You can Plan on Me
A Film by The Crossing
@ Christmas 2020
A new film for the holiday: "You can Plan on Me." A reflection, a pastiche, a new work based on music and texts of our long history of commissioned world premieres.
This year, we can't be together for The Crossing @ Christmas. So, this is our way of being together. Some photos, snippets from music of the past, recording alone and knowing that on the other end of our solo tracks there is a Team listening to us and pulling it into a whole – an 'entire' – finding our way toward what we can do, embracing what we cannot, and making a record of the time; the Christmas when we were separated, not despite our love for one another, but because of it.
The new film is conceived by Donald, who also composed the film score, largely based on composer Aaron Helgeson's "A way far home," which was written for and premiered by The Crossing in December 2017. The film is by Luke Carpenter and Emma Oehlers, with sound producer Paul Vazquez, and assistance to the score and sound by Kevin Vondrak. The work is dedicated to "the artists of The Crossing in isolation."
The Crossing @ Christmas, an annual Philadelphia tradition, was set to be the world premiere of a new work of Matana Roberts, "we got time." – a work that honors the life of Breonna Taylor. Though conceived to be performed outside and socially distanced, recent safety restrictions in Philadelphia caused the postponement of that concert to The Crossing's annual Month of Moderns in June 2021.
Like all the pandemic-time creations of The Crossing, "You can Plan on Me" focuses on the experience of aloneness – of not being able to do the thing we love and rely on. In The Crossing's case, that is singing. Thus, the film content: a solitary figure in a candle-lit room sits at a table reminiscing. We join her as observers, while hearing the soundtrack in her mind. That soundtrack was recorded by the singers individually, at home, on their phones and assembled by Paul Vazquez.
The main text of "You can Plan on Me" is by Gordon Henry, a Philadelphia native and enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe of Minnesota, currently on the faculty of Michigan State University. His "Dear Sonny:" anchors the work, with additional words of Alan Ginsberg, Joseph Rolnick, Donald Nally and Kevin Vondrak.
* * *
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey
on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night (3)
you stand there,
you’re standing there, (5)
Days are still numbers here,
this one if I remember correct,
is a long one, day not number,
just after Christmas, the 27th, no the 28th. (1)
you stand there,
you’re standing there, (5)
What kind of singing matters (2)
the night has many hours
each one sadder than the next (4)
I’ll never know you until I’m home (5)
Days are still numbers here,
this one if I remember correct,
is a long one, day not number,
just after Christmas, the 27th, no the 28th.
I have to go now, the door just blew open. (1)
you stand there,
you’re standing there,
I know you,
I’ll never know you
until I’m...home (5)
Days are still numbers here,
this one if I remember correct,
is a long one, day not number,
just after Christmas, the 27th, no the 28th.
I have to go now, the door just blew open. (1)
I hear a phone,
the coffee’s done, there are no words left for this day,
I’m leaving like I always do, when silence and time get too deep.
I go back among these people you too wanted so badly to love. (1)
when silence and time get too deep.
… wanted so badly to love. (1)
the coffee’s done (1)
I go back (1)
------------------
"Dear Sonny:," Gordon Henry, Jr. from Letters to the Dead and Distant: Dear Marie, and: Dear Sonny, and: The Mute Scribe Recalls the Talking Circle,New Poets of Native Nations and Cream City Review; used with kind permission.
The Forest, Nally and Vondrak
"Howl," Alan Ginsberg
Joseph Rolnick (trans. David Lang)
Aaron Helgeson, after L’amour, Marguerite Duras (trans. Kazim Ali)
The Crossing
Katy Avery
Nate Barnett
Jessica Beebe
Kelly Ann Bixby
Karen Blanchard
Steven Bradshaw
Colin Dill
Micah Dingler
Ryan Fleming
Joanna Gates
Dimitri German
John Grecia
Steven Hyder
Michael Jones
Anika Kildegaard
Heidi Kurtz
Maren Montalbano
Rebecca Myers
Donald Nally
Becky Oehlers
James Reese
Kyle Sackett
Becky Siler
Elisa Sutherland
Dan Schwartz
Dan Spratlan
Kevin Vondrak
film by Luke Carpenter and Emma Oehlers
audio by Paul Vazquez
music for a film: an embroidered choral work
Donald Nally, assisted by Kevin Vondrak and Paul Vazquez
based on an excerpt from Aaron Helgeson’s A way far home (2016)
with words of Alan Ginsberg, Gordon Henry, Aaron Helgeson after Marguerite Duras (trans. Kazim Ali), Joseph Rolnick (trans. David Lang), Donald Nally and Kevin Vondrak.