The multimedia performance shines when the music is left to speak alone.
How Many Breaths? – In Memory of George Floyd and Countless Others came together when four Minneapolis artists processing their grief in unique ways realized they shared a similar vision. Writers Lou and Sarah Bellamy connected with composer Steve Heitzeg and Cornell professor and violinist Ariana Kim to create a hybrid work of spoken word, video, and solo violin. With each artist examining the feelings of their community, and the stories of black lives lost, the piece became a coherent whole, but struggled to get away from its inception as several different ideas. At times the violin and spoken word fought for the listeners attention rather than working off of each other, but when the music got opportunities to star, Kim revealed a world of emotion, channeling months of anguish into 15 minutes of instrumental mastery.
In the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the most visible reactions were visceral, angry, and often violent. The earliest song I heard come out as a direct response to the killing took a week to be released. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who were on the streets across the country within days, it’s easy to see how protest art almost always follows physical protests themselves. How Many Breaths? attempts to blend the emotions of the moment with the weight of a lifetime spent being black. The narrators told the story of Floyd, along with those of mothers, widows, and black boys growing up in a country that has told them that they are disposable. The most powerful moments though, were when only the violin spoke. The video would return from protest footage to Kim, and she would deftly perform a solo that dug to the core of the emotions of the story being told and laid bare what it found. Tempo, technique, and volume would vary, as the violin cried for Floyd, but it left enough space for the listener to fill with their own emotions. The solos connected more closely with the audience than any other part of the performance, even through the muffled audio.
Because the performance had to take place virtually, all the visuals and audio went through Zoom, which significantly reduces the quality of both. This didn’t have a significant effect on the visual or spoken word aspects of the piece, but it hindered the violin performance, especially when it played with the spoken word piece. Notes were lost and distorted, which became distracting and eventually led me to miss entire lines that were read. The speakers and instrument began battling, not only to be heard, but to be felt. Whenever the violin would win the former, it would dominate the latter. The solos came through clearly, and established themselves as the most interesting parts of the performance. The playing was raw, but filled with confusion, anger, and beauty, a respite from the stories of hopelessness.
Although there has been a leap in the amount of black art being made in recent years, a disproportionate amount of it has been about black pain. Suffering will obviously be central to most of the art related to Floyd’s death, but in the case of How Many Breaths?, that was all that was offered by the spoken portion. Black families and communities figuring out how to grapple with pain in their communities is a story that has been told repeatedly, especially in the past few months, but the narrators just told other people’s experiences. The violin freed my emotions, putting my stories and experience at the forefront. Painful creaks and whines made up the sonic backdrop for most of the performance, the tension of the strings breaking though to communicate pain more clearly than the words were able to. Pizzicato added dynamism and texture, and the changes in volume signaled the moments that were meant to be the heaviest. While most of the time I was hearing someone else’s stories told to me, when the violin would solo I became a part of the community, experiencing anger and grief in my own way. Nobody was telling me how I should feel, and I could react honestly. The result was a moment of catharsis, before the reality of the current state of America crept back in. At a time like this though, we should be grateful for those moments, wherever we can get them.