haptic: three essays on Brutality was written in response to the killing of George Floyd and depicts America’s historic and current police violence crisis through collaboration with poet (and general genius icon!) Lua Powers. haptic also deals with subthemes of communication, specifically the use of touch and force and their implications on the feelings of love, comfort, and safety. Police brutality and mass incarceration have long upheld systemic racism: they must be addressed immediately.
first essay: My mother clung to her children (0:04)
second essay: I've been trying to save you (3:19)
final essay: Blood is no longer in our veins (8:05)
Flinching
by Lua Powers
Now I trek my hungry fingers over the fuzz of a television
pretending it can hug me back
My mother clung to her children with nails and teeth
because their touch was never scarce or sacred
I’ve been trying to save you
Because touch is a genetic punch, snatched up, stolen, and sold
And progress is not the blood on your hands slipping in our palms
while every day we need to learn to walk, hold, breathe, squeeze, talk, call, cry all over again
Blood is no longer in our veins, it leaks out of the television
Credits:
Written for the 2020 Lake George Music Festival through the LGMF Composer Institute and performed by The Rhythm Method quartet.
Leah Asher, violin
Marina Kifferstein violin
Wendy Richman, viola
Meaghan Burke, cello
www.therhythmmethod.nyc
Audio engineering and mixing by Bernd Klug
About the composer: Ariel Sol (“Ari”) Bertulfo Schwartz is a human-centered composer and harpist currently studying at the Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. In his music, Ari aims to create community through person-oriented performance experiences. He thoroughly enjoys interdisciplinary work, drawing inspiration from storytelling, mathematics, linguistics, sociology, and current events. Ari is currently the composition student of David Dzubay and the harp student of Elzbieta Szmyt. His compositions and commissions have been performed in such places as the Peoria Civic Center, the Grant Park Music Festival’s Music in the Parks Series, St. Olaf College, and Dominican University’s Lund Auditorium. Ari is also at home as a performer, being selected several times to perform as a soloist at Lyon & Healy. As both a harpist and composer, Ari strives to dismantle traditional accessibility barriers and to diversify both the stage and audience.
Connect with him and see more of his work on Instagram and his website.