sen_no_ongaku | (no subject)

This past Friday, I received a letter from Johanna Lawrenson, Abbie Hoffman's widow, that I could not use the text from Steal This Book I had set for

wavyarms's recital on March 4.

Let me stress that the temporal proximity ot the letter to the performance is not her fault. It took inordinately long to obtain information about who held the performance rights from the book's publisher, and in that time I had to present

wavyarms with music to rehearse.

Nevertheless, the depth of irony in...

1) Having to ask for permission to set text from a book its author honestly wanted people to steal,

2) Being denied that permission in an effort to protect the legacy of one one of the most notorious and outspoken antiestablishment figures of the late '60s and early '70s, essentially

3) Refusing an artist the right to express himself fully

...is nigh overwhelming.

So I spent Saturday afternoon adapting the Wikipedia article on Molotov cocktails to fit the preexisting music. I feel that this diminishes the power of Cocktail greatly, as what attracted me to Hoffman's text was not only the juxtaposition of its clinical, neutral tone with the intense emotion underneath, but also speaking through a historical document. Even though the new words are not wholly mine, they are in my voice, and I feel that changes the tone of Cocktail to one more of petulance than of despair.

Interestingly, it only just occurred to me that Cocktail is as much about despair as it is impotent rage.