Picking at Freckles

Premiered by LIGAMENT Nov 15, 2023

I couldn’t write a pithy, lyrical text, so I decided to write a four-page-long semi-poem. This move against concision allowed me to fill the stanzas of this text with small details and little observations that had struck me during my time writing this piece.

One of the many things art can do is assert the value and meaning of the ordinary, providing a lens through which we can break our chains of automatic thought and freshly perceive what we would usually take for granted. I had always thought this about the little things that augment our days, but in drafting ideas for this piece I wondered what it would be like if I paid that same special attention to darker, more pessimistic moments. Rather than shine a light on some unsung pleasure of daily life, I wanted to see what would happen if I concentrated on little moments of displeasure that could accumulate into a more significant sense of futility.