The time limits of dust

Instrumentation: cello, loop pedal, playback

Duration: 10:30

Written in: 2022

Category: Chamber, Playback

The time limits of dust was written in the context of the Covid pandemic, our activities centering on daily rituals, and so the cello is played with everyday objects instead of a bow – toothbrush, espresso cup, large coin, pencil, and paper.

Co-conceived with the cellist Céline Papion, we chose a short text from the absurdist Soviet poet Daniil Kharms to capture the spirit of these daily rituals. They can be become monotonous, but they also offer comfort and familiarity. And if you look closely, they also are beautiful and fascinating, like the accumulation of dust on a sunlit table.

How easy it is for a person to get tangled up in insignificant things. You can walk for hours from the table to the wardrobe and from the wardrobe to the couch and never find a way out. You can even forget where you are and shoot arrows into some small cabinet on the wall. “Beware, cabinet!” you can yell at it. “I’ll get you!” Or you can lie down on the floor and examine the dust. There is inspiration in this, too. It’s best to do it on a schedule, in conformity with time. Although it’s difficult to determine the time limit, for what are the time limits of dust? (Kharms and Yankelvich 2009)

(Text written on August 17, 1940. Daniil Kharms and Matvei Yankelevich, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writing of Daniil Kharms [New York, Ny: Ardis Publishers, 2009], 263.)

Dust serves as a metaphor for the accumulation of the daily rituals. To represent this, musical gestures are copied and overlaid on each other up to 120 times to form gradually shifting patterns.

The sounds heard in the playback come almost exclusively from the cello, with the single exception of the particularly musical coffee maker that is heard at the end of the piece.