Andrew M. Rodriguez
Andrew M. Rodriguez
Long into the night when I am deep asleep, I see a house. The house looks alien to me, but it is not unfamiliar. I’ve visited this house before; not every night, but many times. It looks different than the last time my dreams brought me here, and different again from the time before that and the time before that. The house transforms, slowly morphing into versions of itself mixed with versions of me. I go in, and I start to wander. Even though the architecture is ever-changing, the sensation I get from being inside this house is always the same. I know where I am even if it doesn’t look recognizable. The house is perpetually empty. It’s a lonely emptiness; not just devoid of life, but without light, air, existence. It’s a space in limbo. I find myself moving from room to room out of habit. I know what I’m going to find here. I know this place intimately, but I can’t stop wandering. It’s almost as if something in this house possesses me into a state of restlessness—constantly searching but with nothing to find. The hollowness of the house mirrors a hollowness within myself. I don’t have this feeling when I wake. This emptiness is reserved for this place, this liminal house, the house from my childhood. Maybe the searching is me looking for memories of growing up here, searching for the warmth I used to feel. But, instead of finding my youth, all I have is this shell of a home that I’m doomed to wander. It doesn’t quite look like the house I remember—sun-faded yellow with a gravel driveway on a corner lot—but when I’m inside I know exactly where I am. So I wander. From room to room I travel, knowing where I am but not being able to reconcile the place I remember with the place I am existing in. So with this endless emptiness inside of me I keep searching, and in this empty house is where I found Flickering Presence.
Long into the night when I am deep asleep, I see a house. The house looks alien to me, but it is not unfamiliar. I’ve visited this house before; not every night, but many times. It looks different than the last time my dreams brought me here, and different again from the time before that and the time before that. The house transforms, slowly morphing into versions of itself mixed with versions of me. I go in, and I start to wander. Even though the architecture is ever-changing, the sensation I get from being inside this house is always the same. I know where I am even if it doesn’t look recognizable. The house is perpetually empty. It’s a lonely emptiness; not just devoid of life, but without light, air, existence. It’s a space in limbo. I find myself moving from room to room out of habit. I know what I’m going to find here. I know this place intimately, but I can’t stop wandering. It’s almost as if something in this house possesses me into a state of restlessness—constantly searching but with nothing to find. The hollowness of the house mirrors a hollowness within myself. I don’t have this feeling when I wake. This emptiness is reserved for this place, this liminal house, the house from my childhood. Maybe the searching is me looking for memories of growing up here, searching for the warmth I used to feel. But, instead of finding my youth, all I have is this shell of a home that I’m doomed to wander. It doesn’t quite look like the house I remember—sun-faded yellow with a gravel driveway on a corner lot—but when I’m inside I know exactly where I am. So I wander. From room to room I travel, knowing where I am but not being able to reconcile the place I remember with the place I am existing in. So with this endless emptiness inside of me I keep searching, and in this empty house is where I found Flickering Presence.
It’s funny to look back on now, but for a long time I never considered writing a guitar concerto. Being a guitarist myself, I have a particular style of writing for the instrument that developed over many years. The way I write for guitar simply didn’t sound like the other works in the canon I became familiar with. It wasn’t until meeting and working with Jamie that the idea of a guitar concerto began to creep back in and I started to see the vision. I first wrote a solo piece for Jamie titled, The world doesn’t need me. This piece sounds as much like me as anything I had written prior to my composition career. Jamie took to my writing quickly and naturally. This pushed me to dive deeper into myself, bring out everything that felt natural to me on the guitar, and push it into the foreground. Slowly, I began to consider what this voice would sound like in a concerto setting.
It’s funny to look back on now, but for a long time I never considered writing a guitar concerto. Being a guitarist myself, I have a particular style of writing for the instrument that developed over many years. The way I write for guitar simply didn’t sound like the other works in the canon I became familiar with. It wasn’t until meeting and working with Jamie that the idea of a guitar concerto began to creep back in and I started to see the vision. I first wrote a solo piece for Jamie titled, The world doesn’t need me. This piece sounds as much like me as anything I had written prior to my composition career. Jamie took to my writing quickly and naturally. This pushed me to dive deeper into myself, bring out everything that felt natural to me on the guitar, and push it into the foreground. Slowly, I began to consider what this voice would sound like in a concerto setting.
At the heart of Flickering Presence is a specter wandering the halls of an empty house. The vision of my dreams kept returning. I imagined the guitar as the ghost haunting the ensemble, faintly glimmering in and out of the textures—appearing and disappearing from existence. This spirit exists out of time. The material moves between all three movements, calling back to the past, or maybe foreseeing what is to come. But not all of Flickering Presence exists in the shadows. The first movement swirls around endlessly from the perpetually descending movement of the orchestra—like being swallowed by a vortex. The soloist hovers just below the surface, only coming up for air occasionally before they come out of the other end of this whirlpool. The next movement is a haze, the fog of memory—or is it just deja vu? Members of the orchestra attempt to pierce through the murkiness, but are only swallowed again. The final movement is a memory of a past life, or maybe multiple lives. The music is romantic, but the memories are fleeting as the soloist begins to skip through time. I keep wandering, searching for something. What do I think I am going to find? There are only empty rooms. More rooms than I remember.
At the heart of Flickering Presence is a specter wandering the halls of an empty house. The vision of my dreams kept returning. I imagined the guitar as the ghost haunting the ensemble, faintly glimmering in and out of the textures—appearing and disappearing from existence. This spirit exists out of time. The material moves between all three movements, calling back to the past, or maybe foreseeing what is to come. But not all of Flickering Presence exists in the shadows. The first movement swirls around endlessly from the perpetually descending movement of the orchestra—like being swallowed by a vortex. The soloist hovers just below the surface, only coming up for air occasionally before they come out of the other end of this whirlpool. The next movement is a haze, the fog of memory—or is it just deja vu? Members of the orchestra attempt to pierce through the murkiness, but are only swallowed again. The final movement is a memory of a past life, or maybe multiple lives. The music is romantic, but the memories are fleeting as the soloist begins to skip through time. I keep wandering, searching for something. What do I think I am going to find? There are only empty rooms. More rooms than I remember.
Like any other piece, I began generating ideas. The visions of me wandering are central to this piece, so I pick up the guitar and start to play with these hauntings in my head. It flows a bit quicker when I’m writing for guitar because the instrument feels natural in my hands. Early sketches are much more guitar-centric ideas, almost like they are solo guitar pieces. Then, slowly, I began to hear ideas that work in the ensemble. Some of these new ideas are addendums to guitar sketches I’ve already been working on, but many of them are new ideas altogether. What ends up happening is I create an abundance of material. I think that I have plans on how to use all of these measures in the piece. They’ll fit together like some elaborate 3D puzzle. But in reality, a lot of this material gets thrown out by the end. It’s a shame, really, because I love so much of it. Learning how to toss aside an idea for the greater good of a piece was a hard lesson to learn, and really I’m still learning it. I would say that for many of my pieces, especially larger ones, I end up writing two, sometimes three different versions of it. Maybe they don’t get written out in their entirety from start to finish, but at some point in the writing process I need to develop a map of how the entire piece will flow. This is the stage where I start to fit in all of the different ideas I’m working on. I am the architect designing the layout of these empty halls into these empty rooms, the rooms I no longer recognize. This is my design process, developing multiple iterations of the floorplan, trying to fit in all of my ideas. I work for weeks attempting to make the first version viable before finally realizing that it never would be, and I need to move on. If I’m lucky, the second version is the version that sticks. Otherwise, it’s another number of weeks trying to fit a walnut into a pinhole. Flickering Presence only had two versions, but I was adamant with myself that I could make the first version work. I often find myself in the middle of a piece—hitting my stride, notes falling into place, sections connecting to sections—when suddenly I realize that I’ve strayed from the central concept I had at the beginning of the process, my visions. Now I’m wandering a house within a house. I need to find my way back to my empty home. It takes awhile to find my way again. I have to let go in order to get back to where I wanted to be all along. Once I acquiesce to letting go, the piece starts to make sense. It isn’t easy, per se, but progress becomes linear. I just need to keep the visions in my mind. The feeling of that house is where it all began, so I can’t let that be forgotten.
Like any other piece, I began generating ideas. The visions of me wandering are central to this piece, so I pick up the guitar and start to play with these hauntings in my head. It flows a bit quicker when I’m writing for guitar because the instrument feels natural in my hands. Early sketches are much more guitar-centric ideas, almost like they are solo guitar pieces. Then, slowly, I began to hear ideas that work in the ensemble. Some of these new ideas are addendums to guitar sketches I’ve already been working on, but many of them are new ideas altogether. What ends up happening is I create an abundance of material. I think that I have plans on how to use all of these measures in the piece. They’ll fit together like some elaborate 3D puzzle. But in reality, a lot of this material gets thrown out by the end. It’s a shame, really, because I love so much of it. Learning how to toss aside an idea for the greater good of a piece was a hard lesson to learn, and really I’m still learning it. I would say that for many of my pieces, especially larger ones, I end up writing two, sometimes three different versions of it. Maybe they don’t get written out in their entirety from start to finish, but at some point in the writing process I need to develop a map of how the entire piece will flow. This is the stage where I start to fit in all of the different ideas I’m working on. I am the architect designing the layout of these empty halls into these empty rooms, the rooms I no longer recognize. This is my design process, developing multiple iterations of the floorplan, trying to fit in all of my ideas. I work for weeks attempting to make the first version viable before finally realizing that it never would be, and I need to move on. If I’m lucky, the second version is the version that sticks. Otherwise, it’s another number of weeks trying to fit a walnut into a pinhole. Flickering Presence only had two versions, but I was adamant with myself that I could make the first version work. I often find myself in the middle of a piece—hitting my stride, notes falling into place, sections connecting to sections—when suddenly I realize that I’ve strayed from the central concept I had at the beginning of the process, my visions. Now I’m wandering a house within a house. I need to find my way back to my empty home. It takes awhile to find my way again. I have to let go in order to get back to where I wanted to be all along. Once I acquiesce to letting go, the piece starts to make sense. It isn’t easy, per se, but progress becomes linear. I just need to keep the visions in my mind. The feeling of that house is where it all began, so I can’t let that be forgotten.
These dreams don’t have an ending. I don’t think I am ever meant to find anything in the vacant rooms. The wandering is the point. The emptiness is what I am meant to feel. Sometimes within the inner void is where a depth of feeling can be found. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been able to reach that place other than in my dreams, but now I know to give myself over to the space. I let myself wander through my empty past, the vacant present, and the unknown future—flickering in and out of existence.
These dreams don’t have an ending. I don’t think I am ever meant to find anything in the vacant rooms. The wandering is the point. The emptiness is what I am meant to feel. Sometimes within the inner void is where a depth of feeling can be found. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been able to reach that place other than in my dreams, but now I know to give myself over to the space. I let myself wander through my empty past, the vacant present, and the unknown future—flickering in and out of existence.
—————————————
A video recording of the premiere of Flickering Presence can be found here.
Words by Andrew M Rodriguez.
Pictures by Jamie Monck, Andrew M Rodriguez, and Erin Shina. All pictures made on film.
For more about Andrew, please visit his website.
—————————————
A video recording of the premiere of Flickering Presence can be found here.
Words by Andrew M Rodriguez.
Pictures by Jamie Monck, Andrew M Rodriguez, and Erin Shina. All pictures made on film.
For more about Andrew, please visit his website.