Those Who Watch
In the last few years, my experience of the world has been colored by constant climate change anxiety. My sense of doom flames dramatically whenever I encounter clips of news pundits actively spreading misinformation and openly mocking the efforts of environmentalists. Accordingly, Those Who Watch attempts to present three distinct perspectives in the spread of climate change denial while working to critically examine my own engagement with misinformation as a distraction from forward progress.
In the piece’s electronic accompaniment, voices of news anchors and oil lobbyists swirl in a cloud of mischaracterizations and misquoted statistics. Meanwhile, the voices of scientists and activists are pitched down and distorted beyond understanding- only really audible in moments of quiet sincerity. The soloist, then, serves as a mouthpiece for my anxiety as the piano stews in its own angst and ignores a path to meaningful change.
Those Who Watch was written for Ann Duhamel’s Prayers for a Feverish Planet Project. Hear Ann discuss the project and this piece in detail on WSMR’s Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline.
Those Who Watch was selected for Boston New Music Initiative’s Music of Speech concert in 2022.