Tom's Rituals
on collaborating with playwright Tom Cone
Tom Cone and Edward Top, Orpheum Annex, downtown Vancouver,January 2012
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Tom's Rituals, Bringing People Together
Published: ti-TCR (The Capilano Review) a web folio, number 4, spring 2012
“Bourbon?” was one of the first questions that playwright, Tom Cone asked me, in his slow and calming voice. I first met Tom at a Song-Room event in his home. The next morning, I received a call that would be the first of many, “Hi Edward, it’s Tom.” He was brimming with ideas, the first of which was to collaborate on a chamber opera. Upon reading his earlier work, True Mummy, I was immediately drawn to its provocative tone and the themes of wickedness, intricate rituals and ceremonies, and the re-purposing of ancient artifacts. Tom created fleshy characters who were ‘real people’, but more notably, they were characters who did not leave an audience indifferent. Indifference was the enemy to Tom. We agreed.
Thus, after numerous drafts of the libretto, I began sketching the music for the opera, Love Thy Neighbour. We would meet in Tom’s garage-studio. As I played through my notes while singing his text, we were often reeling in laughter when hearing controversial phrases such as, “She’s an Arab, he’s a Jew,” turned almost ridiculous in grotesquely exaggerated music. The last lines of the libretto were left open until most of the music was completed. Even after the first official sing-through, the ending remained elusive. Four Americans spy on their Jewish neighbour in Jerusalem, and witness him getting murdered by his Muslim date. Finally, the opera ended in the way by which it began, on d sustained by all four singers in the same register, embodying the indifference of the characters towards the tragedy they just witnessed.
I have not considered the –how or the –why our collaboration worked. Perhaps it was the bourbon? Tom and I spoke on the phone, nearly on a daily basis, the conversations drifting into philosophical twilight zones about life, the purpose of art, politics, or raising children. We seemed to perpetuate each other in creating a grand ‘experience’, that might reach out and envelop the audience. These conversations helped to sharpen my own artistic vision, and hopefully Tom felt the same way.
Our second project, Songs of an Egyptian Princess, used excerpts from the play True Mummy. It was different because the text had already been written (and performed as part of the play), and the plan was to use the score as a starting point for a full-fledged opera in the future. Tom intended to adapt the play into a libretto after the premiere of the Songs, having a better idea of the sonic world. This project brought a different set of challenges. The text was poetic, yet still narrative and plot driven. Already as scenes of the play Tom envisioned them as songs: sung by the performer, possibly with an instrumental accompaniment. They are dramatic songs, almost operatic rather than introspective soliloquies. We felt that there should be several layers of music, simultaneously representing the ominous unfolding of the plot and the action on the surface, even if these seemingly progress into opposite directions. As if what lies ahead is already whispered into the subconscious of the listeners through the magic of music.
The songs are narrations by a young Egyptian Princess about her brief life, premature death, and the ‘re-purposing’ of her ashes as varnish for a Turner painting. The music was composed in an attempt to portray the primordial emotions of fear and anxiety; these nebulous feelings are made even more poignant through the innocent voice of the child Princess. I then composed musical references, or allegories that represent what the Princess goes through in each song: her head bound in linen; a procession; playing hide and seek; preparation for mummification. These references are absorbed by slowly moving spheres of portentous strings harmonies, whilst harp and percussion carry out tinkling garlands within a static modal framework.
Only now, I realize that a recurring theme in both Love They Neighbour and Songs of An Egyptian Princess is that of ‘re-purposing’, whether it is that of land, or a human being (or, a human being that has turned into an artifact that represents a sacred ancient culture). Perhaps, this is reflective of Tom’s interest in land ownership of First-Nation Canadians and his own Jewish heritage. For myself, this idea has striking parallels to music, such as the re-purposing of traditional musical forms and gestures. Tom’s text seemed to ask new questions: Do we own the land we occupy? Does a composer own the music he creates or is all music merely re-purposed forms from a traditional past? Should traditions—rituals—find a new place in today’s life?
I was not prepared for what happened next. Tom fell ill, and this turn of events had many parallels to that of his Egyptian Princess: a life cut short. The collaborative process that previously worked between us began to break down. As Tom began his medical treatment, our phone calls and long walks grew few, until there were none. I was faced with a daunting task of ‘collaborating’ with my worst partner, myself. After several false starts, I still had to finish what we embarked on a year earlier. I suddenly remembered a question that Tom frequently asked when we got stuck, “What’s at stake?” Tom’s life was his work: the ritual of bringing people together, introducing artists from different disciplines to produce exciting new works, organizing concerts and poetry nights in his own home, and championing the merits of local talent.
The ominous strings chords of the Songs of an Egyptian Princess were the only sketches Tom ever heard of the work, as I played them to him on the piano in his garage. Shadow players expand the melodies of the Princess, a soprano. These are instrumental doubles that anticipate and extend the pitches of the soloist. The doubles are a solo violin, piccolo and a harp, instruments accompanying the Princess to the afterlife. This technique of vocal expansion creates the suggestion of endless melodic lines that grow from the orchestral accompaniment into the vocalist, who in her turn then passes them back to the orchestra.
"What's at stake?" Tom hardly spoke of his illness and his pain, and instead wanted to talk about the project. During our last conversation, he didn't ask about the project at all. He asked about my wife and son. So, this was the man I grew to know and admire. Tom passed away two weeks before the premiere, but, like his Egyptian Princess on a Turner painting, the varnish of his spirit illuminated it.