Description
Programme note –
“We put a monetary value on actual life itself. It’s such a strange, strange concept. . .
Did you see that guy accidentally hit that moose with his car?” “…No”
“Holy s#*!, Jamie, pull up that video”
I’ve become rather fascinated by Joe Rogan recently. I’m particularly interested in how multiple he is. He can just as easily engage in deep conversations about human existence and mortality as he can go on endlessly about how how strong chimps are. He will also switch between these two widly contrasting modes violently and on a whim.
What prompted the composition of this piece was realising how jealous I was of this sense of freedom. As a composer within the Western Art Music sphere, I have sometimes wondered whether I may have put myself in a box of only exhibiting the most serious or deep sides of myself in my work. This is something I set out to break away from with this piece. It is therefore an exploration of multiplicity and discontinuity.
On The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, there is a perpetually offscreen character called Jamie. His job seems to entirely consist of being on hand to pull up whatever random Youtube video pops into Joe Rogan’s mind at any point. I often think about what effect this has on poor Jamie, and how stressful it must be to have to stay on constant alert for whatever wild tangent might come next. This piece emulates this, where listeners take on Jamie’s perspective. The music includes moments of total chaos, and muscular material reminiscent of the Doom OST, but also profound, heartfelt melodic passages. The transitions between these states are rarely coherent. The value of this, whether one finds this experience refreshing or frustrating is something for the listener to ponder.
