Chris Swithinbank

The title of this piece comes from Renee Glad­man’s col­lec­tion of short texts Calami­ties (Wave Books, 2016). Calami­ties pre­sents a se­ries of prose poems that move be­tween crys­talline geo­met­ric metaphors for our place in the world — “You were in a field, an uniden­ti­fied coun­try, and all the lines were il­lu­mi­nated and lifted out of the ground” — to med­i­ta­tions on cor­po­re­al­ity in the ethe­real world of writ­ten text — “…writ­ing was the story of the body in thought” — to the kind of si­mul­ta­ne­ously in­sight­ful and hu­mor­ous phrases rep­re­sented by the line I bor­row for my title. I am try­ing to think about prox­im­ity and dis­tance to the world as me­di­ated through the text and im­agery I con­sume — per­haps ex­ces­sively or even ob­ses­sively — every day. We can be brought close to the far away by news re­ports and pho­tog­ra­phy, but as Glad­man’s line sug­gests, prox­im­ity can para­dox­i­cally also make it hard to see.

The first ver­sion of I began the day in­side the world try­ing to look at it, but it was lying on my face, mak­ing it hard to see. was com­mis­sioned by Phil­har­monie Lux­em­bourg and re­ceived its first per­for­mance by en­sem­ble mo­saik at Rainy Days 2018. I am grate­ful for the know­ing and un­know­ing con­tri­bu­tions of James Bean, Renee Glad­man, Clara Ian­notta, Bet­tina Junge, Lydia Rilling, and Zeynep Tora­man in re­al­is­ing this pro­ject.

In­stru­men­ta­tions for the ver­sions per­formed so far are as fol­lows:

1. Am­pli­fied sex­tet with video & stereo audio play­back — oboe (+ ob­jects) / clar­inet (+ flute) / vi­o­lin (+ ob­jects) / viola / cello / key­board (+ ob­jects) — for en­sem­ble mo­saik

2. Spa­tialised en­sem­ble with video & 4-chan­nel audio play­back — clar­inet / trom­bone / trom­bone / tuba / per­cus­sion / vi­o­lin / viola / cello / dou­ble bass — for waste­LAnd

3. Spa­tialised quin­tet with video & mul­ti­chan­nel audio — flute / oboe / clar­inet / vi­o­lin / key­board — for en­sem­ble mo­saik