Trying to Remember What I Chose to Forget

This music is an exploration of trying to remember what I thought I had chosen to forget. A collection of pieces, a scrutiny of the music that forms an identity when sounds remembered are joined with those chosen to be forgotten.

Personal identity is a construct of things we assemble to identify ourselves. A list of achievements of who we think we are. A curriculum vitae, a bio, a thumbnail of a life so far lived. Usually showing our best side, we hope to be considered likeable, honest, worthy or even laudable.

The things we choose to forget are rarely included in such remembering. Of course, this is dependent on how much control we have over the making of our identity, because identity can be formed by things that may spin out of control, sometimes highlighting things we would choose to forget.

Identity can also be associated with a culture. The character of a culture is made up of people’s stories, often an accumulation of the wishing to be remembered. The depth and strength of a culture is its ability to acknowledge the things that would rather be forgotten, for it is in such acknowledgement that the truth of self-knowing builds strength, growth and the ability to survive.

To live the sounds we have become is to sing the music of an honest existence.

Cultural depth lies in the balance of honest admission, self-knowledge and the wisdom to live life in the philosophic formation of an evolving openness to honest self-appraisal. A strong culture embraces and traces connections and contact points that salute the sadness and madness of the tangled tango, danced in its unfolding.

It is marked by historical points of admission and truth, remembered, forgotten, hidden and in plain sight. Its memoires detail an understanding of the difference between myth and reality, an acknowledgement of injustice and a willingness to admit and correct wrong doings.