Antoine Beuger – Now Is the Moment to Learn Hope (2018)

Performed on February 17, 2018, by members of the Extradition Ensemble:

Loren Chasse – bell
Brandon Conway – classical guitar
Sage Fisher – harp
Matt Hannafin – bowed crotale
Branic Howard – bowed guitar
Evan Spacht – alto trombone

"Now Is the Moment to Learn Hope" was inspired by an address presented by sociologist and philosopher John Holloway at the “Rediscovering the Radical” conference, Liverpool, UK, September 2016. A passage from the talk is quoted on the score’s title page:

“Now is the moment to learn hope. Now, when there seems so little ground for hope; Now, when refugees and migrants are drowning in the sea; Now, when racism and fascism are surging in Europe and North America and elsewhere; Now, when even to mention hope seems like a sick joke or an insult to millions and millions of young people who face a life of unemployment, or sometimes worse: employment. Now is the time to learn hope . . . not just to hope that everything will be alright. But to learn hope . . . hope as a way of thinking that opens paths to a different world.”

Later in the talk, Holloway says:

“There is a beautiful sentence written by Arundhati Roy, which says ‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. . . . [O]n a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.’ A world that does not yet exist, but is on the way. A world that moves against and beyond the existing world. A world that does not yet exist, and therefore exists not-yet: as anticipation, as struggle, rebelliousness, as loose nerve ends, as refusal to accept, as a scream against the existing society. It is this world – this world that does not yet exist – that is the axis of hope. And to learn to hope is to learn to think from a world that does not yet exist, but could potentially exist. . . . And we who refuse to accept, we who refuse to abandon hope: What are we doing? I think we are trying to listen to this world that does not yet exist but is on her way. To hear her breathe and magnify the sound. . . . And perhaps it is not just a question of listening to this other world that is on her way, but of resonating, of understanding our own activity as resonating with this world of the not-yet, as trying to stir vibrations of harmony and discord, trying to recognize and create an old and new music. To move in an old and new grammar of resistance and rebellion.”

Beuger’s score asks musicians to play one sound, “caringly / daringly / over and over / again and again / in wondering pondering communion / trustingly / not knowing how and when to end.” In performing the piece, the musicians took additional inspiration from an exchange between John Cage and poet Joan Retallack, quoted in Retallack’s book "Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music":

JR: Have I ever told you my definition of hope?

JC: (Laughing) What is it?

JR: The willingness to be pleasantly surprised.

JC: Yes?

JR: Which sounds perhaps trivial. But I think it is a complex and devious undertaking to remain in a state of willingness, to maintain even the ability, to be pleasantly surprised. It means countering all the good sour sense in both pessimism and skepticism. But one must acknowledge that there is always good and evil. That there’s a struggle going on and we live in the midst of it.

JC: Yes, that’s the truth.

“Now Is the Moment to Learn Hope” was recorded by Branic Howard at the Portland Garment Factory, a woman-owned, certified zero-waste manufacturing studio in Portland, Oregon. Photo and production assistance by Robert Waldorf.