential to culture. So too has it always been reinventing itself. This is why there are so many styles. This why the creators in this medium must constantly change and find new ways of expressing ourselves. This is why we now have so many styles available to us. For every Avant-Grizzly there is a chorus behind them creating change with their art.

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'krü-s&-b&l – a severe test that acts as a refining or hardening process

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006

Tonight I go in to see the final run through of The Crucible that we start lighting on Friday. I think it is really funny that by the end of next week I will have lit both The Crucible and a show at The Crucible. So, the final dress rehearsal. This is my chance to just sit back and watch. To begin putting together the lighting in my head, so that I am prepared for the lighting sessions on Friday.

We tech the show by starting with a ‘dry tech’ or lighting session on Friday prior to the actors arrival on Saturday. I have done a number of shows in this manner and I always find it awkward. It is very common in Opera to work this way. And in that case I understand it since the hourly cost of an Opera singer is too much to have them standing around as we build light cues or reposition scenery. But for theatre, it feels so divorced from the action. In the end I find it just generates more work. You light the show, then you get actors and you re-light the show. I find my work is much stronger when I can just be in the moment and react visually to what I am seeing and hearing.

So, The Crucible. Despite all my conceptual work, I always end up doing at least a few traditional plays. I like them. They tend to be quite fun as a change of pace. The director for this piece does some interesting stuff with staging. I worked with her on a production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play last year. There were some very interesting blocking choices made that were both unexpected and quite successful. So I am looking forward to this process.

I am actually surprised there are not more productions of The Crucible going on now given the parallels between the current US government’s actions and McCarthyism, the social context for the play. The witch hunts and calling out of ‘unpatriotic’ elements is really disturbing when put in this kind of historical context. John Proctor’s transformation at the end of the play has obvious echoes with Joseph Welch’s famous “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Only in the play, John asks this of himself. And finds, finally, his own inner core of self respect, dignity and indeed decency.

Illegal wiretapping, domestic spying, the outing of CIA agents by Cabinet Officials, illegal invasion of sovereign nations, holding people captive without due process, torture. This all sadly sounds a lot like the world of The Crucible. Sometimes you don’t need cell phones to make a play contemporary. Sometimes you just need words. Lots of words. Magic words, like freedom, and self-respect, and honesty, and authenticity. Magic words like liberty to counter the evil words of the B*** Administration, they sound like ‘freedom’ but they mean oppression. Democracy=theocracy. Freedom=slavery. The lies they parade as the truth can only be resisted by the truth.

In a play I recently worked on there is a line that goes “Three things can not long be hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” Just as the hysteria that gripped Salem in 1692 passed into the history books, so too will our current age of darkness pass. This too shall pass. Comfort in times of sorrow and a check against hubris in times of fortune. This too shall pass.

And just in case anyone wants to do some more research on this play, I offer this as a good starting place.

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Towards a Further Understanding of Networks

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

There have been several discussions recently surrounding what it is that makes good theatre. A lot of questions. What is necessary for good theatre that is relevant to an audience? What makes theatre immediate and engaging? A lot of hypotheses. It must be this or is has to say that. Many of these new manifestoes are searches for ultimate meaning. The core essence and foundation of theatre. I believe these quests are all well and good. But I begin to wonder if the search for a fundamental truth is truly what is needed.

If it is all just a relational network, then why the need for an absolute answer? There is a theory in Chaos Magic called paradigm shifting. The idea behind it is rather simple. Identity is fluid. By transforming ones identity/persona to harmonize with the currents and forces around you, you can better influence those forces in a beneficent way. While this might sound a bit ‘widgy woo woo’ to some, let me give you a practical example.

As a lighting designer, I work with a number of different directors and producers and texts and mediums. While there is a clear stylistic difference between dance and opera, there is a more subtle one between two different plays. When the same director approaches two different plays there is a change. When they approach the same play in two different contexts they are different experiences. Sometimes drastic sometimes minor. But there is a change. Now, as a designer, if my response is “well I just don’t do that sort of thing,” I will not work very much. Thus I need to find a ‘way in’ to the text. But more than that. I must find a way to see the piece through the eyes of the director. Because when I can inhabit that mode of seeing, then I can open up to the freedom and possibility within the text. I could choose to ignore that and turn it into a fight, but then the whole situation gets boring really fast.

So I learn the paradigm of the production. And change. Simple.

This is why I read many and various things. Because everything feeds into the work and every perspective is needed. You absorb everything around you. Because that is all we can do. We are creatures that take in and process information. Then we transform that information into art. If we are observant then we can shift to new paradigms and understand them. We can find new ways of being in the world. We can find new languages and expand upon our vocabularies.

Working in theatre is wonderful because every new show opens up new potentialities. Every play provides a different avenue for research and ideas and images. With every production the world expands a little further. The evolution of art, I would guess, operates on similar principals as the evolution of science. After all, There is some evidence to suggest this line of thought. It appears as though the fractal network we call the internet is truly beginning to influence these trends beyond serving as a prop. It is coming into its own as a locus for discussions. Allowing a cross pollination of ideas where geography means nothing. Time moves faster here. And the roller coaster is only just climbing the first peak.

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Invisible Art

Monday, March 20th, 2006

One of the things about lighting that always fascinates me is how it is an invisible art form. It used to be that a good lighting design was one that did not call attention to itself. The old, if you notice the lighting the designer is not doing their job, line. While this way of thinking has largely fallen to the wayside it is still around subconsciously. Part of this is due to it being an intangible medium. Part of it, I also think, has to do with language.

Light is about the surface of things. You bounce electrons off an object so that they hit the spectator’s eye and can be processed by the brain. Light is not conceived as an entity in and of itself, rather it is often perceived as a tool with which to see ‘real’ objects. Yet light has presence. It has a physicality that, while incredibly delicate, is certainly real. The delicacy of light may also be one of the reasons it so often goes unnoticed. To see light you can not grab it and force it to conform to your mode of seeing. Rather, you must sit back in a state of active passivity and observe. You must let the light speak to you, and it will, though very softly. It is a whisper. A soft and gentle thing.

This is not to say that light can not make a strong and a bold statement. It certainly can and often does. But it is still a quiet strength. The power of silence. It can not be touched. It does not crash or smash or explode. A bulb occasionally screams out for recognition by exploding inside a fixture. But the light just burns on with quiet intensity.

You can not touch it, though you can feel it. You can not hold it. Nor taste it. Yet it is all around you. A few days ago I quoted Jean Rosenthal talking about dancers and light. To limit the analogy to dancers seems reductive to a degree. We all live in light. So unaware are we of the power of light, that it becomes background like the oxygen that we breathe.

Everywhere and no where at the same time. Difficult to see, beyond simple brightness or dimness, because it is so ubiquitous. While a sunset is often appreciated, rarely much more is noticed. Much of this is linguistic. We lack the words to describe light. The only advanced vocabulary around for talking of light is the vocabulary of spirituality. The inner light of truth, divine light and so forth. But outside that context, light again becomes invisible. Right in front of us all the time, it goes by unnoticed and practically unseen.

Unless you train yourself to see without words, you often miss things when the language is not there to describe it. Like visiting a culture foreign to ones own. You find yourself immersed in a mass of sound and image and spectacle with no means of discerning one thing from another. When you have spent enough time in that culture to know the words for objects and events, suddenly the things around you multiply. Eskimos have some huge number of words for snow. We have a few. Because of this linguistic difference, an Eskimo will see snow differently than I will. Not because their eyes are different but because they process the visual information differently.

Because of language, things that are around you all the time, every day, become invisible. The immediate becomes distant. Because of the poverty of language to describe light, we are affected by things and often do not know why. Language is power and light speaks in a silent symphonic poetry that often hides in plain sight. But the poetic core of light may well provide an insight into the new lyricism. Light is poetry and music made visible from the a-tonality of fluorescents to the harmonic convergence of a sunset. It is the oldest language. The first word. Hidden in the clear light of day, waiting for us to learn its vocabulary.

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