What is meant - Full Score (PDF Edition)

Performance Note:

Written for ChamberQUEER's Digital Pride Month Festival in June 2020, a conversation concerning "what is meant" during a forced digitalization of the arts, and how artists everywhere convey what is usually consumed in apt spatial circumstances through this lens. This piece begins with metronomic snapping, gridding nests of similar melodies in varied delay, paying homage to a musician's first experiences digitizing their craft; a sort of technological distortion of "what is meant."

In the context of Phillip B. Williams' poem, the use of snapping might depict a distant clock, down the hall as the speaker depicts their surroundings and desires from a room. Using visceral imagery and distant metaphors, we're left to ponder how their surroundings might relate to their learned social scripts, deeming what is "acceptable" and/or conventional.

Until the last two lines of the poem, so much is mulled over in the head with metaphor and symbol, before even one action with the body. To ask "is this what is meant by enter the light?," seeing through flecks of golden pollen, a bee, dangerously close to the eye. We might recall the suspense and wonder of trying to make our own sense of something previously uncharted. That exploration of place and meaning where we've been told it is unsafe or unwise to dwell, and finding a catharsis; a more genuine and honest actualization of the self, whether it be through our expression, art, or truth.