“What Glass Shards Are Called”
This project presents the poem and musical composition What Glass Shards Are Called, a collaboration between poet Emmy Newman and composer Samson Matthews.
About the Composition
The process in making this piece has been strung out yet clumped.
I started with the initial recording material, which I intended to record all in one day, but didn’t end up doing that way. Emmy sent me recordings of her dad performing glass work, which made my life a little bit easier in that regard. I remember particularly the day I recorded the “raingutters crammed with leaves” bit. I collected leaves from various trees on campus and put them in a brown paper bag. Then, I found a gutter, pressed record, and started stuffing the leaves into the gutter. Even though I had a large pile of leaves, I didn’t have as many as I wanted, so I began to tear the paper bag, and stuff that down the drain as well. I really leaned into the process of creating these noises, it even felt meditative after a while. I was in this weird altered state of consciousness once I got going, and I’m not really sure how to describe it. Fixated, lively, full of movement. Never the same, always immediately present for the task at hand. I didn’t feel in control of my own body, like I was letting something else control it for a bit. I don’t know, it was weird.
The other two big recordings I did in the same night, which were the “buzzing” of the hair clippers, where I trimmed my partner’s undercut (two birds, one stone!), and the “washing out a pot of burned rice”, which is pretty self explanatory. No magical, meaningful experiences here, just expressions of mundane. Although, perhaps mundanity is a phenomena in itself, where we give up autonomy for the convenience of routine, where someone else is perhaps controlling our body for a short bit of time. Perhaps these experiences weren’t out of the ordinary realm of consciousness or feeling, but maybe that’s what makes them all the more interesting and worthy of reflection. What are ways that I play with autonomy, agency, routine, and time in the decisions that I make on a daily basis?
The first draft I came up with had two components to it: the reading of the poem, and the musical drone in the background. I enjoyed it, and I had a lot of fun playing around with different spatial features and manipulations of the speech, and I like how the drones add just enough to keep you engaged the whole time. The drones kind of just came out of me. Sometimes I will sit down to write something and 20 min. to an hour later I have a product that felt more like it created itself than it does anything else. These projects are usually ones that I’m more excited about, because the process feels natural, and I feel guided by intuition and curiosity. I am a little bit concerned with the understandability of the words in places, but maybe that’s not important. I mean, of course text is important in this project, but it’s kind of all about making text important in ways that you maybe wouldn’t initially expect. So maybe audibility isn’t the biggest priority. But also it’s important to keep people engaged, and I want people to know what the poem is about. I don’t know, something I’m still grappling with, and thinking about.
This last draft that I created, I’ll admit was not as finished as I wanted it to be. It had been taking longer than I wanted to implement the sounds into the piece, and there is a very distinct part that feels very disjunct. I ran out of time, essentially, but I wanted to show where I ended up. I do feel like I have a clear idea of how I want to move forward, which is really great, and really important. In this last draft, there is the inclusion of the keyboard sounds and the playing with the text on the keyboard. I enjoy the cool and weird sounds that are being created from this texture, and I like the thinking behind it. Again, it’s so close to being really amazing, and I just need to push myself to get there. Right now, I think it’s good. It’s boring in some parts, but it sparks interest, and hopefully leaves you with questions. But it could be sooooo much bettterrrrr! It’ll do for now.
The reason I say that this piece has been strung out yet clumped is because I feel like every little piece of the puzzle has slowly shown itself, but I feel like much of the work has happened in bursts. So, there are these little chunks/bursts of time, energy, and creation that all link up to creative this final product. I’m kind of visualizing it as a sort of ring with dots, or a figurative crown with different points, some bigger than others. I don’t know if this makes any sense, this is just what my brain thinks about all of this right now.
Context of the Composition
This piece starts with Emmy and her Dad, the relationship that she fostered with him, and the way that her family life has cultivated around the love of creation. There is a sanctity in making things that is at the essence of the poem, and at the core of her relationship with her dad. This sanctity ultimately drove the inception of this poem. And then she shared this poem with me, and offered me a glimpse into this relationship, and the opportunity to create atop this sacredness that she was already familiar with. There are mentions of her grandfather, and her dad’s relationship with him. Deeply embedded in this poem is the relationship between family and creation, whether that creation is art, a relationship, burning food, or the process of doing something together. I guess what I’m trying to portray in my interpretations is the convolutedness, yet clarity there is in naming such sanctity. I am in relationship with these people in such a small way, yet I feel it. I am so far away from closeness that I don’t even know Emmy’s dad’s name, yet I am able to encompass the same emotional space that they occupy. This emotional space then extends to those that I hold dear to me, and the loved ones that I share sacredness with.
About the Website
The audio and composition for What Glass Shards Are Called were completed by Samson Matthews during a 2020 summer fellowship at Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL).
Samson worked with CDIL faculty to develop the website concept, prepare objects and metadata, and write content. Evan Peter Williamson developed the website based on a CollectionBuilder template, with customizations for playing the audio directly linked to the text using wavesurfer.js and howler.js. Interactive features are designed to allow the composition to be presented in a variety of forms, and coexist as a collection of components.
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