LIGHTHOUSE 40°N, 73°W

Collaborator Christina Campanella and I…

wrote this song during the early stages of our exploration of a piece that we hoped would address the rising seas that are coming our way. She has a long family history in Washington Heights: Her late father used to go fishing with her grandfather down by the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge. Suffice it to say, she has all sorts of powerful memories of that place. What would happen, we wondered, if the rising waters erased that spot?

The spoken texts at the beginning of the song are taken from W.G. Moore's remarkable A Dictionary of Geography.

This video is from a performance installation we did at the Red Door in NYC—the end-product of a Harvestworks Residency. Christina has gone on to use the song as the installation has evolved into something called Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, an aural estuary, a spatial listening experience experienced through a set of wireless headphones, which she is making with sound designer Jim Dawson.

Video by Damian Calvo.