So some of you may have noticed that I took a short hiatus to publish elsewhere. I wrote a piece for Public Books called “diss(ertation) track” which was rejected due to their no longer accepting anything that wasn’t prose. I instead wrote “On Dressing Down Myth” which I limited my…

Do you ever watch a piece of media and wonder if it was crafted precisely for you? That’s how I felt watching Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s …(Iphigenia) at the Kennedy Center yesterday afternoon. A jazz opera of Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, Shorter (score) and spalding (libretto and one…

ἰὼ δύστανος, βροτοῖς οὔτε νεκρὸς νεκροῖσιν μέτοικος, οὐ ζῶσιν, οὐ θανοῦσιν. alas luckless, neither mortal nor shade amongst shades but as a migrant, not living or dead. (Ant. 850–2) — — We can start with the obvious: hasn’t Antigone been done to death? The short answer is yes: it’s our…

Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past. . . . Does then the ‘historical’ person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from…

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you…

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas) adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen! My mind’s brought to speak on bodies morphed into new forms. Gods — for y‘all’ve wrought them changes — breathe over my beginnings…

ὦ πότνια πότνια μᾶτερ, οὐ δάκρυά γέ σοιδώσομεν ἁμέτερα· παρ᾿ ἱεροῖς γὰρ οὐ πρέπει. Oh my dear lady mother, I shall not tender you with my tears for they are not proper at holy rites. — Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 1488–90 “With this faith we will be able to hew…

~in which, a hairy explanation for the “unfunded”, liner notes for the BCAD production of Iphigenia in Aulis, and musing on our potential for chromatic classical futurisms PRELUDE: Haley, Ashby, Greenwood or, On Becoming Unfunded I’m sorry if this planet that I’m living on is quizzical My lyrical ambitions sometimes don’t…

written by v ness (2020) “I’m not interested really in talking to you as an artist. It seems to me that the artist’s struggle for [their] integrity must be considered as a kind of metaphor for the struggle (which is universal and daily) of all human beings on the face…