For Solo Piano (2025), duration: 5’

This piece responds directly to a photograph by Diane Arbus – “The Backwards Man in His Hotel Room”. The work is one of Arbus’s early works, and in each piece, there is always a sense that she recognizes the subject and the subject recognizes her – an act of mutual seeing. This picture in particular always seemed like such a complete picture of loneliness, and the despair one feels when they are at odds with their own body. There is something poignant about the hotel room as well – the bare lightbulb, the asymmetrical furniture. The sense that the very world of the photograph is temporary and fleeting. That the man in the picture – maybe a contortionist? – is performing for themself. Ever since first seeing the photograph, I have always wanted to write music to accompany it. Music that would be both tentative and voyeuristic, and that expresses that same sense of loneliness.