Contemplative, Edgy, Intimate
What sounds like a glib parlor game or late night bar ice-breaker, becomes an aural Rorschach test for the participants who are asked the title question. They are often surprised by their own responses, like the young man who dismisses the concept of survival after death, then goes on to describe how he would have haunted his mother, "just to let her know that I was okay."
The deliberately ragged soundscape design of this narrator-less essay is one of the things that saves it from the "new age" curse. Truly contemplative and thought provoking, it maintains an unsentimental edge.
This could be the centerpiece of programs about spirituality and mortality, but it would also be an evocative and tantalizing piece to drop into the right mix of music. In any context, this is the sort of work you want coming out of your dashboard on long drives through desert nights.
Joseph Dougherty
Studio City, CA
August 4, 2006
Impromptu responses contemplating death and astral mobility
