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In February 2022, Christina Yuan Lee was followed home from the Christie St. station and brutally murdered in her own apartment, an act that was legally deemed not a hate crime. I lived only a few blocks away from where the crime happened. The reality of the murder didn’t hit until well into the evening and, not too soon after, I would be harassed by an antagonistic man saying that I was the reason why “this country has gone to shit” amongst derogatory slurs.
This piece along with my interpretation of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s work was initially filled with venom. Like Lee, Cha died as a victim to a horrific hate crime only weeks after she published Dictee and her artistic career was cut short. I was so angry with how common this was, how unwilling the world was in acceptance, and how little grace and kindness existed for the Asian community that I felt like I needed to represent these emotions in a piece. It wasn’t until later that my tone shifted, and I realized how sad it would be if all I did was focus on her and Lee’s death as if that is the only important thing to remember them by.
So, a little less elegantly but similarly to Cha, I had to transcend from pain and suffering and focus on the beauty in the words of her poetry. Her repetitions, imagery, wordplay, and deconstruction of the French and English languages brought me so much joy that I wanted to focus on that and that alone. I hope to expand on her work and even this poem one day but, as you listen, I hope you can hear all the small linguistic changes that occur throughout the sound space.
Commissioned and premiered by Unheard of Ensemble
Instrumentation: B Cl, Vln, Vc, Pno, and Electronics
