The following text was developed from and performed at a workshop on Autofiction taught by Sergio Blanco. Nerina was the in-session translator who translated our conversations between French and English. The workshop was conducted at the La Mama Director’s Symposium Session 1 2024.

Dear Sergio,

Sergei Rachmaninov was 40 years old when he composed his Prelude Op 23 No 4. Andante cantabile. The structure is simple. He introduces a D major theme, develops and transforms the theme, and returns to the theme. It’s called ternery form in musical terms. ABA. You probably know this.

Musical thought starts with a single note. The appearance of a second note creates an interval. What it is called is determined by the distance between the two pitches, their vibrational frequency. It is obvious on a piano. It is only with the third note does melody form. Each successive note increasing the distance of time and space away from the first note played.

{Music starts, duet with the music and the translator} https://open.spotify.com/track/5yZCF5EkhZYP7KvbFvewxF?si=YgQZQbNRSH-PtRU7gD95-A&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A2gRFTif5RpBq2MqbrZd7tl

In Prelude No.4, the theme starts in the left hand, a gentle sweep of triplets, rising and falling. It is consistent. The right hand introduces what feels like the main theme. Mi…Re-Mi. ABA

Composition is created by the distance between successive notes. Their frequencies vibrate in-sync. Like God placing each star where they need to be, the composer determines each note’s orbit – dueting centers of gravity to create harmony; or a percussive meteor, forming dissonance. Beauty can only exist if there is dissonance.

I do not know enough (yet) what was Rachmaninov’s impetus for writing this work – was it dissonance or harmony? What was he working around? Was he sick? Maybe he was waiting for his HIV test results? Or maybe who? Was he wanting to say something to somebody? A musical question to Augustine?

How do you measure the age of Love? My theory is to measure the orbital distance from each center of gravity. Young love is close, you can’t get away from the other. You stick together even on tropical nights, no clothes between skins squelching, salty.

With marriage you move your lives closer to each other, now you officially share the same bed, the same space. But, your orbit has loosened. You buy a bigger bed, a pillow each. You curl into each other when you need.

If your love is old, your distance has the equilibrium of a constellation. Stable or apart, your choice. You sleep in separately but show up together at events.

We are sleeping on a single-sized bed in a small Campo Grande apartment. It is just outside of Lisbon, I am a long distance away from home, 16-hour distance or interval. We are finally skin to skin again. He pulls out a plain metal ring, and gives it to me. I am sitting on the bed with one sock halfway on. My mouth opens, and what comes out is…are you sure? You can see my heart beating, but if you look really closely, you will see my horizon opening, my pupils dilating in the orbits of my eye.

Augustine: Singapore has finally taken Section 377A out of our Penal Code. Overnight, my carnal, sordid acts of rebellion and protest suddenly was…not political. It kinda takes the kink out of gay sex. Among my gaggle of gays, the jokes we crack to laugh at being labeled as criminals, shift from crass lewdness to deep conversations about open relationships, polygamy, throuples, anything to keep someone close when really our generation never really understood that. We’re not criminals now. Now, we’re just messed up, heathens outside of marriage. What makes a heathen? Is the love that dares not speak its name still God’s Love?

I am 76. I am now dead. My body is freshly found in my Kallang home on Wednesday, hours before I am to be sentenced for killing my husband.

“He was coming at me with a hammer, and I swung, It was a small death, I sat on the floor by the kitchen cabinets across from the stove, next to him, for a long time.”

The Prelude’s B section is presently tumultuous. We are waiting to leave it. We just need to wait for the right hand to simplify again, the tenderness of the A section will return.

{cadenza section, skip or paraphrase lines responsive to where the music is, making sure to duet the ending lines with the concluding musical section}

We are waiting to leave it. We just need to wait for the right hand to simplify again, the tenderness of the A section will return. The left hand sweeps and flows, relentless. The right hand develops thick inversions and transformations on the melody, grabbing bigger and bigger chords, pulling further and further into the outer octaves. Finally, when the distance between the two hands are so far apart, the furthest they can possibly be from each other, something pulls them together again.

{ending lines}

Can you will feel the end coming? But, Rachmaninov, God, He will bring the constellation that forms the A theme back with one last incarnation.

Do you hear the question? Or an answer?

(Music ends. Beat).

Love,

Shou Chen