…is in your near future.”
    — fortune cookie from tonight’s dinner.

Near indeed.

The fortune I discovered in my wallet yesterday — “We are here to create / not merely survive” — was inspiring. This one was just scary.

We have a little over a week before we’re performing in Boston

. Cocoons are hanging precariously from the tracklighting in the studio, spotlights-on-relays have been flashing on and off for the last several hours, Steve has been editing soundclips and working on the Quartz Composer-based sequencer, Robert has been drilling clear acrylic glass, and I have been hacking out some text that may or may not be recorded at some point this weekend.

Writing text for this performance has been difficult. Normally, I write things that are fairly expressive and metaphorical. For this, given that we’re not really performing a story so much as an idea, it didn’t seem appropriate. Or PURE enough.

So using an online rhyme generator to play on the randomness-and-technology-as-an-integral-part-of-creation themes in our piece, I assembled a few lists of homophones and a few random phrases for good measure. These will be spoken as if they’re part of a psychology experiment or a language course, only with bizzare variations of intensity. And maybe a mock-British accent.

It’s hard to imagine if I’ll be pleased with the final product. Fortunately, reassurance is only one order of szechuan chicken away.