SEE YOU IN THE STARS is a work for theremin and electric harp, composed in autumn 2023.

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I've been thinking a lot about the Arecibo message, as well as other messages humanity has sent out into space (such as the Voyager 1 Golden Record). Each message sent into the aether requires its messengers to wrestle with the same question: how do you communicate with beings that might be millions, or billions, of light years away - that might not have any basis to understand the language, or even the medium, of the communication itself?

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In SEE YOU IN THE STARS, the theremin takes on this anthropomorphic question of communication, the instrument oscillating between sending voicemails out light-years, to singing grandiose arias to itself - conveying speech, or emotion, in a way that does not necessarily use words but rather implies them. How much us, as listeners, can truly understand of its attempts to communicate is for us to decide. At the same time: how much should we understand, if we don't know whether the message is made for us?

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I don’t like goodbyes.

Because if I say goodbye, then it’s forever. Like that’s it.

I don’t think I’m ready for that. Not yet.

So instead, erm...

I guess,

 

I’ll see you in the stars.