• Premiere: 1996 / Proctor Art Center, Bard College, NY

• Instrumentation: prerecorded sound

• Duration: 3'

• Text: Gilda Lyons

Program Note

A snapshot of a not-so-gentle inner dialog about the role and perception of a young female voice in American culture, what you want (substance free) circles around a grotesque caricature of the ‘nice girl’ who has softened every edge, hidden any sign of intelligence, and obliterated her own internal fire for the sake of other people’s comfort and acceptance.  In this portrait of her, I explore the personal and communal cost of losing oneself to the perceived normalcy of the one-dimensional, the palatable, the unthreatening, and the vacuous.