bluet (i): aporia

for solo cello

2021

This piece is the first in a series I anticipate composing, entitled bluets, inspired by the prose-poetry-memoir Bluets by Maggie Nelson—a chronicle of depression, loss, love, and a literal and metaphorical love of blue. As such, the series is a sort of bittersweet tribute to melancholia and its complexities.

Aporia can be defined as a logical impasse, contradiction, and expression of doubt. In philosophy, an aporia references a state of puzzlement, to be unable to proceed. In this first piece in the series, aporia, I explore the contradictory experience of depression, of feeling simultaneously as though one could vanish into the air yet also as though ones bones were made into lead. While existing in these contradictions, one finds oneself at an impasse within the subliminality of existence and nonexistence, unable to fully be present in either plane. Much of the sonic material seeks to express this confusion and fragility of being, presenting itself on the precipice of existence and exploring the sensation of emptiness in various ways. Other material drags, as though weighted, and revels in its own dullness. Moving between these extremes and melting them into one another, I attempt to sonically navigate the nature of this aporetic experience.