There's an element of the opera which attempts to reconcile the literary component - the writing through a libretto form, evoking fiction and nonfiction and poetics of every variety - the oration of the text that is spoken = with my musical aspiration concerning emotions, abstraction (of the aether, of atmosphere) = with the fine art background related to the optical phenomenon and its articulations of the body. I've always prioritized scientific ideas, even though they carry with them an inherent violence towards the natural world, in the reduction of the complexity of the world through viewing it through this ontologically abstracting lens, irreparably cracking open the substance of the world to reassemble it another way - the artistic method is the epitome of synthetic discourse and artificial engagement with the world. This in fact seems what it may offer to knowledge: aesthetic order.

There is a bias towards the present, but it is the ultimate hallucination. The present is the shoreline, where the land meets the sea, but the line separating them cannot be located, is constantly dissolving and moving. The present is defined by the re-membering of a past experience or anticipation of an experience still yet to be had. Advocating for staying in the present - to "be here now" - is the prolonging of a culturally shared, collectively embodied, phenomenological hallucination.