"1251," Still image from Of What Remains. Digital animation, 2007.

I open my internet browser
to the new news website
daily--a collision.

How to reconcile
deaths in Sudan
Iraq or North Korea
reduced to
twelve-point numbers
on the screen?

Caught in the space between
what is
what ought to be
a bitonality
of two worldviews
touch ever so slightly.

 

 

The title “bitonality” was inspired by a talk by Jeremy Begbie. It refers to a passage of music, as in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, when both an F#m and C major chord are played simultaneously. The different chords resound not only together, but through each other, combining the old to create a jolting sound of newness.