"But Would She Remember You?" explained

This week I realized—late, I know—that because Spotify doesn't have a "program notes" feature, people listening to some of my early work on Spasm don't have the benefit of context. This came into focus today when I received an email from a listener.

She writes: 

I wonder if you might be able to explain your piece “But Would She Remember You?”. I only came across it recentely and I was struck upon hearing it by the extent to which it caused me to reflect on what I’d heard. I replayed it several times to try and form a better understanding of the story.

I appreciate that the ambiguity and mystery of this woman are important so I do not wish to ask about her as I feel that would spoil the nature of your piece but I would like to know a little about the speakers. Does each voice represent one person? I would be interested to know whether the interviews all happen at once or whether they’re speaking from different points of time (so their perspectives/relationships have changed). I’m also interested in the process of writing it; how did you go about putting it all together? 

Good questions. So, for those of you interested, here is my response:

In the piece I interview 5 men talking about important women in their lives who are no longer in their lives. The first movement is about a first love who is long gone, the second is about a mother figure who was not your mother—a female mentor perhaps—who made a positive impression on you during your youth, and the third is about a female relative who is no longer alive. 

The speakers are me, my father, my former roommate when I first moved to NY in 1994, and two other close friends. You can follow the stories by listening to the voices and matching them up as they speak. Each interview was done in one sitting, and each person is talking about only one person in each section. And, we are all talking about different women from our lives. 

The process was really one of editing the stories—my interview with my father was well over an hour—and composing the background for the voices.

There you have it. If you have any other questions about stuff, please send an email from the site, and I’ll answer…and maybe post it here!

Michael