The piece starts with the beautiful and erratic koto and the 808 bass. This is the “grandmother,” the matriarch of generational trauma, but this is not about either of my real grandmothers. This is a representation of a grandmother, a source of sadness felt by the “mother.” I was playing Debussy and had leftover muscle memory in my hands and sound memory in my head, which suggests that the koto melody is residues of Orientalism reimagined. I don’t know how to play the koto and so this melody may never work on a real koto. The melancholy section with the piano and the violin is the mother, my real mother dimensionalized, the sadness she holds but never expresses, the wheezing wisps of the violin she experiences when she feels like she can’t breathe, EKG machine beeps and conversations and ambient noises I recorded at the SF General that day when I took her to the emergency room. I bring back the grandmother’s koto exactly as it was in the beginning and pair it with the resolving and steady flute, the imaginary “daughter.” The mother’s piano comes back in similar patterns as before but is more bold, more confident, supported by the daughter’s flute. The grandmother’s 808 bass comes back but this time it’s not threatening, even her high koto plucks are shimmering and attentive, watchful. And together they weave a cohesive unit, as an interpretation of resolving generational trauma.
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