entry in diary I don't keep

instrumentation: string quartet (violin, violin, viola, and violoncello)
duration: c. 8’00”
dedication: to Quinn and Maeve, for music sharing, unexplainable joking, and "Both of 'em" being
recorded: April 4th, 2021 by JACK Quartet; Video and audio by Ryan Streber Oktaven Studio-Mount Vernon, NY; Mixed by D. Carter

When we are together, my brother, my sister, and I are loud. We wildly dance around, incessantly speak over one another, and instantly become an enigma to any spectators. Now that my siblings and I live further apart than we ever have before, our ability to all be loud in the same place at the same time is less often than I would prefer. This year has, of course, only magnified that wish to be geographically closer, but luckily despite our individual busyness, we have slowly settled into our new ways of keeping in touch. Our connections are made in small periodic text exchanges of music, forwarding the occasional funny tweet, and calling to share a life update or two. entry in diary I don't keep attempts to capture these imprints of interaction with my siblings through a warped theme and variations observing both the bombastic and the introspective moments we’ve created together. Each gesture functions as either a distillation of a collective memory with them or as a placeholder for a future one.
A surreal representation of this program note has been made into a playable Game Boy game available below. Click on the screen, use "z" on your keyboard or "a" on your Game Boy to interact, and the arrows or direction pad to move. If the screen does not initially load, click the full-screen icon in the bottom right-hand corner.