A setting of text adapted from Gillian Rose’s memoir Love’s Work. Below is the original in full:
'Hands no longer marvel at the beauty of hands: they cease to stroke, slowly, repeatedly, the long, speechful fingers; her hands can no longer reach their short, maladroit, childlike friends. Palm no longer paddles in palm, kissing with inside lip.
Lips still meet lips, full enough for breach of promise, unlike the lipless organs of politicians. Lip no longer sucks in lip, tongue roving around the songlines, greeting whorl upon whorl of inner ear. The embrace of face by face is the true carnival of sex beyond gender.
He no longer calls my name. (He no longer even uses my name.)
‘Loss’ is a loose description. The movement from eros passion through the passion of faith to the everyday and the ethical, enhanced when together and, equally, when apart, is missing. In place of the unselfconsciousness of mutual love, its berth of listening stillness, a hateful self-regard is unleashed to gnaw the Beloved, the disappointed one.'
———
Performed by Lotte Betts-Dean. Live recording taken from Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, 20 March 2024.
Electronics adapted from a piece originally for Stephanie Lamprea.
Artwork is a detail of 'Christ Among the Doctors' (1506) by Albrecht Dürer.